Welcome to this blurb!

Interesting banner, huh? Would you believe me if I told you that most of these snippets and pieces came from old video game ads? As a matter of fact, the B on BLURB in the banner isn't even a B, it's an R, it came from the logo for ActRaiser, and for some reason it just registered as a B in my mind. As a matter of fact, the right part of the back of the head that's blue on the player is actually a piece of Goku's shirt from an ad where it's captioned "this lethal weapon just slipped through customs." Wild stuff. But see if you can guess where all of these pieces are from, there's some that are fairly easy to guess!

Apart from that, gave the top banner header a quick update because I'm still working on a full replacement, but I don't want it to be the case where people are expecting a new blurb every Monday when it's a biweekly release. Also, it's a temporary header, just gotta cook up this animation just a little more before releasing it.

In other news, new stuff has been revealed by the developers! New parts, new bricks, new excitement! Keep reading to see what they revealed, and what it could mean for the game.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at what the community has been up to recently:

Did someone say cool looking bricks and cosmetics?

That's right folk, I get to do one of my favorite things when it comes to writing the speculation column: talk about cosmetics and bricks!

So let's not keep it waiting and first consider the new avatar parts and accessories:

Probably an awesome neighbor:

Source: ConfidentBottle

Pretty awesome, right?

It would seem that a lot of these new pieces are actually made by TombstoneTechnician. I say this mainly in reference to some of the pieces I showed from Tombstone in the last blurb.

For the pieces that aren't new in these photos, those would be the glasses on the blue- themed character, the headphones, the airtank on the back, the antennas on the pink- themed girl, the sticker and the torso, and the lower-arm piece. Aside from that, every single piece here is something we haven't seen revealed before!

There was something that I was wondering about, and that was specifically in reference to whether or not we'll be able to color the neon-piece into a solid-color material instead of just having neon, or whether or not we could even slap a torso sticker onto that sucker. So, being the inquisitive ant that I am, I just decided to ask!

"I know that not all torsos pieces in Brickadia are able to have torso stickers on them (i.e. the skeleton torso), so I was just curious if this was going to be another case like that with this new torso piece. To say it more clearly, will we be able to put a torso sticker on that sucker in some way? And to that effect, will it be possible to change the material of the neon highlight in that piece for that express purpose?"

- "[M]ost of these more detailed torsos will lack the ability to have stickers just due to complexity with actually fitting them onto the surface[.]" -Confidentbottle

While the second part of that question wasn't answered (my fault for not thinking when I asked if they could answer ONE question), it is understandable why they can't always put a sticker on the torsos. Though, to be fair, I think having only a piece of the sticker stay on is a neat thing, I can imagine the top part of the new torso piece having a buttoned sticker on it to represent a vest of some kind. The absence of an answer for that second part though, while it doesn't really mean anything, does leave me hoping that we can change the material of some parts on a player some day.

Moving away from that, that doesn't mean all of them were made by Tombstone as we absolutely do get some new pieces revealed here. For instance, we now have a new hair piece, a duffel bag!

Credit: ConfidentBottle

Interestingly enough, I thought I recognized the duffel bag itself in terms of having seen it before. Turns out, I was correct: it was Remanedur that made the duffel bag!

Credit: remanedur

It's always awesome to see cosmetic pieces and items made by contributors make it into Brickadia, but that does leave a bit of an interesting thought. What other cosmetics could we see in the future?

For one, we've seen quite a bit of science-fiction and fairly modern accessories. In that regard, it would be cool to see some more medieval or ancient accessories. Could you imagine a Spartan helmet making it into the game, or a pharoah's headdress? What about a kimono, or even draped clothing?

Or what about silly accessories? Like a melted plastic head, or a cap with soda cans on the side? The more variety there is, the better, even if it seems a little niche to add. At the end of the day, with the fact that you can combine cosmetics and accessories to get unique appearances, who knows what could be done with avatar parts like those?

Now we do already know that there is a bit of a style guide for Brickadia, so if there would be any addition into the game for cosmetics that seem a little intricate, we can fully expect to see it either simplified or broken down into something that aesthetically fits the game.

It seems that whenever I talk about cosmetics, I tend to repeat the same points as I usually do: "Imagine this, imagine that, I want (insert cosmetic/accessory of personal preference) in the game!", so let's not stick onto this too much. Moving on, the new brick pieces!

At the time of writing this, quite a number of things have been revealed by the developers, and just so that we don't end up with a speculation column taller than me, we'll just cover switches today.

Now, let's take a look at what has been revealed to us by the developers:

Credit: ConfidentBottle

Now, interestingly enough, this isn't the first time we've seen these switches in Brickadia, and when I say these, I am specifically referring to the light-switches shown attached on bricks. However, this is the first time we've seen them in-game rather than in a render. But where was the first time we saw this?

Luckily, it seems like people in the community are observant, and did the job for me, though I wouldn't say it was the hardest thing to look for considering I knew it was going to be in that same spot, but the first time we see those switches in reference to Brickadia is actually in development blog "Interactive Brickadia: Next Steps," which was written by developer Sixmorphugus.

-

But what are the purposes of these switches in Brickadia? Well, if the name of the development blog they were originally seen in didn't give it away, it is basically the means for interactivity in reference to the Behaviors and Wires system in Brickadia. In short, they serve the function that you'd hope they'd serve, allowing players to create systems that respond to user feedback and provide some sort of result, whether it be flicking the switch for a light, or for activating a cart packed with 100 rocket thrusters (would be cool if we saw a rocket part, tsk tsk).

The interesting thing to take away from this, however, is the intent to add the means to color different parts of the switch bricks. In the tweet where the light-switch is shown to be in-game, this is what is said: "to-do: implement being able to color the moving part of the switch separately from the base". Could you imagine different types of switches being added into Brickadia, and having those separate pieces of the switches be colorable? Even the idea of having different switches is something, in itself, an exciting thought!

Now, that isn't something you have to imagine.

For example, when these levers were revealed, this is what ConfidentBottle had to say:

Credit: ConfidentBottle

So it's clear we'll be getting other switches for sure in the near future. But what could they look like, apart from the descriptions given here?

I intentionally left out one other button that was shown to potentially make it into the game, which is this red button:

Credit: ConfidentBottle

If you take a look at the development blog that I recently mentioned, you'll also notice a button like that in the renders of the blog:

Credit: "Interactive Brickadia: Next Steps"

You'll also notice that there's two other types of buttons there in this particular render, showcasing a phat (big, I'm just calling it that) switch, and a dial. When I asked for a variety of switches to be added to Brickadia as a suggestion, I was met with this reply:

Credit: remanedur

And once again, we see that there's a switch that we see from an older development blog! Now for this one, I'm not privy to whether or not that will make it into the game, but considering it was publicly shown before, one could assume it couldn't appear at some point in Brickadia.

Where am I going with this? The no-brainer is that we're finally seeing these in-game. But the deeper take away is that we're starting to see the implementation of not only interactivity in Brickadia in the way that it was described to us so long ago, but also the means by which we'll be able to use Behaviors, Wires, and the vehicle system in a user friendly manner. And given that we're getting closer to the end of the year, especially knowing that this is the year in which Brickadia is supposed to release, this only adds more fuel to that idea.

It may not be that far of a stretch to come to that conclusion, as a matter of fact, it's probably as simple as the no-brainer conclusion I just described earlier. However, I describe this less so as we're finally seeing switch-interactions and more-so as we're finally seeing the physical manifestations of features we've been waiting for.

But how can I say all this? After all, these are just a couple switches, what else is there to back me up on this?

Stay tuned for part two in the next blurb as we take a look at more of the new pieces revealed to us!