Well, sort of.
Hey there! My name is Solar and I'm a 22 year old hobbyist artist and writer from the United Kingdom. I like kitsch, worldbuilding, 80s-90s aesthetics, tacky Hawaiian shirts, bright colours and cheesy horror movies just to name a handful of things.
You read the subject title right; Like a lot of folks who still linger here on the forums, I'm not a newcomer! I first registered and started playing FeralHeart exactly 12 years ago as of the 27th of this month. I've played FeralHeart on and off over the years to varying degrees under different users, this isn't my first rodeo here. I've went under this username as well as
geogirl (turned out I was in fact not a girl so you can see why this one was unfortunate--),
Solarphoenix and
ApatheticMagpie.
So why am I here?
Well, one of the things I didn't do back during FeralHeart's peak was make an intro. I remember vaguely starting one, but never posting it because at the time? I was shy, 10 years old and I was scared at the idea of getting any kind of attention from it. Though in retrospect? I think I regret that, especially now that the game has died down.
So here I am! Correcting that and finally not only saying hello, but introducing myself properly to a community I've neglected to for a long time.
I first heard about FH through YouTube. I remember sitting down at my chunky old desktop computer way back when and stumbling across videos about Impressive Title (I remember
this one in particular being one I rewatched a ton) and being fixated on the idea of it. I've always enjoyed playing video games and I've always been an animal lover. Even back then I was a big fan of virtual pet sites/forums like Neopets, Marapets, ChickenSmoothie, etc. but I was always bothered that you could never actually
play as the animals you took care of. So the idea of a game where you actually got to play as an animal? That blew my mind back then!
That said, this was shortly after Impressive Title shut down, so I couldn't play it. Soon after that I learned about FeralHeart being in development and after a lot of hype and a bit of a wait later, it came out! I downloaded it, played it and the rest was pretty much history. I remember I used to log in every day after school to play it for hours, stay up all night, only to fall asleep in the early hours of the morning and repeat that cycle again. Was it unhealthy? Probably, but that's kids making stupid decisions for you.
From there I did
a lot of roleplaying - I was a big Warriors roleplayer primarily. I ran an ingame group called Boltclan in Fluorite Plains that I distinctly remember being determined to get to a hundred members despite the fact there wasn't really a reason to? I was also
huge on Pokemon roleplays. I remember there were a small group of roleplayers that used to gather in Ficho Tunnel to do Pokemon rps and I was one of them! Outside of that? I did a lot of different things. Some wolf pack rps, stray dog rps, lion pride rps (anyone remember the Umafisi Pride that used to rp on L island? I was there for a while!) and Lion King rps, I helped to run and eventually had to advertise a duck rp in general chat once if you'd believe it. I also made some presets and maps here and there, as well as hung around in some Impressive Title servers that popped up! Namely Impressive World, Sanctum of Eventide and Last Moon to name a few I can remember.
Over the years I met a lot of cool folks here, who are sadly mostly gone now. It probably sounds dramatic, but this game and the people I met in it helped to shape me a lot as a person. They helped me to grow creatively as an artist and a writer, helped me discover interests that I still hold dear to me and I'd argue they even helped me come to terms with my identity as an LGBTQ+ person.
I don't know how active I'll be on the forum after this post, but FeralHeart is something that means a lot to me so I thought it would be nice to at least share my experiences here and talk about them with some like-minded folks. So on the off chance anyone sees this and feels inclined? Go nuts, I'd love to talk about them!
If you got this far? Thank you for reading my little ramble. It's nice to meet you and I hope you have a good day!
♥
