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.