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PonyRL Progresses Smoothly

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A screenshot of the PonyRL web client.
PonyRL

 The web-based PonyRL project seems to have made a decent amount of progress since we last looked at it back in August, with several more playable classes and scenarios for the player to unlock. It's still pretty basic as far as roguelikes go, however; enemies are mostly stationary, there aren't really any NPCs for the player to interact with, and you aren't likely to get sick from eating orc carcases. Newcomers from the genre should find it fairly easy to get into, although after a while it might leave them wishing for something a bit more...substantial. Might have something to do with the game's still being in beta.

 Then again, it could just be that the later stages are all much better and I just suck too much at the game to get to them, who knows?

Another Fallout: Equestria Adaption

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  A while back a group calling themselves Overmare Studios were working on a Fallout 3 mod with ponies, but eventually decided to move to the Unity3D engine and release a standalone game based off of the influential fanfiction Fallout: Equestria. Months of painstaking development lead to this video, showcasing the incredible, never-before-seen ability of picking objects without resorting to hands or magnetic hooves: magic (i.e. how Gordon Freeman picks up the can before he is given the Gravity Gun). Hopefully this will lead to HL2-like shenanigans such as tossing kitchen sinks at hostile wasteland inhabitants, but even if it doesn't there should still be plenty of fun to be had...hopefully.

 It's more than a bit early to form a real opinion on the game, although I do have doubts about the team's ability to create enough textures, given the probable size of the game.

 Obligatory pony.

Play Legends of Equestria Tomorrow

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Game announcement: servers are opening in 24 hours!

 On Friday at 12:01AM EST the Legends of Equestria open server weekend will presumably begin, provided that their servers can handle the load. Even now they are crumbling under the weight of thousands rushing to download the MMO's client in preparation for the big day, and quite probably things will only get worse come tomorrow. Still, if you do actually manage to get in and play for a bit you'll be able to experience lawyer-friendly locations such as Ponydale, Cantermore and the Evershade Forest, and thanks to the /stuck command earth ponies will no longer be subject to eternal damnation in Tartarus.

 You can download the game here and read their exclamation mark-riddled announcement post here, but I'll copy & paste some of it below just in case the site goes down.



System Requirements
  • To run our game, you'll need to make sure you have the following: 
  • 2 GB ram 
  • Dual core processor, somewhere near 2 GHz. A single core processor works, but is not recommended 
  • An okay graphics card. If the computer is made after 2007, you'll be fine. The bare minimum would probably be 128 MB vram, DirectX9.0c/OpenGL2.0 
  • 1.5 gigabytes of hard drive space 
  • OS: Windows, Mac OSX, or Linux

    Commands 

    /listfriends Lists all your friends./logout Logs out of the game.
    /players Lists all the players in the room./help Lists all the commands.
    /report <player name=""> Lets you report a player to the moderators. You can also click on a pony to report them./playervisible <true false=""> Toggles your player invisible for you only, everyone else can still see you.
    /cinemacamera <true false=""> Your player will disappear and the camera turns into a camera-fly mode./removeitem <inventoryslot> Removes a game item according to the inventory slot it is in. Starts at 0.
    /stand Makes your pony stand./sit Makes your pony sit.
    /dance Makes your pony dance./unwearall Removes all items from your pony.
    /facehoof Makes your pony facehoof./inventory Opens your inventory.


    Getting to Cloudopolis

    In order to get to Cloudopolis, you must travel via the airship in Cantermore!

    If you're in Cantermore, travel up the cliff to the airship port and board your way onto the airship.

     If you're starting in Ponydale, you must first go to the train station and travel to Cantermore, and then go to the airship port.

    Getting to Cantermore

    In order to get to Cantermore, you must travel via train from Ponydale or via airship from Cloudopolis!

    If you're in Ponydale, you must travel via train.

    The train station is just past Sugarcane Corner. If you're in Cloudopolis, go to the airport located high up and to the right of the main cloud.


    Getting to Ponydale

    If you'd like to visit the quaint little town of Ponydale, you must go by train from Cantermore.

    If you're in Cloudopolis, go to the airport and get to Cantermore.

    Once you're in Cantermore, simply go to the train station by by Astral Charm.


    Questing

    Plenty of NPCs (Non-Player Characters) need help with their tasks! Some give out special prizes if you lend them a helping hoof!

    Go up to any NPC, right click, and select "Talk." NPCs have a "..." over their name.

    Listen to what they have to say, and be sure to follow their instructions in order to move on in the quest.

    At the end, you might get a reward for your kindness!


    Battling

    Watch out when going to the Evershade Forest! It's home to some scary monsters!

    In order to defend yourself against the creatures you'll encounter, try using your special combat abilities!

    Earth Ponies have Seismic Buck, Unicorns have Rainbow Fields, and Pegasi have Dual Cyclone! All three races have Ground Pound.

    When ready, select a creature, a target reticule should appear. Attack the mob by getting in their range and selecting your skill.

    When the enemy's health gets to zero, they'll faint! Don't worry though, I'm sure they can just walk it off.


    Trading

    Do you have an interesting item that you'd like to give to a friend? Well, you can trade them!

    Simply right click on your friend and hit "Trade." The other pony needs to accept your trade for it to continue.

    Once accepted, you'll see a screen. Left click and add the item to the trading menu.

    When both players are satisfied with the trade, they both must hit "Ready." When both players hit "Ready," a "Done" button will appear. Once both players hit the "Done" button, the trade will be completed.


    Stuck Somewhere?

    Have no fear! No need to call the moderators! Simply type /stuck or unstuck me and you will be moved to the starting point of the map. (This will not work if you are in combat.)

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    Thoughts on Legends of Equestria

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    Gameplay screenshot, as usual.

     Given the heavy load that Legends of Equestria's servers are under, it was a wonder I was able to get into the game at all. Many were not so fortunate; I've heard of people who literally spent several hours trying to log in before giving up, and over the weekend things are probably going to get even worse as people use their day off school/work to participate in the open server weekend.

     Aside from the connectivity issues (which are to be expected, given the game's current popularity), how good is Legends of Equestria in its current state? You can find my thoughts on it below the break.


     After spending several minutes logging in, I decided to start off with a unicorn character and fondly named him "Terrible Tuxxy", only to discover that the teleportation system is horribly broken and requires you to mash the left mouse button in hopes of it actually working. There's not really any point in using it unless your destination is some otherwise inaccessible high spot on a building, since the time spent mashing could otherwise be used to simply walk there like a normal pony.

     So much for them, I guess. Pegasi are really the only class worth using at the moment anyways, since they can fly and whatnot. They also have this amusing glitch that lets them effectively limp around in mid-air instead of flying, and since they can fly it's possible for them to reach areas that nobody else can. Oh yeah, and navigating Cloudopolis as any other race is a pain in the ass (especially since you can uncontrollably slide around after jumping and accidentally slip off a cloud), so there's that.
    It's easier to appreciate a lovely view when you've worked hard to reach it.
     Even if pegasi are the only really useful class, shortly after making the purposefully tacky mudpony "Cantermore Invader" I realized that LoE's movement system is flawed in that the player can, with some practice, walk around the sides of near-vertical walls, enabling them to access incredibly remote areas that only a pegasus should be able to reach via normal gameplay. This was honestly the most enjoyable part of the game for me, and I hope that the developers decide against fixing this quirk or go out of their way to make these high spots easier to reach. In its current state the game unintentionally rewards players who are willing to think outside the box, something which should be treasured.

     Scattered about the wondrous land of Equestria there are NPCs, most of which are involved in fetch quests. Some will also break the game if you try speaking to them, forcing you to log out and waste valuable time. These quests often provide very little reward for completing them, and if you'd really want cash you're much better off farming the mines for gemstones and selling your findings to a merchant.
    Being able to hang out in someone else's bedroom is kinda creepy, come to think of it.
     Once you've gotten bored of exploring, doing fetch quests and engaging with combat with enemies (which mostly involves running up to foes, using the ground slam ability and retreating before repeating the cycle once more), there's not much to do but chat and roleplay. The game would be pretty good for this if the chat window didn't keep automatically scrolling back up to the top, making conversations at a distance/in a crowded area fairly difficult. I'm also baffled as to why the chat was censoring "earth pony" but not "mudpony" at one point, perhaps the filter's maintainer is a unicorn supremacist or something.

     Of all the parts of Legends of Equestria that need work, the environments need the most. Ponydale feels more like a collection of oddly misshapen boxes than a small town, Cantermore's skybox distant mountains and water have incredibly shoddy textures that look like they were borrowed from a bad SuperTuxKart track, while the ground far below Cloudopolis resembles an ugly green blob. I know, they need to keep system requirements fairly low, but I've seen far more lightweight amateur games that looked much better (most of which admittedly benefited greatly from good art direction, I might add).


     So...yeah. We all knew the open server weekend would feature an unfinished game, and that's exactly what we got. It's not something I really enjoyed (aside from the time I accidentally escaped the skybox, along with the aforementioned "exploit the movement system" bits), but plenty of casual players seem to be enjoying it and if you're one of them I'd definitely recommend giving the game a shot if you manage to download it successfully and are lucky enough to get logged in.

    For a brief moment Cloudopolis reveals its dark side.
    Based anon from /mlp/ shows us a weird cloning glitch his friend discovered.
    Outside Ponydale's skybox the ground slopes downward, making it feel like you're descending some kind of green mountain into oblivion. It's strangely calming, actually.
    I jumped.
    At this point, Cantermore Invader started vibrating in a rather humorous fashion.
    Falling off the edge of the world will temporarily ruin your hair.
    Admiring the sunset past the invisible walls which surround this world.
    *blasphemous boast*
    A friend from Horse News managed to break the skybox himself and flew to "Canterlot".

    MLGD Marathon Compiliation (Or Not)

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    A modified version of the My Little Game Dev Marathon logo

     When Wishdream announced Part 2 of the My Little Game Dev Marathon, he said that sites would have to wait a couple days after the event's end to post things while he whipped up a compilation video. Thing is, "a couple days" turned into two bloody weeks, and the video purposefully leaves out several key games to make room for ones that were either a part of the previous marathon or not even entries at all, but separate games that he just decided to throw in there. I'd say that's more than a tad dishonest: kind of makes me wish that I'd never agreed to wait for this in the first place (especially since it comes out on Sunday, which of all days is supposed to be my day off).

    Given how poorly things were handled I'm not even going to bother posting the video, so I'll just post the games separately and give them the attention they deserve instead of shoving them all into one big compilation post.

    Super Ethical Shipping Climax Demo

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    (Tumblr)

     Billing itself as a SFW-ish parody of shipping-centric visual novels, the Super Ethical Shipping Climax demo is an awkward jumble of borrowed vectors, annoying placeholder music and plenty of fourth wall-breaking dialogue. This might sound bad, and from several perspectives it leaves a lot to be desired, but to be honest I rather enjoyed this weird little MLGD Marathon entry in spite of (or perhaps partially because of) its shortcomings. Perhaps that's what the developers intended in the first place?

     Since this is only a demo there are several missing endings and whatnot, although I hope they leave in several of the blank scenes in which the narrator laments their lack of a visual artist.

    Battle Royale: Forward to the Past

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     Silly Mare Games' main entry into the marathon also proves to be their first foray into multiplatform development; no longer will users of Unix-like operating systems have to run their games at abysmally low framerates. Even those of you who don't care about such things should still enjoy this fun little deathmatch game, especially since they're planning on adding online multiplayer in a future update (whereas for now you'll have to either find someone to play with or exploit the AI's shortcomings).

     I'll probably review this once they add online multiplayer, but if you can find a friend to play it with I'd highly recommend giving Forward to the Past a shot.

    Celestia's Cake Golf Adventure in Space

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    Woo, cake.

     I was pleasantly surprised to hear that futzi01 would be participating in the MLGD marathon; this odd little game of interplanetary golf is probably one of his better recent creations (most of which were unfortunately a tad dull). It starts off well enough and introduces some interesting gameplay mechanics as it goes along, but suffers from a massive difficulty spike partway through the game that would make bring the chosen undead to his knees. This probably has something to do with the game's being created within several days and there not being too much time for playtesting, so it's still pretty impressive: just don't expect a superbly polished experience.

     Also, I thought I might as well use this spot to apologize to Wishdream for how harsh the "compilation" post turned out. There's more I'd say, but it's probably best that things be worked out in private conversation than on here.

    Demo: Lyra and Bon Bon Save the World

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    Lyra and Bon Bon Save the World

     The brainchild of Supertrentyguy, Lyra and Bon Bon Save the World is a fairly standard side-scrolling platformer/shooter with some absurdly huge jumps and mostly offscreen action, since spamming bullets on the first few levels will usually take out most enemies before you even see them. Still, with fixed controls and better level design this could make for a rather entertaining fangame, although I doubt it'd ever end up matching something like Megapony.


     There needs to be a joke version of this game with this playing as the background music.

    Luna's Letter

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     Jach Marsdonpone (primarily known as the developer of No Guns in Canterlot and A World You Should Not Know, now a member of Silly Mare Games) decided to make his own entry for the marathon, and it basically came out as a more boring version of My Little Hang Glider. You float like some kind of really fat duck, touch colourful balls and fly past the occasional incoming projectile with your boost (the aforementioned floatiness prevents you from simply dodging them like in most games). Also, those pretty clouds? They constantly obscure your vision and the interface, rendering the latter almost utterly useless a lot of the time.

    So...yeah, it'd probably be for the best if you skipped this one. Jach's other games are much more entertaining (even if they aren't quite as pretty as this one), why don't you try them out instead?

    Magic Hexagon

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     As can be gathered from the game's announcement on Tumblr, Magic Hexagon is basically an open source clone of Super Hexagon with pony cutie marks, placing it under the "barely pony related" category. There's not really much to offer for feedback here without either essentially reviewing the original or commenting on the developer's taste in libraries/programming languages, although it would be nice to have some more variety when it comes to songs (the creator is looking for a musician though, so that might be resolved in the near future), along with pre-compiled OS X and Linux binaries in the near future.

     In case you're interested in contributing to the project or compiling it yourself, you can check out Magic Hexagon's GitHub repo at https://github.com/meh2481/magichexagon.

    Review: Island of Falling Stars

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    A gameplay screenshot of Island of Falling Stars.

     As far as 3D creepypastas go, newcomer Goerge's marathon entry is pretty standard fare: it stars a defenceless Lyra recolour who wanders about her dreamscape and collects glowing rocks, only for things to get progressively worse as she does so. We'veseenthisbefore, of course, but does Island of Falling Stars live up to its comrades?

    You know the drill.


     In this kind of game, atmosphere is everything, and Island of Falling Stars is a bit of a mixed bag there. The first couple minutes are silent aside from the sound of your hoofsteps, and as you collect stars the world will grow increasingly hostile until you are left alone to wander in the blowing debris with only the light of the fallen star to guide you. Problem is, none of them are very scary, since the game is fairly predictable and survival is more a matter of routine; once you figure it out the game is an absolute cakewalk.

     There was going to be an entire paragraph here dedicated to the hilariously cringeworthy ending, but I just couldn't do it justice (hint: it's exactly what you'd expect, except even more ridiculous).

    Screenshot. Boring.
    That archway leads nowhere, unfortunately, and since it's somewhat out of the way many players won't even notice it.
     Even for a dream world, this one has a rather odd environment: it's littered with unusually interesting objects and setpieces, most of which serve no purpose whatsoever (aside from the simplistic maze, in which the second star lies). I'd say it's almost cruel to put a cave on the map and not allow the player to enter it: even with the magic barrier in place I kept instinctively checking back to see if it was possible to unlock it somehow, only to eventually wish that he had never included it in the first place. It's not bad for a dream, most of which tend to not make sense anyways, but if Goerge does move on to create other fangames then it'd probably be for the better if he not design their levels quite like this one.


     To be honest, Island of Falling Stars feels like a practice effort in which Goerge the enterprise Java developer tried out various things and slapped a game on top afterwards, and according to the development log that's exactly what he did. From that perspective it succeeds, but as a game it kind of falls flat and thus there's not really much of a reason to play it again afterwards, so for now I'm not really going to put a grade on it.


    Note: if you're having trouble playing the game on Linux, try playing around with the file permissions.

    Ponyventure Demo

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    The Ponyventure title screen
    Ponyventure

     From what I've seen, this is a fairly generic pony platformer with multiple characters and, surprisingly enough, local multiplayer (although I haven't really gotten the chance to try it out yet, as usual). Dunno if this'll go anywhere or not, but Hopeabandoner's other main fangame project looks much more promising so I'll be posting about it next.

     He also made this creepypasta named BENT.EXE, but I dunno if I'll ever get around to posting it.

    Age of Canterlot

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     Despite the name leading us to believe that it'll feature gameplay similar to the Age of Empires series, Hopeabandoner is evidently aiming for his RTS to be more like the Starcraft series, which kind of disappointed me since I'm rather fond of the former. There's also some plans for "original elements", which probably have something to do with unit customization (something that's been available since 1999 in Warzone 2100, along with a crapton of other RTS games). Even so, the pony fandom doesn't have enough real time strategy games and it would be nice to actually see one get finished for once, so...

    Follow the tumblr, I guess?

    Crystal Games Challenge 2014

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    Some weird pony.
     Last year there was some event called the Crystal Games Challenge, and unsurprisingly they're holding another one this year from June 13 to 15. That's really all I know, aside from their plans to feature the entries on a convention panel somewhere like they previously did at Everfree Northwest.

    They have an exclamation-plagued announcement at http://www.thegamingcolts.com/2014/01/15/announcing-the-crystal-games-challenge-2014/


    The Daily Oat mentioned that the event will be a livestream, although I'm not sure where they got that from.

    Demo: TWALAGHT SPARKUHLZ REVEHNSHE 2

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    Title logo for TSR2.
    TWALAGHT SPARKUHLZ REVEHNSHE 2

    Coming from Penta Studios, of Waiting is Magic fame, TWALAGHT SPARKUHLZ REVEHNSHE 2 is the sequel to the first game about defending Ponyville from parasprites and other assorted creatures of the forest. The demo released for the MLGD competition contains an introductory sequence, three levels (allegedly; I keep messing up and dying halfway through the second) and five upgrades. Not a ton of content, but certainly enough to discuss a bit, yes?


    This time around, Twalaght has overcome her paraplegia and can roam freely around the arena, including flying around on those fancy new wings Celestia gave her last year. This gives a new twist over the first game, even if most of the game is spent hovering in the middle of the horde and shooting at whatever comes by. Unfortunately, in its current state, levels drag on for far too long, turning a fun shooter/defender to tedium by the time the player reaches wave 25 of 30 on the first level and has only encountered a few unique patterns.

    Regardless, the game so far is impressive, and definitely a worthwhile play; the upgrade mechanics are engaging, mowing through enemies is a fun experience, and I guess there's a story of some sort to justify this? I kinda skimmed past that part...

    Screenshot.
    The game definitely doesn't go easy on you.

    In other news... hi! You probably haven't seen me around here before. Tuxxy asked me to help out with writing for the site, so I'll be around more often to ramble on about games with candy-colored horses. Hopefully I've made a good impression so far!

    Demo: Daring Do

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    This game from Okamikurainya is a fairly standard pony platformer starring Daring Do (who would've guessed?), with its fair share of barely-visible jumps and doodads floating around waiting to be collected. The lack of any temporary invincibility after a hit leads to many situations where one hit leads to more that can't be avoided. The boss is unusually clever for these kinds of fangames, though, and manages to be pretty fun when you're not getting backed into a wall and killed instantly. There's some potential for a fun game here if the developer works to add some variety to future levels.

    Equestria Jukebox's Alpha is Released

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    Screenshot of the Equestria Jukebox website.

     In January I wrote about Equestria Jukebox, the unusual pony creation utility/chat app successor to the Pony Avatar Creator, and its alpha client came out on this Monday. It looks pretty neat so far, although there's a distinct lack of manes and accessories for users to pick from and I was unable to save my abominations to the server, leading me to believe that they have gained sentience and are actively discriminating against ugly original characters. Do note that the userbase is fairly small at the moment, so if you do make a chat group it'll probably take quite a while to grow (unless the service undergoes a sudden growth in popularity).

    There's always Lunasync as an alternative, of course, although nobody seems to use it ;~;


    EqJ needs a Deadhead room.

    Crystal Gaming, a Fandom-wide Team Fortress 2 Tournament

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    The folks running the Finnish Crystal Fair 2014 brony convention are organizing a Team Fortress 2 tournament named Crystal Gaming (unrelated to the Crystal Games Challenge we covered a few days ago), aimed at players of all skill levels. The tournament, designed as a promotion for the convention, is taking signups through the end of the month. They've got some TF2-related prizes for the top teams, and are also accepting item donations to add to the prize pool, if you've grown bored of hat collect-a-thons and want to offload your inventory or something like that. Read past the break for their press release, with more info and some useful links. (Or you could just read it on their site, if you'd rather.)



    Announcing Crystal Gaming, a Fandom-wide Team Fortress 2 Tournament


    Most of you have probably heard about Team Fortress 2, the free FPS-game originally launched in 2007, which is still one of the most popular multiplayer games out there. There have been a large number of TF2 tournaments, so we thought: why not make one aimed for the whole brony fandom? That’s how Crystal Gaming was born.

    Crystal Gaming isn’t aimed for professional TF2 players and teams, but for everyone out there who enjoy playing the game. Taking part in the event doesn’t even require you to have an already-established team, as long as you manage to get a team together before signing up ends.

    Signing up for the tournament is simple: all you need is 6 people (+ optional spare players, just in case), and a small amount of time to take on your opponents. All the games will take place during the weekends of March and April, and your team will be able to choose the best available times to play against your opponents.

    If you happen to be missing a couple of players from your team, or if you’re looking to create a team from scratch, we have a couple of places for all of you to find the perfect teammates. More information concerning finding teammates below!

    Signing up for the tournament has begun today, on the 5th of February, and will end on the 2nd of March, at 24:00 GMT. Thus you still have loads of time to find yourself some teammates to play with!

    The Finale will be played during April or May, and will be live-commentated by some of the most known bronies out there. Stay tuned for more info about who those people will be!

    Now you might be asking, are there any prizes? The answer to that: yes. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd placed teams will receive a bundle of TF2-related items. The value of these bundles will range from 5-30€. Also, to make things even more interesting, we’ve set up a Steam Donation Bot, which will accept all donated Team Fortress 2 items, which will be added to the bundle for the 1st place winner! So if you have useless stuff clumping up your inventory, now there’s a place where you can give that stuff away!

    We’ve also opened a public community server for you to play on before the actual tournament starts! You can find it on our website as well!

    Crystal Gaming is made by the same people as the Finnish pony-convention, Crystal Fair. Make sure to check out the site for the convention itself from the links below!




    Community Server #1 IP: 91.121.111.154:27080

    Tournament server IP: 91.121.111.154:27090




    Places for you to find teammates:

    The Eurobronies forum, which will be opened in the near future!

    Crystal Fair: www.crystalfair.fi


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