Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector (Grand Fur-nale)

Over the course of this semester, I've written about a number of games which fall into the general category of "cheap and/or free indie games that happen to appeal to my specific interests". Honestly, this is mostly for the sake of my own convenience. But beyond that, I think that this is an area that is often underestimated. Certainly, video games as a whole medium are becoming more respected, as new games by major developers gather massive budgets, advertising, and media attention, and being a "gamer" is hardly the social taboo it may once have been. However, the comparatively simple games I've showcased on this blog have their own impact. They've bent the boundaries of video gaming beyond the expected, told brilliant and heartwrenching stories, and just plain been pretty fun. Yet it's rare for an indie game to get the sort of attention that big-budget games have, and the games on this blog are largely restricted to very small but devoted fanbases (with one notable exception).

On a totally unrelated note, here's Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector.

Meow.

Unlike the other games here, Neko Atsume is a smartphone app. It provides you with a plainly-drawn virtual yard, in which you can put cat food and cat toys. Close the app for a while and reopen it, and a cat might show up to nibble at your food and play with your toys. Close and open again, and the cat is gone, leaving behind it a small gift of fish that can be spent to buy more food and more toys.

That's it. That's the entire game.

Neko Atsume is really unlike other games, to the point it's debatable whether it can even really be called a game. While most games rely on the player's ability to drive the action, interaction is minimal in Neko Atsume. Sure, you can decide what toys and what kinds of food you want to provide to the local cats, and you have to keep up the food supply if you want cats to show up. And you can take pictures of the cats if you want. But it comes down to the cats to decide what happens when. If a cat isn't showing up to your yard, there's little you can do about it except keep refilling those food bowls and pray. The easiest way to play the game is just to set out food and wait a few hours, leaving the cats to play and the fish to accumulate by themselves. 

Here's a yard with a cat in it.

Yet there's something about Neko Atsume that has proven irresistibly charming. Maybe it's the appeal of cute drawings of kittens. Maybe it's the fact that the game can be played with barely any time, money, or emotional investment. Or maybe it's the constant onslaught of cat puns (Joe DiMeowgio, anyone?) Whatever the case, Neko Atsume has hit it big. We're talking tens of millions of downloads. There's a line of plush toys, if you want to bring the cuddliness of cat collection out of the phone and into real life (without worrying about litterbox training). There's a theme park opening in Japan based on these cats, and it's planned to run for a few months and offer attractions and food based on the game. How many games can say that?

These are the cats you're looking for.

Neko Atsume is a definite example of the idea that sometimes simpler is better. By being easily accessible and appealing to humanity's universal love of cats, it's somehow become a multinational phenomenon. I can't quite explain what it is about these kittens that made the world fall in love with them, but clearly it worked, and maybe there are lessons to be taken from this. It's possible that in the modern age of video games we've lost sight of what's really important in a game. Or maybe we're all just blowing this little cat app out of proportion.

Unsatisfying way to finish off this blog? Perhaps. But not everything has to be wild and thrilling all the time. At the end of the day, it's good to be able to sit back, relax, and look at a cat.

Yume Nikki (And You Thought Your Dreams Didn't Make Sense...)

As you may have noticed from previous entries on this blog, I really like RPGs. And, as you may also have noticed from previous entries about RPGs on this blog, I really, really like RPGs that are dark, creepy, or otherwise weird. Well, if that's the sort of thing you like too, here's a game that hits all those notes perfectly. This is Yume Nikki. (n.b. Unlike the other site links on this blog, this link downloads the game directly.)

Truly, this is the face of a happy game for children.

Yume Nikki (Japanese for "dream diary") isn't much for introductions or backstory; every bit of information about what's going on has to be gathered from context. So, from what one can tell: the main character is a girl who lives in a small room with a balcony. Her world is very limited: she can't leave the room (can't or won't?), and aside from saving the game, flicking a TV on and off, and playing a pitiful NES-style video game, there's nothing to be done except go to bed...

...and that's when the dreams start.

Upon getting out of bed, it's quickly apparent that things have...changed. The room is full of slight differences, the most important of which is that the door opens now. Walking out takes you into an entirely new world, one which is evidently the girl's dream world. From the dream world, one can go through doors into new worlds, which contain doors of their own, which...well. These places are massive, and they're often very open with little in the way of guidance to where you are supposed to go. And really, you aren't supposed to go anywhere in particular. It's enough to just wander around the dream, take in the sights, attempt to interact with the inhabitants, and try to make sense of things.

A road through a forest is easy enough to understand.

This? Not so much.

The details of the environment are really what make this game what it is. There's virtually no gameplay beyond walking around and checking things out, but Yume Nikki doesn't need any of that. Exploring the vast expanses and confusing labyrinths of the dream world is all that the game needs. It's clear that the dream world was a labor of love by the game's developer. There's hundreds of things to see: some bright, some beautiful, most bizarre, and - fair warning - many gory. If pixelated blood puddles and body parts make you squeamish, this game will be a very unpleasant experience. Also, there are several instances where things suddenly jump out or fill the screen without warning, which can be jarring. This is not a game to play with small children around. By the way, nothing here is ever explained within the game. Aside from the tutorial which appears at the very beginning, there's no dialogue or instruction to help you through. Just you and the endless caprices of the girl's dreaming mind.

So, what's the actual goal here? You might expect that there isn't one at all, and you're just meant to roam the subconscious forever or until you get bored. Actually, there is an endpoint to reach, surprisingly enough. By interacting with certain objects and characters hidden throughout the dream, you can get "effects" which change the girl's appearance and abilities. Most of these are totally useless, but like the worlds in which they're found, they can range from cute ("play a flute") to strange ("become a lamp") to horrifying ("become a severed head"). It's rare that an effect is actually needed to get to a specific location (and there's only one case where an effect is needed to get another effect), but there's some rather unique interactions to be had by using certain effects in certain places. Plus, they're just neat to try out sometimes.

My personal favorite is "become a stoplight".

All in all, there are twenty-four effects to collect, and once they've all been found, Yume Nikki's "ending" becomes available. You may have gathered that much of the girl's dream world is left as loose ends, open to theorizing, and indeed, searching the Internet for the game's fans reveals that there's many different ideas as to why the girl and her dreams are the way they are. As to the "ending", though, there's only one leading interpretation. Suffice it to say that it will stay with you long after the game is done.

I came into Yume Nikki expecting a strange, creepy, and overall engrossing experience, and I certainly did not come away disappointed. Obviously, it's not a game for everyone, especially if you dislike blood and scary things, or if you prefer games with constant action. But, if these things aren't issues for you, and you want to explore a world beyond imagining, you should absolutely play Yume Nikki, preferably in your bed, alone, with all the lights off. Pleasant dreams!

(dogs barking)

Howdy, readers! The game you're going to read about today should hardly need an introduction. Since its release, it's touched the hearts of players everywhere and brought new meaning to video gaming itself. Chances are, unless you've either been ignoring video-game-related news for the past year or been living under a rock, you've already heard of this game and possibly even played it for yourself, or at least gotten annoyed by its massive fanbase. Whatever the case, it's surely had quite the impact on video game culture.

I am, of course, talking about Winnie-the-Pooh's Home Run Derby.

The nightmare becomes reality.

Just kidding! It's Undertale.

A friendly game!

Writing about Undertale here is difficult, for several reasons. First, it's (currently) the only game on this blog that actually costs money in and of itself, and although there's a free demo and the full game is a reasonable $10, that is money nonetheless. Second, as mentioned before, there's a good chance that you already know things about this game even if you haven't played it, due to its media coverage and extremely vocal fandom. Finally, and most importantly, Undertale is really the sort of game that really benefits from going into it with as few expectations or prior knowledge as possible. So, I'm going to be vague about a lot of things, but I hope to convey at least some sense of what's going on.

The opening.

Undertale takes place in a world inhabited by both humans and monsters. The monsters were sealed underneath the earth as the result of a war between the two peoples, and since then, they have been trying to escape their underground prison. You play as a human who has fallen into the underground and must defend themselves from monster attacks as they try to reach the surface world.

Gameplay-wise, Undertale is usually described as being a turn-based RPG, but it's very different from how these sorts of games are normally done. Sure, you run around rooms, check objects, solve puzzles, and get attacked by monsters, but there's several key differences in the way that these monsters are represented. For one, while many turn-based RPGs require players to simply defend and heal from enemy attacks, here every monster fires bullets which the player (represented by a tiny cute heart) must physically dodge. It's reminiscent of old-school shoot-'em-up games, and it's a system that strongly rewards skill over luck or grinding.

Individual bullet patterns provide not only difficulty, but also personality.

The human's side of the fight is drastically simplified from the average RPG, too. While most games give you all sorts of wonderful weapons with which to annihilate your foes or strengthen yourself, Undertale only has a few basic types of actions. FIGHTing is the only way to actually damage and kill monsters, and it's quick and efficient. On the other hand, the human can also ACT, which provides a variety of possible interactions that are different depending on the monster. Once certain actions are performed, the MERCY option allows the human to spare the foe and end the conflict nonviolently. The dichotomy between attacking and sparing monsters is a very big and important part of the game. While it may be appealing to avoid violence in every possible situation, killing monsters is the only way to gain experience and level up, and unless the human gets stronger, later fights will get more and more difficult, to the point that the player may feel forced to grind in order to beat tough opponents. And in some cases, one or the other option might seem to be unavailable. Tough calls have to be made often.

And the impact goes beyond gameplay. Each and every monster is designed to have its own personality and given at least a little bit of dialogue. It's up to the player to decide whether their foes will live or die, and these choices really do matter, in ways that are often unexpected (and just as often totally expected). Describing the exact consequences delves furiously into spoiler territory; just know that Undertale will make sure you remember your decisions, even hours into your journey.

Maybe it's best to just be nice to everyone. Or maybe not...

And what a journey it is. Undertale is filled with fantastical lands, dangerous adventures, bad puns, skeletons, bad puns about skeletons, pasta, incredible music, things that don't entirely make sense, and an uncountable number of dogs. It's a world of emotion, where even the most minor of NPCs come to life vibrantly. Underlying everything is an incredible, occasionally warped sense of humor that parodies every aspect of normal life and every convention of video games, all mixed generously with genuine feeling. When you're not laughing your butt off, you might just be crying. Sometimes both within the space of a single scene.

Well, sometimes, anyway.

Most importantly, you'll be thinking. Undertale's choices go beyond the battle system and permeate every element of the lives of the underground's denizens. It's a game that, even when it's cracking silly jokes about fast-food restaurants, feels meaningful both inside the game and in your own life. Even though many parts of the game are totally beyond anything reasonable in reality, Undertale asks players to look beyond the fantasy and into their own reality, to examine their own lives and the very real choices they make.

It's easy for a game that tries to have deep meaning to come off as shallow or pretentious. However, Undertale is also very self-aware about its nature as a video game, and makes sure to balance out its serious elements with loads of humor and personality, as well as being just plain fun to play. As a result, the game's style has earned it a spectacular number of fans. Of course, the fandom sometimes proves detrimental to experiencing the game, as spoilers are thrown around with no mercy, and the game's often accused of being overhyped. Realistically, it won't solve your life problems or cure the world's ills. It's only a video game, right? But it's a great video game, and if you're even a little bit interested in video games, it's definitely worth your $10.

A Dark Room (less is more)

More and more games nowadays try to cram as much content, beauty, awe, and spectacle as possible into one package. While it's true that this does sometimes result in incredible masterpieces, it's also true that sometimes, you don't need high-definition graphics, sweeping soundtracks, or hundreds of hours of bonus features in a great game. Sometimes, all you need is A Dark Room.

This is what the game looks like.

As you might expect, A Dark Room begins with you in a room, and as it turns out, that room is dark. Fortunately, you can make a fire to bring light and warmth to the dark room. Stoking the fire for a while leads to other wanderers finding your room, which opens up new actions, which lead to other things happening... From this point, A Dark Room is difficult to classify. At first, it seems like a text-based adventure game, but soon the player is charged with producing and managing resources, and then other gameplay elements are added in, and from there new complications keep appearing. I suppose it could be called a mystery, where the conundrum to be solved is what the game even is.

As you begin to get the hang of things, the game starts to look more like this. But I'm only scratching the surface...

The one thing that A Dark Room never gives you is any sort of instruction on how to do things or what needs to be done next. You're simply thrown right into the room without so much as a physical description of yourself, and the game actions given to you speak for themselves. One might think that this could be confusing, but there's a certain wonderful simplicity to the style of the gameplay; while new actions keep getting added as the game progresses, they're given at a slow rate to ease the player into getting used to the new factors, and few things get much more complicated than "press this button". Rarely is your full attention required, and then only for short bursts at a time. Certain parts can and should be completed by just leaving the game open to run itself while you do something else. Overall, it does a great job of tying many disparate gameplay elements together in a way that doesn't feel disjointed or rough, but instead carries momentum right up to the all-too-soon conclusion.

This simplicity extends to every element of the game. Rather than show off with fancy graphics, A Dark Room instead confines itself to the black-and-white text-based format, as can be seen in the screenshots here. There's no sound other than what you provide. Occasionally graphics do appear, but they're made entirely out of text too, and the vast majority of the game is just written out. The game's writing is itself very minimalistic; there's little to no dialogue, and every event or object, no matter how major, gets only a bare, straightforward description, no more than a few sentences. Even capitalization is rare.

Even in tragedy, the game rarely breaks tone.

Normally, such writing runs the risk of coming across as bland and unemotional, but A Dark Room uses this style skillfully and brilliantly. There's layers of characterization and worldbuilding hidden subtly throughout the game's events, and sometimes a single line or even one word can dramatically twist the story. The result is an engrossing narrative where nothing can be taken for granted, and questions the player never even thought to ask get unexpected solutions. Ultimately, the answers to the game's mysteries are never stated outright, instead indirectly implied through the simple descriptions and left largely to the player's imagination. I won't go into much more detail about the plot or setting for obvious reasons, but it's definitely worth pursuing to the end. There's value in playing more than once, to catch details that may have escaped notice the first time but turn out to be shockingly important or foreshadowing (it helps that the game is fairly quick to finish, taking a few hours at most including idling time).

A Dark Room is truly a unique game, one that never seems to be entirely clear in its meaning but constantly leads players onward in search of solutions that only lead to more questions. Combine that with smooth, casual gameplay, fantastic writing, and a genuinely interesting story layered under all that mystery, and the one thing that becomes obvious about A Dark Room is that it's a game that's absolutely worth your time.

I Wanna Be The Guy (But Is It Really Worth It?)

In choosing games to write up for this blog, I've generally stuck to a few self-imposed rules. Use mainly freeware games that don't take lots of effort to find and download (while this does sadly exclude pretty much every console game ever made, it's a lot easier on me and on readers to stick to a college-student budget of zero dollars). Only post about games I've actually played and beaten at some point. And, most importantly: talk about GOOD GAMES. I don't want to waste my time or your time on something that's just plain bad, even if it's kinda fun to mock for a while.

But sometimes, being a bad game just isn't important. And sometimes, I just can't push myself through a whole game. And, every once in a while, there comes along a game where both of these are the whole point.

Which brings me to I Wanna Be The Guy.

The Movie: The Game.

The game opens with a very brief text scroll detailing the life of "The Kid" and his eponymous quest to become "The Guy"; this is pretty much as far as story goes in this game. Experienced gamers (read: nerds) may find that the whole sequence looks a little familiar. Yes, I Wanna Be The Guy is jam-packed with references and elements directly lifted from other games, primarily from ye olden days of the NES. But if you're expecting an ordinary, cute retro platform game, you're in for some surprises, which I'm now going to proceed to ruin for you. Behold one of the earliest areas of the game:

The Kid is down near the bottom there.

Even armed with nothing but a tiny pea-shooter, a double-jump, and a big ol' smile, this doesn't look like much of a challenge, right? Just walk through those trees and...watch as one of the red fruits falls from above and crushes the Kid, turning him into a ludicrously massive pile of pixelated blood. (If you don't like ludicrously massive piles of pixelated blood, this is not the game for you.) It's possible to rush past a few fruits, but players will quickly find it's much easier to just jump over the fruit, thus avoiding delicious death from above.

At which point the fruit flies upward to kill the Kid mid-jump.

Get used to this.

I Wanna Be The Guy is a game won not through skill or reflexes, but through perseverance and pure trial and error. Eventually, a persistent player will be able to pick their way through the fruity minefield and make their way to the next screen, where even more tricks and traps await. It's as much a puzzle game as a platformer, and "solving" the many death chambers sometimes requires totally counterintuitive moves, upending everything you thought you knew about playing video games. There's a lot that must be memorized and pulled off flawlessly, and save points are often scarce. One wrong move, and it's back through the same gauntlet of fruit, spikes, malevolent platforms, and giant airplanes. To make matters worse, there's bosses to fight as well, and commiting their attack patterns to memory often isn't enough to best their challenges.

Bosses are generally familiar characters from familiar games, with unexpected twists. Case in point: Giant Mike Tyson.

Is this fun? The average gamer would say, "Heck no." But the game isn't supposed to be fun, in the conventional sense. Its appeal is to players who seek to pit themselves against the toughest challenges available, overcoming obstacles for no other reason than because they can, and eventually being able to brag to their friends that "I am the Guy!" (Neeerds.)

Of course, anyone outside that particular group will quickly grow bored and/or irritated, especially as the game's presentation suffers from issues similar to Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. It's a mishmash of graphics and sound either created originally or pulled from other games, and as such it tends to clash with itself. A lot of humor is derived from referencing other games (would you have guessed that was Mike Tyson, specifically?) or it's just offensive (the game's idea of mocking you for playing on the easiest difficulty is giving the Kid a big pink bow, as if the worst possible insult is comparing him to a girl). It also contains gratituous blood, swearing, and slurs that are there for no other reason than to seem Cool and Edgy. And obviously, some people just don't want to play a game where they do nothing but die

over

and over

and over again.

But hey, if you are the kind of person whose idea of a good time is ramming headlong into the same spike wall ten times in a row, then I Wanna Be The Guy is right up your alley. It's by no means a good game, but it doesn't try to be a good game; it tries to be a hard game, and in that area, it certainly delivers.

Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden (Everybody Get Up, It's Time to Slam Now)

Ever since I posted about OFF, people have been saying: "You should write about another obscure indie RPG with a bizarre premise, a post-apocalyptic setting, and a protagonist who plays sports!" Actually, no, I don't think anyone has said that, ever. But in any case, you're all in luck! Introducing Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, or as it's properly called, Tales of Game's Studios Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa.

Really.

Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden follows the story of Charles Barkley, real-life professional basketball player extraordinaire, living in an alternate timeline ravaged by the Cyberpocalypse. B-ball was once one of the Post-Cyberpocalypse's few joys, but all of that changed when Barkley performed a dangerous maneuver called the "Chaos Dunk" in the middle of a heated b-ball game; the resulting cataclysmic death and destruction led to the sport being banned and many of its greatest stars hunted down and executed. Barkley was one of the few survivors, but the world was never the same without b-ball, and he still carries the weight of his sins.

And so the stage is set for an adventure that is essentially one long running joke about basketball, the Internet, and the RPG genre as a whole. Honestly, without a premise like that, this would be a pretty ordinary game. You explore dungeons, fight monsters, level up to fight stronger monsters, and eventually get to fight some really strong monsters to win the game. The environments are simple, with few puzzles of any sort to be found, and while combat mechanics are surprisingly solid, they're rarely used to much effectiveness. All in all, it would be an average RPG.

Except, y'know, it's Charles Barkley doing all that stuff.

But this is not an average RPG. This is Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, and with a name like that, presentation is everything. Not that the presentation here is good, mind you; for starters, virtually all of the game's graphics are "borrowed" from various other games and shoved together haphazardly (although the soundtrack is both mostly original and pretty sweet). No, every moment of the game, from the moment the theme from Space Jam strikes up on the title screen, is devoted to pushing the sheer ridiculousness of the Post-Cyberpocalyptic world as far as it can go. Nearly everything is devoted to the glory of b-ball, from the real-life basketball stars who populate both this world and the next, to the bouncing and dribbling ghosts and referees who make up the bulk of Barkley's foes, to a character whose skin is replaced with basketball leather. References abound to the great teams and b-ballers of the past, as well as to the aforementioned Space Jam, that '90s movie where Michael Jordan teamed up with the Looney Tunes to beat aliens in a basketball game. (By the way, the events of that movie are canon to Barkley's plotline, and provide an important plot point.) It's all about as cheesy and over-the-top as you can imagine.

Our heroes visit the B-Ball Dimension.

When Barkley isn't hamming it up on the court, it's parodying those RPG games that all the nerds are playing off the court. The plot could be described like nearly any other game: our strong and masculine hero with a dark and troubled past makes new friends, faces betrayal, and overcomes impossible odds to defeat a mysterious villainous organization set on acquiring a mystical artifact with the potential to destroy worlds. Sure, said hero is Charles Barkley, and said mystical artifact is a scientifically-engineered basketball, but when this is stripped away, Barkley shows that RPGs in general are just as ridiculous already. Several specific common tropes show up and are quickly slammed, particularly the tendency of many games to bring up new plotlines out of nowhere and drop them just as fast, and throwing in new antagonists and dei ex machina just to shake things up. The result is a story that, while obviously flawed, shows a clear sense of self-awareness that keeps things fresh and humorous. Indeed, the impression that I got from much of the game is that the developers could have made a really great game if they wanted to, but instead intentionally chose to create Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden.

Unfortunately, Barkley is not the perfect parody one would hope for after seeing such a title affixed to such a game. Its sense of humor is very referential, both to professional basketball and to the video gaming community. The things I "got" gave me plenty a chuckle, and even some of the more obscure in-jokes had enough context to still have hilarious effect. However, referential humor is bound to fail at some point or another. References to great basketball players and sports events were generally lost on me, and even as a self-described Person Who Cares Way Too Much About Video Games, I still found myself running to Google on occasion to figure out just what an Angelique: Tenkuu no Chinkonka is and why I should care. And generally, jokes that require the recipient to run to Google to figure out the punchline don't work.

At least I learned a lot about Ghost Dad.

More importantly, though, there are times when Barkley's attempts to be wacky and off-the-wall cross a line and become offensive. Much of the dialogue is filled to the brim with swear words for no real reason, which could be interpreted as making fun of games that do similar to make themselves seem "edgier", but here it just gets annoying (and definitely not child-friendly). While the game generally tries to avoid straying into racist or sexist territory, it's to be noted that there are approximately three major female characters in the entire game - a game whose all-male player party is made up of four people. Being a game about pro basketball, one might be tempted to give it a pass here (pun absolutely intended), but it's still pretty jarring when the number of women in the game is about equal to the number of people named Barkley. And insensitivity even extends to the gameplay itself, where standard RPG status effects like "poisoned" and "confused" are replaced with real-world conditions such as "diabetes" and "Asperger's" and other things which are generally considered Not A Joke.

I don't want to end this article on a low note, so have this picture.

Is Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden a good game? That's certainly debatable. But Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is not about being a good game. It's about slams and jams, about the squeak of shoes on the court and the bouncing beat of b-balls on blacktops, the three-point shots that tie up the game in the fourth quarter and the slam-dunks that write and rewrite the history books. And it's a game about being a bad game. Whether or not it's successful at failure or just plain a failure is...also debatable. If you want a good RPG, go try out OFF, or Star Stealing Prince, or Undertale. But if you want an RPG where Charles Barkley can take on a trenchcoat-wearing Michael Jordan in space with nothing but two double-dribbled b-balls and raw athletic skill, look no further than Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden.

Oh, and be on the lookout for The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 - Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie - Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa. To be released in 2013. Mark your calendars now.

Star Stealing Prince (Story of a Snowbound Kingdom)

Making a game is hard. Even though it sounds like a great idea, it's actually really, really difficult to pull off correctly. So many elements have to be considered: gameplay, graphics, plot, writing, setting, audio, and more. Fortunately for aspiring developers, tools such as RPG Maker exist to supply code, art, and sound to make the creative process easier. Unfortunately for players, the fact remains: making a good game is still hard. Thus, most projects made in RPG Maker are unfinished, broken, or just plain bad. But when the rest consists of games like Star Stealing Prince, it's hard to complain.

There's a prince in it. You'll never guess what he ends up doing.

Star Stealing Prince is largely a celebration of what so many people love about role-playing games in the first place. At its heart, it's the story of a young prince who sets out seeking adventure with a small band of unlikely friends. Dungeons are explored, puzzles are solved, climactic (and difficult) battles are fought, bonds are forged, worlds are saved, and yes, stars are stolen. Despite the fairly linear storyline, there's a good focus on exploration, secrets, and hidden items, and especially dedicated treasure-seekers may find a path to a secret dungeon and an alternate ending (which is absolutely worth pursuing). 

While all this stuff sounds pretty cool, it's not exactly unusual for RPGs, and as mentioned before, countless bad games have been made in the past. Star Stealing Prince is good because it does these things well, while also bringing in a few surprises and twists along the way. The plot presents itself as a simple matter of "go on a quest and save the princess" at first, but this is very quickly thrown by the wayside in favor of a complex and deep narrative about selfishness, trust, and grief. Characters are both endearing and realistic (well, as realistic as they can get in a world where magic and ghosts both exist and are important), and their actions and feelings are presented to the player in a manner that can go from heartwarming to tearjerking to gutwrenching in the space of a single scene. It feels much like a fairytale or fantasy novel, and despite the occasional writing goof, it may be one of the best stories I've ever played through.

Exploring often leads to nice rewards. This isn't one of them.

The world of Star Stealing Prince is as rich and detailed as the story. Even though the setting is rather limited in scope, there's many areas to search, and finding objects hidden in every nook and cranny is very rewarding. Many things give responses if checked, and tidbits about the backstory of the characters and the world they inhabit can often be found in unexpected places. There's also a ton of foreshadowing which only becomes evident in hindsight, so read everything carefully. Every bit of every location feels at least a little bit significant, and the mixture of stock art and fantastic original art is very nicely put together, feeling like a coherent whole.

Even places like this snowy town avoid feeling bland or repetitive.

Of course, games have to be fun, too. And Star Stealing Prince definitely manages to be fun. A common pitfall of RPGs is when either they are too easy, in which case actually playing just feels like an annoying delay in getting to the actual story; or they are too hard, which in an RPG translates to forcing the player to fight enemies over and over for hours on end to get strong enough to continue. While Star Stealing Prince tends a bit toward the hard end of the spectrum and may require a bit of "grinding" to get through, its difficulty usually comes from the fact that actual thought and strategy has to be put into both puzzles and combat. Every puzzle feels well-designed and has a reasonable solution, and this extends to boss battles as well, which while tough can usually be overcome once the player figures out their strengths and weaknesses. It helps that the battle system encourages experimenting with different equipment and skills, so even ordinary fights rarely become boring.

This thing is still probably going to kill you at least once.

Every element of Star Stealing Prince, from its artwork to its gameplay to its wild story, comes together to make it an RPG worth experiencing. If you're looking for a fantastic adventure to carry you away, finish up your homework, download Star Stealing Prince, and buckle up.

OFF (the wall)

If video games are art, OFF is probably what you would get if you handed the surrealist movement an RPG Maker kit and told them to go wild.

What exactly are we supposed to expect from this?

OFF does not waste much time on introductions. Your protagonist, a baseball player simply called "the Batter", is on a sacred mission to purify the world's Zones and defeat the specters that plague them. A perpetually-grinning cat calling itself "the Judge" gives you quick tutorials on combat and solving puzzles, and before long you'll be busting ghosts and letting the intimidated inhabitants of Zone 1 get back to their important jobs of mining smoke and extracting metal from cows. If none of that makes any sense to you, you're not alone; explanations for this game's events are few and far between, and all answers just serve to raise further questions. It's that kind of game.

The world map itself is confused.

Even before the Batter arrives on the scene, the universe of OFF is on its own the definition of bizarre. The Zones, where all the action takes place, are essentially huge metal platforms floating in a sea of liquid plastic. There are very few signs of any life in the world other than the specters and the not-quite-human residents of the Zones. (And the aforementioned cows.) There's an air of artificiality to everything, and this, combined with the fact that the world bears little to no resemblance to our own, makes the atmosphere distinctly unsettling.

It's the art direction that really supports this feeling. Graphics are mainly minimalist, flatly colored sprites, unless they decide to be hand-drawn pencil sketches, or rendered photographs. Most characters are totally monochrome, while their environments are brightly colored. The strange combinations really hammer in the constant feeling of unfamiliarity that totally permeates the world of OFF. The soundtrack also deserves mention here, being an unconventional mix of ambience, harsh noise, and the occasional jazzy swing bit. It's a shining example of how all the elements of presentation can combine to set the mood, which in this case is almost terrifyingly surreal.

Also, there's pedalos.

And as for the Batter's own journey, well! I won't go into much detail, because there's a lot of things that are better experienced first without knowing about them beforehand. However, the plot of the game is every bit as weird as the world it takes place in. Symbolism is rampant, and it's often unclear what exactly anything is referring to. There's a wide range of theories about just what is going on, especially in later parts of the game, and nothing can really be proven. The one thing that does become clear is that there are sinister forces at work in the world. OFF's genre is often classified as "surreal horror", and while much of this post focuses on the surreal aspects, it definitely does earn its horror designation. Even the Batter's motives and the consequences of his actions are thrown into question by many characters and by his own actions, yet the Batter presses onward.

Or rather, you push the Batter onward.

In my last post, I talked a good deal about the impact of a player's choices on a game designed around them. In contrast, OFF presents very few in-game decisions to the player. Certainly it's possible to take in the sights in one Zone for a while, or return to a previously purified area before continuing on to the next, but ultimately, the Batter will end up at the same destination no matter what path you choose for him to get there. Yet this, too, is a way to look at the player's ability to choose. As is eventually revealed, even if there seems to be no other way to go, there is always one decision the player can make: to quit and leave the world of OFF behind, or to keep going and fulfill the Batter's mission. And, within the game's universe, this may be the choice with the greatest impact of all.

But if you don't play, you won't get to meet this guy. Just saying.

I do have to admit, however, that there is a particular flaw in OFF that detracts a bit from the experience. For a game that is all about kicking the player's expectations and knowledge about how the world works to the curb, the combat system is remarkably straightforward. Purifying specters (and the occasional whale) is done in a very stripped-down version of an RPG battle system, and the fact that your moves have such names as "Saturated Chain" and "Run with Courage" does little to hide the fact that there's little actual strategy involved. Even boss battles can often be won simply by setting the fight to "Auto" and watching the Batter smack away with his pixelated baseball bat, with occasional breaks for healing. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, if not for the high frequency of both random and forced enemy encounters that leave the Batter no choice but to fight. Perhaps it's meant to be a statement about how senseless violence is a poor solution to our problems? In this game, that's entirely possible.

This specter looks like it just told us a really bad joke.

In the end, though, boring combat isn't enough to totally ruin the brilliantly bizarre atmosphere that OFF sets up. In some ways it even improves the experience, by encouraging normal RPG players to pay attention to the world and the story unfolding around them when they would otherwise be hacking through as many foes as possible. And OFF's worldbuilding and story are practically perfect, if often incomprehensible. Its greatest strengths lie in its ability to draw players into its wacky world, make them believe that the weirdness is entirely plausible, and then, when things get bad, remind them that they always had the chance to leave if they really wanted to. So, when you finish your homework and are looking to be transported to a whole new world, give OFF a try. You might not regret it.

Iji (Fighting Aliens and Other Questionable Decisions)

If you liked freely blasting your enemies to bits in Cave Story, Iji is going to be a fun and interesting experience for you.

A young girl stares at her own name projected in the sky.

Iji is just an ordinary girl, taking an ordinary trip with her ordinary family to the ordinary research facility where her ordinary dad works, when she looks out the window and sees some definitely-not-ordinary lights in the sky. The next thing she knows, she's laying in a bed, and the bodies of several researchers are laying right outside the door. As her brother Dan explains over the facility's speaker system, the lights came from aliens called Tasen who struck the building with a barrage of lasers before descending into the facility and killing everyone they could find. However, all hope is not lost, as the survivors have spent the last six months(!) using Tasen nanofield technology to turn Iji into a weapon capable of standing against the invaders, able to use Tasen weaponry, upgrade abilities, take machine gun fire to the face, survive long falls, crack codes, and basically do anything a video game protagonist would need to do. Now, Iji is the last hope for the humans against the Tasen invading force.

And all that before you even get to the controls.

So begins the tale of Iji's fight against the Tasen. Gameplay-wise, the game is essentially based around shooting aliens and trying not to get shot by them in turn. The research facility setting, while full of branching corridors to explore, is not exactly conducive to jumping around and falling into pits, so instead, Iji gets its difficulty from constantly thrusting its heroine into combat.

A fairly standard situation for Iji.

Enemies get stronger and more numerous as the game progresses, and Iji too gets stronger as she gains more experience in fighting. Killed aliens drop nano fields, which can be picked up to increase stats and gain the ability to wield rocket launchers, machine guns, and ever more powerful guns. From beginning to end, Iji is a constant battle against merciless foes, and Iji guns them all down, because that is the only way that she can save the last vestiges of humanity.

...or is it?

Near the beginning of the first level, Iji encounters her first opponent, the lowliest of Tasen foot soldiers. Dan's advice says that while she should kill the enemy in order to grow stronger and get used to fighting, there is nothing stopping her from simply walking past. Some players might not even notice this line before they open fire and clear the path; after all, the alien has no qualms about attacking the moment it sees Iji. In truth, this is a choice that will be repeated throughout the game. Iji herself expresses doubt about killing Tasen, and while players used to other games may not think twice about mowing down a hallway filled with alien soldiers, sparing their lives is always an available choice.

And ultimately, it is choices that define Iji's journey. The game does a brilliant job of handling the player's choices and reacting to them. As stated before, the most commonly recurring choice throughout the game is whether or not to kill. It is in fact possible to complete the entire game without taking a single life, and without going into too many plot details, this does have an effect on how the story plays out. Both pacifism and murder are viable solutions here, and Iji, Dan, and the rest have their own opinions on how the situation should best be handled, but it comes down to the player to guide Iji down their chosen path. And, by the end, the player will have to decide whether they really made the "right" choice.

Dan would rather not think about things like that.

Player choices extend beyond the simple "fight-or-flight" of combat. Head down this hallway, or take that elevator? Upgrade health to take more hits, or upgrade weapons to deal out more damage to enemies? Use a valuable item now, or save it for later? All of these choices can end up changing not only the player's experience of the gameplay but how the characters themselves experience events, and many actions, even ones as minor as ignoring a single logbook, will be commented on by the characters. The result is a game where every action the player takes feels important.

What begins as an ordinary sci-fi gunfest quickly blooms into something surprisingly deep. Everyone, whether human or alien, generally avoids being one-dimensional or stereotypical, and their actions and reactions make sense; Iji herself in particular reacts just about as well as you would expect to suddenly having all the hopes of humanity riding on her. Surprisingly for a game with such a bleak premise, there's a good amount of humor as well, as Tasen logbooks complain about everything from the weather to the pests to the guns that only their higher-ups are allowed to have. There's a terrific attention to detail as well, and while the game only takes two or three hours to play all the way through once, bonus features, difficulty levels, and loads of secrets keep things fresh even when replayed.

One of the advantages of video games as a medium is that they give players the power to make choices that affect how things turn out, and Iji is possibly one of the greatest examples of how the element of choice can be used to make an impact on players. When your homework's done and you're looking for a game with an excellent story, playing Iji is definitely a good decision.

Cave Story (It's Aptly Named)

When deciding what to write about for my passion blog this semester, I settled on video games as a topic pretty quickly. They've always been an important and often overlooked form of media to me. However, as I sat down to write, I realized that it would be difficult to convey my feelings to other people; after all, it's a commonly held belief that video games are stupid, and I wholeheartedly agree. In order to properly discuss video games that I love with people who don't care, I need to figure out: why do I care so strongly about games?

To answer this question, I first looked to Cave Story.

There's stories in them there caves.

Cave Story is a free platformer game by Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya, who programmed, wrote, drew, and composed the entire thing by himself over the course of five years, which is a pretty impressive feat considering that it takes me hours just to write a simple blog post. His original description of the game upon its release in 2004 is as follows: 

Cave Story is a jumping-and-shooting action game. Explore the caves until you reach the ending. You can also save your game and continue from where you left off.

It turns out there's a little more to it than that.

After a short, unexplained cutscene, we're introduced to our similarly short and unexplained hero, pictured above in the cave where he begins the game. Leaving this cave reveals another, slightly larger cave, populated by strange critters and obstacles. By proceeding further into the cave, the hero can get a gun, which allows him to fight the monsters and clear away the obstacles. Then he can get through a door leading into another cave, from which more caves branch out, which allow access to other caves, and let's just say that there's a few very good reasons they call this game Cave Story.

One thing I've always liked about this opening sequence is its total lack of "tutorial" elements. There's nobody to walk our hero through his first jumps and deadly spikes, nobody to tell him what the deal is with this gun he found in the middle of a cave. The game doesn't even make the controls clear, although they're not hard to figure out. You're just thrown into this situation with no knowledge of what's led up to this, and as it turns out, your character is in the same boat. While it may be initially confusing, this helps to build a sense of immersion, that "you are your character", and this feeling is what drives the impact of the story that unfolds from this point.

You may have been wondering where the "story" part of Cave Story comes into play. As this blog runs, I will be talking about the varied and sometimes unexpectedly deep plots of games, and how their story elements make them worth playing. Cave Story's plot, for its part, is relatively straightforward. After making your way out of the first cave, you find a town populated by little bunny people who live in the caves for...some reason. You're introduced to a few key characters and the villains who make their lives miserable, and soon enough you're in the caves again, on your own against the machinations of the mysterious yet definitely evil Doctor.

None of these people are the Doctor.

It's a simple, "video-gamey" plot, which is mainly made to give some excuse to the various caves and creatures that inhabit it, and to give the player a bad guy to shoot at. Which is why the game's emotional moments often come as a shock. Characters can and will get hurt, even die, and the game has ways of making the player feel the impact of their loss, whether it's taking up a powerful weapon from a dying warrior or realizing, while just on the threshold of the final boss's lair, that a tragedy long since gone could have been averted. By the end of the game, the characters you met in the caves seem to reach almost human levels of motivation and compassion, and by this point you're playing to make them happy and give their sacrifices meaning as much as you're playing just to "reach the ending". 

Ultimately, however, every element of Cave Story, from its surprisingly heartfelt narrative to the cute, pixelly graphics and retro soundtrack, serves to enhance gameplay. After all, when you play a game, you generally want to have fun, and Cave Story delivers fun in spades. While the story's out of focus, each level is really enjoyable to blast your way through. There's a variety of weapons, and while all of them have their uses, it's entirely possible to just pick your favorite and start shooting. Most enemies will fall quickly in the face of your withering sea of infinite ammunition, but that's not to say that the journey will be easy. Skillful jumping is often needed to get through perilous situations, and bosses are usually much tougher than the levels that precede them.

Fun fact: This frog killed me. Several times.

Outside certain boss sequences, though, there's really not a whole lot of thought you need to put into playing Cave Story. Just jump the gaps, fetch the items, fire your guns as fast as you can, and enjoy the story that's being told.

Cave Story was one of the first games that I really loved, and looking back on it it's not hard to see why. Even if it lacks a whole lot of depth, it makes up for that by just being fun, in both its caves and its story. If you're looking for a fun game, and you've finished your homework, I absolutely recommend downloading Cave Story.