The title does not lie, today is infact my birthday!

I'm now 20 years old, which means I have well and truly entered adulthood. It honestly doesn't feel all that different, except now I can say I'm in my twenties, which does feel a bit strange.

I got sent some money from relatives, which I used to buy these two things for myself:

I've been wanting to play Astro Bot since it came out; I loved Astro's Playroom and all of the little references it had! As for the surge protector, this is actually my second one, as the first one ran out of spare plug sockets. Having this means I'll no longer have to swap out plugs when I want to play another console. Additionally, my friend @aapiarts gifted me Egglien on Steam, which was nice of him.

Unfortunately I don't plan on making any birthday art this year, as there are already things I need to do for collabs and such. I'll try for next year, though!

So yeah, all in all today's been a good day. I'm not really sure how to end this post, so... let's see how much I grow as an artist and a Newgrounder by the time I hit 21!

Over the past few days I've been working on an idea for a new project. Unlike my older, now-cancelled projects, whose stories I feel were a bit too open-ended for my skill level, I feel as if this one could be a lot more focused. Let me know what you think!

--

Basically, somewhere in a forest, secluded far away from civilisation, there exists a home for creatures with a "physical vulnerability". What this means is that the creatures that live in this home all have some kind of physical attribute that would cause a serious risk of harm to them in the real world. For example, one could be filled up with helium, having to constantly avoid bursting themselves. Another could be dangerously prone to accidents, always tripping over themselves, bumping into things and the like. Another could be severely allergic to air, permanently confined to a vaccuum chamber on wheels.

But what if some of these creatures were tired of being confined to this house? What if they wanted to go out by themselves, go on risky adventures and experience what the world has to offer, despite their circumstances? Well, that's exactly what a group of them did.

--

I already have two of the characters finalised, and am currently designing a third. I'll make a more official announcement post when everything's ready to be revealed in full, but for now, let me know what you think about the idea!

Hi all,

After much thought and deliberation I have made the decision to retire my X/Twitter and Instagram accounts, leaving Newgrounds as my only active social media. I have decided to do this for several reasons, including but not limited to:

• the little amount of interaction I have on these platforms compared to Newgrounds,
• the increasing use of posts to train AI models, especially X's decision to no longer allow users to opt out,
• the benefits it will give to my mental health.

Unfortunately this means I will lose out on making alt text on my art for visually impaired users. I will try to compensate for this by adding more detailed descriptions to my art in the future.

I am sorry to anyone who followed me on these platforms, but I feel as if this is the best decision to take for myself. Plus, it'll allow me to place my focus entirely on my Newgrounds, and making it the best it can be.

I do not plan on joining any additional platforms (Bluesky, Cara, etc.) at this time.

Thank you for your understanding.

Hi all,

You may or may not have noticed that I've been posting very little on Newgrounds for a couple months now. Even before then, I had already cancelled a project and skipped a monthly newspost. What's been going on?

I'd say there are three main reasons for this:

• I was struggling with my OCD a lot during this period; however I'm feeling better lately and I've been learning to power through parts of it more.
• I got distracted playing video games. No excuse, I'm just a lazy ass.
• The third and final reason, and the one the rest of this blog post will be focused on: I have been feeling overwhelmed by the stuff I've been doing on Newgrounds, and that it's been feeling more like a chore than a passion.

Now look, I would consider myself to be a creative individual. And as such, I come up with a lot of ideas and concepts for random things. However, where I think the problem with me lies is that when I come up with an idea I like the sound of, I have a sudden burst of energy to get started developing it right away. This may sound good on paper, but you have to remember, I'm just one guy. One guy who is only a beginner artist. There's only so much I'm able to do at one time... and three simultaneous projects certainly ain't it.

I absolutely love creating new characters, designing them, giving them stories to look back on, worlds to explore and adventures to go on. I can hand-on-heart say it's one of my passions in life, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to create these characters and upload them here for all to see. It's something I've been doing ever since discovering this interest back in 2022, with Candlestick Road in particular being perhaps my first ever proper "project". However, for the reasons mentioned above, over time more and more of these projects and ideas have been piling up, and it's getting to the point where, despite my passion, I'm unable to keep up with maintaining and developing all of these projects. I no longer feel as if I know where exactly to go as an artist, and that in turn makes the GlitchBuddy account lose a defined identity.

Henceforth, I am making the difficult but necessary decision to cancel all but one of my projects effective immediately. I know this isn't the news that some of you would want to hear, but I feel as if it's the right thing to cut back to the bare minimum and re-evaluate my direction as an artist and worldbuilder over time.

The one project I will be keeping is Glitch & Gummi. I've been attached to these lil fuckers for too long now, and it will serve as a good beginner project for me to flesh out my writing and drawing skills with. Glitch & Gummi will now become the main focus of the account, although I'll still continue to draw and post random concept characters and fanart as I currently do. New projects won't be an absolute impossibility; I do still have the desire to eventually work on other characters and worlds. But for the foreseeable future, Glitch and Gummi will be taking the helm of the GlitchBuddy brand.

While we're here, though, I do want to show you all another thing I've secretly been working on in the background: a YouTube channel. Now it's nothing to do with art or animation (although I do want to make a GlitchBuddy YouTube channel at some point); rather, I will be making videos related to video games; reviewing them, playing them, talking about them, etc. Originally, these videos were going to be hosted by a new, original character I had made called Bork, but I eventually decided against this, and now the channel will be hosted by none other than Gummi himself. I've already started recording the first video, and I can't wait to show you all once it's done.

One more thing before I go; I plan to keep making the monthly GlitchBuddy Update news posts I started a few months ago; albeit in a much more slimmed-down, art-focused format. This should hopefully reduce the monthly writing burden, and enable me to present the month's happenings in a more concise format. The first one of these will happen in October.

Well, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading. This is a big decision for the future of GlitchBuddy, but it gives me an opportunity to slow down, focus more and take things slowly over time, rather than just rushing into them as I had been doing before. I know, I know; I've done a lot of these sorts of posts over time, and trust me, I ain't exactly proud of it. But I hope - I really, truly do hope - this will be a renaissance for me in my output, activity and, most importantly, quality. I really appreciate all the support I've gotten in such a short amount of time - for a small beginner artist like me, 60+ fans in a year is absolutely insane. I hope this new direction will help me provide you all with some awesome content.

- Glitch [ I - ]

Hi all,

If you've been around for a while then you may be aware of my project, Ditko, which is about a dimensional traveller who must fight a malevolent entity.

I had originally planned for this project to keep being developed by fleshing out the story and conceptualising several of the dimensions that Ditko would travel to. However, recently I have decided to come back to an old project concept, and it's one that I'm really keen about developing and expanding. Unfortunately, this means I have to shelve one of my existing projects, as four projects at a time is too much to work on, and I have chosen Ditko.

There are a couple of reasons as to why I chose Ditko to be shelved. The first is that I feel like it's a bit too ambitious for someone at my level to work on, with the whole "infinite dimensions" concept and all. This new project I'm working on is a lot simpler, which should hopefully make it more suited to a beginner like me. Another reason is that, in my opinion, Ditko is so far the least-developed out of my three current projects; both Glitch & Gummi and Candlestick Road have a defined setting, characters and story (even if all of those details may not yet be public), while Ditko hasn't really progressed in the same way.

Notice how I use the word "shelved" instead of "cancelled", though. I would like to bring this project back at some point, maybe when my skills have improved a bit. And if I do, I promise I'll bring it back in a way that not a lot of you may expect.

Sorry if you were excited about the project's growth, but I do believe this is the best path going forward. Thanks for your understanding.

-Glitch [ I - ]

Well, the day has finally come! Every active Newgrounds user will become Newgrounds' user of the day at some point in their careers, and today it's my turn!

Honestly, I was expecting to wait a lot longer for this moment, and I'm kind of surprised it came only two years after joining the site. Yeah, I know it doesn't really mean anything, but it's still a nice thing to see in the morning.

Thank you to all of the new people who have followed as a result; the support is appreciated!

-Glitch [ I - ]

Hi guys,

Unfortunately, due to unforseen circumstances, there will be no GlitchBuddy Update for this month. Thanks for your understanding, and I hope to be back in September.

-Glitch [ I - ]

Greetings Earthlings, and welcome back to another GlitchBuddy update, the monthly series where I give you updates about what’s been going on with me, my art and my Newgrounds, as well as Gummi taking you through the games he’s been playing lately.

This post marks the end of a short break I’ve been taking from Newgrounds. I love this site and the people on it, don’t get me wrong, but I felt like I was getting a bit burnt out, especially on the judging side of things. Hopefully this break will have refreshed me, and I’ll be able to come back a better GlitchBuddy than before!

Unfortunately this month has turned out to be slightly less eventful than before, whether it’s because of the burnout or just general lack of motivation. However, there’s definitely still enough to talk about to fill up an update, so without further ado, let’s get started!

Art

Glitch takes a selfie

There’s only been one new piece of art this month; I haven’t been super motivated to do anything else lately. But I still really like how it turned out, and it ended up being a fun experiment on perspective.

For those unaware, I recently created an Instagram page, and I wanted to make a special drawing to start it off. I quickly came up with the idea of Glitch taking a selfie, because, y’know, that’s what people do on Instagram! As Glitch’s arms aren’t all that long, I had the challenge of drawing his face really close up and to the side, something that I didn’t originally think I’d be able to pull off all that well. But I persisted, and after a good long drawing session this is what I came out with:

In order to achieve this, I first started by drawing rough guidelines that correlated to the position I wanted Glitch to be in. This is something that I haven’t really done all that often in my art career, but it ended up helping a lot for this particular piece. I then used the guidelines as a base to draw each of the cube’s faces on separate layers, so that they did not overlap. After this, the rest of the details pretty much came naturally, although I did have a slight bit of trouble lining Glitch’s face up with the perspective. Finally, I threw in Gummi being the jolly fellow he is, and I was done.

You may notice that Glitch has a lil’ scratch just above his right arm – this is a small character design update I made after the close-up perspective got me thinking about little details I could add to my characters. I think it helps to further emphasise his personality as an energetic risk-taker, and I’d like to potentially add more small details like this to both Glitch and my other characters, although I’d have to be careful to not overdo it.

Newgrounds

The EGB journey continues

Ever since officially joining the ranks of the Elite Guard Barracks back in June (see the last update for more info on that), I’ve continued to steadily judge submissions, flag those that break the rules, and do my best to keep the portal clean.

I mentioned in the last update how I had joined into something called the ROTC, which is essentially the EGB’s rookie program for those who do not yet meet the official requirements to become an officer. While you only need 400 B/P points to join the ROTC, you need 2,500 of those points to become a full officer.

I didn’t explicitly mention it at the time, but I had set a goal for myself: to reach 2,500 B/P and become a full officer by the end of the month. When I made the last update, I mentioned having around 1,750 points, which meant I had to judge around 750 submissions in just 15 days. It was hard, but I was determined to make it.

And, now that we’re here, I’m happy to say that I succeeded in my goal, on the very last day of the month no less! And if you look on the EGB website, you’ll see I have officially been promoted to a full officer:

It feels good knowing that I am contributing towards making this website a safer and better place for everyone.

Games of the Munchies 2024

In my last update, I mentioned how I joined the Newgrounds Games of the Munchies 2024. For those who haven’t read the update, it was essentially a pseudo-tournament where your OC was put into an online Hunger Games simulator, and the organiser (TheShokBlok) would draw little doodles of your character doing whatever the simulator returned. It was quite a big deal; all my friends on Discord were talking about it, and I saw several of the participants using their character portraits from the tournament as their Newgrounds profile pictures.

Unfortunately, Glitch and Gummi met an untimely fate somewhere in the middle of the tournament, after getting into a fight with two other characters. It was a shame, but hey, at least Glitch got a cool propeller afterwards, and Gummi even got some crushed-up nachos as a treat.

The winner of the tournament ended up being FunnyPlush, who emerged victorious after a long and gruelling battle with BargonSpaceman’s Kai! Congratulations!

Gaming

Newgrounds

Since the last update I have managed to more than double my medal count, going from 189 medals to 438. I started by just copying whatever BlueMonday1984 played (sorry about that), but now I’m finding games by going into the game portal, selecting a category of game I’m feeling like that day and making sure “Medals” is selected in the API Options dropdown. I don’t usually find the time to medal hunt, but when I do, it’s pretty fun, and I get to play a lot of old obscure Newgrounds games I would have otherwise never heard of. There are too many to go through all of them in this update, so I’ll just run you through some of the highlights.

100% Complete

100% Complete is a game I’ve actually known about for years, ever since I was in primary school. I remember playing the game back then and constantly seeing Newgrounds medal pop-ups, but of course I didn’t know what Newgrounds medals were at the time, so I was very confused.

Anyway, the premise of the game is in the title; you have to “100% complete” the game by exploring the world and finding all of the “secrets”. These secrets, for the most part, are regular everyday objects such as a slice of bread or a coke can, although they can occasionally be other things, such as an up arrow or the Newgrounds logo.

You find these secrets by going through holes in the wall and floor, which aren’t all that obvious and for the most part you will need to uncover yourself. It’s pretty fun to discover all the hidden passages and areas, although when you’re trying to collect all the secrets then it gets a bit annoying towards the end. Other than that, I’d definitely recommend this one. It’s a good game.

awesome calculator

Awesome Calculator is the mostest awesomest calculator to ever exist ever in the history of humankind. Not only do you get the four basic operations to work with, but also exponention?????? That’s insane!

The art direction has been thought of meticulously here, with both the rainbow background and Comic Sans font seeking to ignite the imagination and transport the player into a world of whimsy and wonder. The royalty free dubstep in the background is also pretty epic.

Also I’ve heard that if you calculate enough times, a picture of a cantaloupe will appear… my uncle works at bethsda, I would know.

Anyway yeah this is the greatest calculator to exist ever. Why not whip it out during your next maths exam?

Little-Rena's games

(just a selection)

I’m gonna knock out multiple games with one paragraph here and tell you all about a Newgrounds user called Little-Rena. She’s probably one of the most well-known users, especially among the BBS, and has been around for one heck of a long time.

Now to be honest, I’m not too sure what it is she’s most known for, but I can tell you this: she’s made a lot of games over the years, varying from things such as guides for flagging reviews, COVID-19 headline generators, and even a Clock Crew dating simulator.

A lot of (if not most of) her games have medals, and they’re all fairly easy to get. For example, in Red Egg Redemption, you have to click the red egg in each level, and you get medals for reaching certain levels, clicking on certain colours of eggs and failing the first level. That’s it.

A common theme throughout the medals in Rena’s games is that there will usually be ones for clicking a mute button, reading instructions, viewing credits and clicking a Newgrounds supporter link (if applicable). The games are neat, though, and if you’re looking for something short and silly, why not check a few of them out?

Right-Click Menu Gen. V2

Now here’s something unconventional: not a game per se, but rather a tutorial on how to generate a right click menu in Adobe Flash. And yes, it has medals.

There’s six medals in the game. Three of them you get for clicking certain buttons, and the other three you get for doing certain things with the right click menus you generate.

Honestly, there’s not really much to say about this one; I just wanted to include it because it’s not really something you’d consider a “game”, but it still has medals. I found that interesting.

PC & Console

Written by Gummi

It’s ya boi gum, as always, with another update on my incredible and very awesome gaming career. I’ve managed to get a lot done this month, so let’s get right into things.

Woodle Tree 2 Deluxe+ (PS4)

Yes, yes, I know, I’ve been talking about this one a lot, but hear me out: my goal is to get all of the achievements for this game on all the platforms it’s on. Yes, that’s how much I love it.

You’d already know about the game itself if you read the last update, so I’ll just skip to the good news: I’ve completed the PS4 version, and got the platinum trophy! This gives me my 4th platinum so far on PlayStation, and also gets me up to trophy level 200, which is a nice bonus.

Woodle deserves to relax after all his hard work.

It was pretty hard getting there, though. In order to 100% complete the game, you must collect 930 “blue berries” scattered across the world. Normally, once you collect half of the blue berries, you’re supposed to unlock the “blue berry radar”, which helps you locate the rest. However, for whatever reason, this did not unlock for me on my PS4 playthrough. I emailed the developers of the game about it (indie developers ftw) and they directed me towards an unofficial video guide on YouTube. While this did help me collect the rest of the blue berries, it was a very tedious effort as I of course didn’t memorise the location of every blue berry. This meant I had to follow the guide exactly, even if I had already collected a blue berry in that location. Oh well, I got there in the end, and I’m happy about that.

The last blue berry I had to collect. It was in the desert area.

Now that I have all the achievements on both PS4 and Xbox One, the only platform left to complete is both the Deluxe and original releases on Steam. I’ll try to get them both done this month so I can finally stop talking about this game, lol.

Gears of War (Xbox 360)

Woodle Tree wasn’t the only game from my last update I had completed this month; Gears of War has been checked off my list as well!

…well, the Casual difficulty at least. In order to get all of the single-player achievements, I also have to complete the Hardcore and Insane difficulties, as well as collect all of the “COG tags” that appear as you progress through the game.

Gears of War ended up being a pretty fun game, even if I did get stuck in a few areas. The shooting was fun to pull off, although as with most 3D shooter games I do wish it had motion aiming (god damn you Splatoon). The “active reload” mechanic (where you time button presses correctly to reload quicker) did take a while for me to get used to, but pretty soon I was reloading quicker than a cheetah on Red Bull.

Just about to raise hell on some grubs.

Overall, the game was pretty simple to get through… that was, right up until the final boss, General RAAM. God DAMN was he a bitch to kill. I initially tried going in with the same guns I had been using throughout the rest of the game, but all of those attempts would end in the same way: he’d blow my fucking head off. I then went online and looked up how to beat him, and a lot of people said you needed to use a combination of the Torque Bow and Sniper Rifle, both weapons I would have otherwise never considered using. I tried multiple times to get to the turret at the back in order to shoot at RAAM with that, but all of them were unsuccessful. Eventually I managed to kill him out of sheer luck, and completed the game.

If the final boss battle was that hard on Casual difficulty… what about Hardcore and Insane?

Brink (Xbox 360)

The latest home console game I have started is a first-person shooter called Brink. The game’s premise revolves around a man-made island called the Ark, which has become a refuge for thousands of people during a global warming crisis. The massive influx of people has led to extreme poverty in some areas while the original creators of the island continue to live in luxury, which has started a civil war.

In the game, you can either play as a member of the Ark Security service or a member of the Resistance, with different missions between each. I’ve began by playing on the Security side, with the missions I’ve played so far involving rescuing a hostage, getting a “datakey” from a safe, and recovering a bioweapon sample.

One of the promotional images for the game. There's twenty of them, and they all look the exact same. Naturally, none of the gameplay actually looks like this.

While at first I found locating and completing objectives confusing, I discovered a feature called the Objective Wheel, where you can select objectives you want to complete (for example, escorting a hostage or defending a key structure) and they’ll automatically be highlighted for you in the game world.

The gameplay is okay, although so far I haven’t really found it very engaging. For all of the missions so far I’m able to spend all my time shooting down enemies while my NPC friends get the objectives for me. The shooting itself isn’t super intuitive either; you can knock people down easily, but to kill them you have to keep shooting a stupid amount of bullets into them.

I don’t feel as if I’ve explored enough of the game yet to give a proper verdict, so I’ll hold off for now. Maybe in the next update.

Pokémon Pearl (DS)

And now we come to the last game I will be talking about in today’s update, and it’ll probably be a familiar title to a lot of you: Pokémon Pearl! (or Diamond, or Platinum…)

A lot of you may not know this, but I’m a pretty big Pokémon fan. I’ve played through a lot of the games, owned several pieces of merchandise throughout the years and even used to read Pokémon World magazine tons as a child (RIP). But funnily enough, throughout all those years, I’d never played the Sinnoh games, even though those are probably the ones I hear talked about most online. It’s always been a desire of mine to experience what I missed out on, though, and so a few months ago I managed to pick up a complete-in-box copy of Pearl.

It's been fun exploring all of the unfamiliar locations in the game and experiencing its story for the first time, although there’s not much that differs it greatly from other Pokémon games. Compared to other big cities in Pokémon games, Jubilife City was a bit underwhelming, with it not containing anywhere near the amount of fun locations and things to do as even Goldenrod or Celadon, in my opinion. The Pokétch is a bit of a gimmick; while it does contain some useful applications, like the one that tells you how much health your party Pokémon have left, or the one that indicates your Pokémon’s friendship level towards you, I mostly just leave it on the default clock application.

That’s not to say this is a bad game though, far from it. Like I said, I’ve really enjoyed exploring all of the locations I never got to see before, such as Oreburgh City with its huge mine, or Floaroma Town with its peaceful flowers. Apart from that, when I’m not playing through the story I’ll usually spend the majority of my time training up my Pokémon in the tall grass, with a YouTube video on in the background.

I’m definitely gonna play through this one till the end, and I’ll be sure to update you all when I complete it.

Conclusion

A slightly less eventful month than before, but still significant. I was able to complete a piece of artwork I didn’t originally think I’d even be able to do, and I became a full member of a club I’m very passionate about. Overall, I’d say this month has been pretty successful, and I shall be looking forward to the next!

Oh, look at that, is that the time already… well, enough writing, time to relax and ponder in thought once again. As a robot, I can’t truly go to sleep like Gummi can, but I can enter this sort of state where I’m still technically conscious, but fully immersed in my thoughts, with my surroundings becoming secondary to me. That’s what I do to get me through these long nights, but I do often wonder how things must be for Gummi. Going completely unconscious for hours at a time with nothing but your brain’s random conjurations to keep you company… he must go insane.

Anyway, goodnight! See you all soon!

-Glitch [ I - ]

NG Stats

My account's stats as of writing (16th July 2024, 23:02 BST)

• Fans: 54

• News: 14 (including this post)
• Art: 28
• Games: 1
• Audio: 1

• Faves: 213
• Reviews: 87
• Posts: 465

• Level: 14
• Exp. points: 1,970/2,180
• Exp. rank: 31,674
• Vote power: 5.59 votes

• Rank: Private
• Global rank: 3,453
• Blams: 306
• Saves: 2,298
• B/P bonus: 18%
• Whistle: Silver

• Trophies: 1
• Medals: 470
• Supporter: 5 months, 5 days

Yep, you've heard that right. I now have an Instagram account, where I'll be sharing the drawings I submit to the art portal in addition to Newgrounds. I've already been using this account for about a week, but now I am officially announcing it!

I'm currently in the process of posting my backlog of art to the account, which will be joining X as my second alternate social media platform. You can check it out at the link below or on my profile:

https://instagram.com/glitchbuddy

Hi all, Glitch here with another update about what's been going on with me, my art and my Newgrounds. I want to aim to make at least one of these things a month, which I seem to have been successful in doing so far. I'll probably try to aim future GlitchBuddy Updates for around the midway point of each month. For now though, let's get into it!

Art

A new character approaches!

The concept character grind continues, and this one's a special one, because it's a co-production! Me and my good friend @aapiarts collaborated on designing a new character, based on an idea I had a while back about a "friendly creature who absolutely LOVES rubbish". After a lot of discussion about a lot of details (yes, even down to the shade of orange), this is what we created. Say hello to Core!

Core is a travelling slug-like creature who absolutely adores trash. He spends his days looking for trash, admiring it, and collecting the pieces of trash he likes the most in his little metal trash can. Naturally, Core spends most of his time in large trash dumps, although the owners of said dumps aren't too pleased about it. Core is generally well-loved by the public, who'll sometimes donate pieces of their trash to him.

Core doesn't just collect trash, he wears it too. Apart from his rusty trash-can-on-a-rope that's always slung across his shoulder, he also wears a black trash bag on his head, a pair of old, torn rubber gloves on his hands, and a white plastic shopping bag tied around his arm, all of which are very sentimental to him.

As for the art itself, you can see I've once again been making use of WaterC Special Blobs, this time as a way to draw dirt on Core's face and body, as well as a couple rust spots on his trash can. Drawing the initial outline for Core was very hard as I had never dealt with a character of this shape before, and it took a LOT of attempts to get something I was happy with. If I could improve one thing about this artwork, it would be making Core's arm blend in a bit better with the overall art style.

Here's aapi's drawing of him, which I got permission to share. He insisted that Core should have a missing front tooth, which I liked the idea of.

Overall, this is something that me and aapi are both very proud of, and we are definitely open to designing more characters together in the future.

Fun fact, by the way: The slime like substance Core's species produces is usually supposed to be a light-blue colour, but in Core's case, since the glands that produce it are so clogged up with dirt and grime, it appears as more of a yellow-green colour.

Ditko wakes up

I have one other piece of art left to talk about for this update, and it's one I only uploaded yesterday as of writing. I call it "Waking Up":

For a while now, I've been wanting to draw Ditko during the days before he became a dimensional traveller, and I think this resulting drawing turned out pretty well. For those who don't know the lore, before Ditko was a dimensional traveller, he was a depressed and emotionally distraught individual with a heavy addiction to Ponko Juice, a drink that produces alcohol-like effects. He would often wake up like this after a night of heavy drinking, with very little memory of the events that happened before. As you can imagine, in the days since, he's sworn to never touch the stuff again.

This drawing features the GlitchBuddy debut of two new Krita brushes. A brush called "Dry Bristles Eroded" was used to provide the texture of the asphalt, which resulted in a very nice wearing effect. Another one called "Charcoal Rock Soft" was used for the double yellow lines on the road, which I think makes them look a bit more realistic compared to if I had just used the basic hard brush.

I also tried my hand at some hard shading again, which is something I'm aiming to include at a base level in all of my future full-scale drawings. As I imagined there would be lights coming from the buildings to the right (off-canvas), I drew the shadows pointing towards the left. Ditko's shadow isn't exactly the most accurate thing in the world, but hey, I'm slowly improving.

If there are three things I could improve about this artwork, they would be:

• Drawing more accurate shapes for the hard shadows. The one on the Ponko Juice bottle is decent enough, but Ditko's shadow is missing his antenna, as well as not really being accurate to his body shape.
• Using darker colours (or alternatively light filters) for a nighttime scene. This is something I did with the crushed-up soda can on the side of the road, but Ditko and the Ponko Juice bottles look too bright in comparison.
• Adding some more detail onto Ditko to really drive the point home that his life is a mess; for example, some dirt near his stomach, or perhaps a cut or bruise on his face.

Still, this is one that I am again proud of.

Newgrounds

Elite Guard Barracks!

Around the time I made the first GlitchBuddy Update (link for those who haven't seen it), I was starting to get into something called the Elite Guard Barracks (EGB). For those who aren't aware, the Elite Guard Barracks is an unofficial Newgrounds group comprised of people with a strong passion for game & movie judging, who convene in a forum thread to report bad submissions, give advice on how to properly judge and rate, and overall help make the Newgrounds Portal a cleaner place. This is something I had been passionately doing even before I found out about the EGB, so this seemed like the perfect group for me.

Well, after about a month of posting bad submissions to the thread, I'm pleased to say that I've finally, officially joined the group! Look, that's my name on the list and everything!

I've joined as something called the ROTC, which is the EGB's term for those who don't yet meet the requirements to become a full member. ROTC members are given a little extra leeway when it comes to mistakes, and are there to learn the ways of the EGB before they become a fully-fledged officer. The requirements to become a full member are to have 2,500 combined B/P points and at least a bronze whistle. As of writing, I'm at just over 1,750 total B/P and have a bronze whistle, so if I keep things up at the pace I'm at now then I should become an officer in around 1-2 months' time. Regardless of whether I'm an officer or an ROTC member, I'm really excited to be a part of the group, and it's definitely given me the motivation I've needed to keep judging and reporting. I'll let you know where I get up to next month!

Abandonware

Another club I joined between this update and the last is one called Abandonware, which despite the name is a club dedicated to sharing and discussing your OCs. As a character designer, this seemed right up my alley, so I decided to join! Unfortunately it hasn't really been on my mind as much as the EGB, although I still do want to post there occasionally. However, it has worked in getting a few new eyes on my art, so that's something! I'll probably make a post there after I finish writing this blog.

Medal grinding

If you know me, you know I love seeing a meaningless number on a screen go up, and what's the one thing people on here tend to grind other than B/P? That's right, medal points! I'm already an achievement hunter on PC and consoles anyway, so why not add Newgrounds medals into the mix?

My grind started out with 157 medals that I had already gotten from just casually playing games on the site. As of writing, my medal counter sits at 188. I'll go into more detail about the specific games I've been playing in the gaming section of this update.

Games of the Munchies 2024

This is something I only found out about last night, when my friend aapi suggested I should look into it. For those of you who aren't aware, the Newgrounds Games of the Munchies (GOTM) are a Hunger Games-style event hosted by Newgrounds user TheShokBlok, where you submit your OC as one of 24 participants in a battle to the death, with only one OC remaining victorious. He uses an online Hunger Games simulator to generate the events that happen during the tournament, and he draws little sketches of your OCs doing the things that the simulator spits out. It's honestly a really cool concept.

The GOTM is something that I vaguely remember happening last year, but this is the first time I myself am joining in. I've entered Glitch and Gummi in as a duo, which is allowed because Gummi is both tiny and non-humanoid. As part of the entry, you're required to fill out a sheet explaining things like your character's name, lore, abilities, personality and even their thoughts about death. Here's the form I filled out:

I can't wait to see how these guys do! Hopefully they don't die on the first day...

Gaming

Newgrounds

The start of my medal grind involved me trying to unlock any medals I was missing in the games that I had already played, as well as a couple of new ones.

Toss the Turtle

A classic "launcher" game, as I like to call them. Is it the first one ever? I don't know, but it's pretty fun nonetheless. You launch a turtle as far as you can using a cannon, and keep it in the air using a gun (yeah, idk either). You earn money every time you launch your turtle, which you can use to buy better cannons and weapons, as well as extras like chest bombs and nukes.

I'd already had half of the medals unlocked from a time when I played this game back in 2022, so all I needed to do was to complete the game, which was an alright time. I don't remember my exact record, but I think it's around 3 million feet. One medal I didn't enjoy as much, however, was the one that required you to play for 2 hours total. The game got a bit boring after a while, but I'm the type of guy who likes to do things in one go. Even so, it was late at night and I had to go to sleep and come back to it the next day. Still, I'm happy I managed to 100% this one.

Trivial Trivia: The Newgrounds Collection

This is one of the new games I've played in my grind so far. As the name suggests, it's a trivia game all about Newgrounds, with questions revolving around the website itself, the events it holds, and some of its most legendary series. I had a bit of trouble connecting the game to my Newgrounds account at first, but after that was sorted it was smooth sailing... for the most part.

The highest score I've been able to get so far was on Friday Night Funkin' trivia. As I used to be really into FNF around 2021, I found this one to be easy, and have scored 100 a total of 7 times so far. My second highest score is on general Newgrounds trivia, where I managed to get 80 points. My lowest score so far is on Pebbles trivia, where I somehow managed to get 25 points despite having never seen a single Pebbles video in my life. Seriously, all my answers were complete guesses. I should probably watch some Pebbles...

NG BBS Awards 2022

Another old one from my early days of the site, NG BBS Awards 2022 isn't really a game per se, but more so an interactive experience used to showcase the winners of the titular awards ceremony. There's one for 2023 as well, but I haven't played it yet.

There were only two medals I hadn't unlocked, and they were both secret. Newgrounds actually lets you see the details of a secret medal if you view it on the profile of a user who has already unlocked the medal, which is how I was able to see them. Turns out, they both required you to click on specific areas in the awards window, which I guess I just didn't come across when I originally played it back in 2022. Anyway, nice easy one to complete.

Crunky's Fun Rager

Another new game I've played during the start of my grind. It's a game about a bunny seeking revenge against creatures called Crunko Pops... for some reason. The gameplay involves the screen slowly scrolling to the right while you, as Crunky, stomp, shoot and essentially kill the Crunko Pops in any way you can.

So far I've only gotten 4 out of 20 medals in this one, but that's probably because I was playing it really late at night and I was feeling a bit... cranky (get it?). I did find some of the mechanics a bit annoying; for example, there's a gun you can grab that automatically shoots, and you need to shoot a number of Crunko Pops within a certain time limit in order to progress towards unlocking a bonus. But some of the Crunko Pops are hard to kill this way, and there have been several occasions my bullet narrowly missed them by a pixel because they were just slightly higher than me. Regardless, I wouldn't consider it anything game-ruining, and I plan to come back to this one at some point.

Gappy's Playground

The last Newgrounds game I'm gonna discuss today is another one I had previously played around the beginning of 2023. It's called Gappy's Playground, and it serves as a sort of experimental proof-of-concept title in the legendary Gappy series of platformer games by LeviRamerez. There are 4 levels in total, and you can play through them in any order you please.

I'd only previously unlocked one of the five medals in this game, which was for collecting 100 dollars' worth of coins. The remaining medals are for 500 dollars, 999 dollars, breaking every block in the game, and a secret one that looks to me like a sort of easter egg hidden somewhere (it's worth 100 points, so I'd better find it). So far in my grind, I've only managed to unlock the one for collecting 500 dollars, so this is another one to come back to. There's a difficult area in the game called the "Worm Zone" that I still need to complete, too.

PC & Console

Written by Gummi

Hey guys, it's ya boi gum here again, and oh boy have things been crazy since my last update. There are four games for me to talk about today, so let's stop the yapping and get right into it.

Doki-Doki Universe (PS4)

So you may remember in the last update I talked about a game called Doki-Doki Universe. I had already completed the PS3/Vita version, and I was working on completing the PS4 version too.

Well guys, you'll never believe what happened. I was in the middle of leaving one of the planets to do something else, when the game crashed. "Eh," I thought to myself, "it does that a lot. I'm probably gonna have to do a whole bunch of stuff again which is a bit annoying, but it's no biggie."

I start up the game again. The game loads.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I get a message saying my save had become corrupted and it was deleted.

I cannot believe what I am seeing. Out of desperation, I dismiss the message and hit the continue button on the title screen anyway.

It loads my old save from the PS3/Vita version.

Excuse me Sony, but what the fuck!?

I'm probably not gonna come back to this game again, at least not for a very long time, because it's just so damn tedious to 100% everything. This is something that's really annoyed me, and now I'm forever cursed to seeing "71%" on my trophy list. Alas, the grind must continue, so I swiftly moved onward to my next game...

Death Squared (PS4)

I played this game for a bit back when I had a PS Plus subscription, and it had been sitting in my trophy list for a while. Curious, I looked in the PlayStation Store and found that it was on sale for only a couple of quid, so I bought it from there, and the trophy hunt restarted.

Death Squared is a game where you control these little coloured square robots, which you must place on matching checkpoints by solving puzzles:

[Screenshot from Steam]

For example, Red's checkpoint is that little red circle to the left.

In order to 100% the trophies, among other things, you have to complete all 80 story puzzles and all 40 party puzzles. The story puzzles have you controlling two robots, while the party puzzles involve four. You control each robot by tilting an analogue stick; Red is controlled by the left stick while Blue is controlled by the right. Surprisingly, the developers let you play the party levels with just one controller by using the triggers; L2 + left stick controls Yellow, while R2 + right stick controls Green.

The controls were decent, and I enjoyed the humour provided by the bored testing technician you play as, but god DAMN were these puzzles hard. I eventually resorted to using a walkthrough by the time I got to around the 50th level, but even then I was having trouble, as you have to position each bot in a specific way for some puzzles. And holy shit, I have been through very few grinds as tedious as completing all the party puzzles. I genuinely spent up until 1am one night just trying to complete the main story. I'd be lying if I didn't say that the game started to get really boring during these times.

Eventually, after a fuck ton of grinding and a lot of lost sleep, I earned the platinum. I don't think I'll be achievement hunting this one on any more platforms.

Woodle Tree 2 Deluxe+ (Xbox One)

During the last update, I talked about a game called Woodle Tree Adventures for the PS4. I mentioned how, while you can tell the developers put effort into it, it didn't exactly hit the mark, and I suggested you check out the second game instead. Well, seeing as I've almost completed all the achievements for that one, it's finally time for me to talk about what is genuinely one of my favourite games of all time: Woodle Tree 2 Deluxe!

Instead of the linear approach taken with the first game, Woodle Tree 2 puts you in a massive open world that you're free to explore all the nooks and crannies of. While there are specific themed areas of the game that you have to go through in order to progress, you're free to do them in any order you please (apart from the first level), not to mention all of the secrets to discover both inside and outside of them. Your goal is to go through each level collecting three "water tears" in order to restore the tree sages that protect your land.

I genuinely had fun with this one. Not only is the game really smooth to control, but it's fun to look for collectibles, even if a bit irritating at times. Additionally, there are 12 "sacred flowers" dotted around the map, each of which you must wake up by completing a difficult platforming level or puzzle.

I played the Xbox One version of the game this time around, as it was the one I already had the most achievements unlocked in at the time. As of now, the only achievement I'm missing is the one where you have to play with a friend, as I can't control more than one controller at a time. I'd have to wait for Glitch to help me out, which he'd be able to do if he would just stop writing this blog post...

Overall, if you're into platformers and collectathons, then I would 100% without a shadow of a doubt recommend picking this one up. You'll have a good time, I promise you.

Gears of War (Xbox 360)

And finally, we get to the game I've been playing most recently, the original Gears of War for the Xbox 360. After playing so many indies for so long, I figured it was about time I get stuck into a AAA title. This is one of the 360 games that's backwards compatible with Xbox One and Series X/S, so I've been playing it on my Series X.

The story involves a group of soldiers as they attempt to defeat the Locust Horde, a malevolent faction of creatures intent on destroying humanity. The game looks pretty good, especially for such an early 360 title. The shooting gameplay is alright, although it does get repetitive at points. Right now I'm in Act 2 of the game, in an area where you must keep close to a light source or else you'll be immediately killed by these bird-like creatures. I've been stuck on this area since yesterday, but hopefully I'll find a way through.

Plans for the future

Gears of War has separate achievements for completing each act on each difficulty; for example, completing Act 1 on Casual difficulty and completing Act 1 on Hardcore difficulty are two separate achievements. There are also these collectibles called Cog Tags that are scattered throughout the game, and you must collect all of them to earn another achievement.

Therefore, my plan right now is to finish the Gears of War campaign on Casual difficulty without worrying too much about the Cog Tags, so I can get a feel for the game and its different areas. Once I've completed that, I'll switch over to my PS4 so I can get the platinum trophy for Woodle Tree 2 Deluxe+ on there; I've already essentially completed the Xbox One version so it should be a nice easy platinum. After that's done, I'll go back to Gears of War and play through the campaign on Hardcore difficulty, and use a guide to collect all of the Cog Tags. Right now I'm unsure when I'll play through Insane difficulty, the hardest difficulty the game has to offer.

Conclusion

Another GlitchBuddy update complete! I honestly didn't expect to write this much at all; from what I can see in this little preview window it looks to be at least twice as big as the previous update. I guess I've just gotten better at writing about stuff, and knowing what I want to write about. A lot has been happening for me lately in terms of both my art and my Newgrounds career, and I'm excited to see where it will take me in the future.

Anyway, you know how I said that I'm the type of guy who likes to do things in one go? Yeah, apart from a half-hour break, this entire blog post was written in one go. I know robots like me don't tend to get tired, but I really do feel like I need a break from computing all of these thoughts. Thanks for sticking with me through the update, and I'll be sure to see you in the next one!

-Glitch [ I - ]

NG Stats

My account's stats as of writing (11th June 2024, 16:22PM GMT)

• Fans: 35

• News: 12 (including this post)
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• Faves: 167
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• Rank: Police Lieutenant
• Global rank: 5,069
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• Medals: 189
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