Guardian Acorn
Eryi’s Action is a game that, while not the most well known, seems to have gotten some popularity from some of the more popular lets players of Youtube. The nature of the game is one that makes a blind run interesting simply due to the reactions that one may have to its content. The reactions in the case of Eryi’s Action are, of course, to the game’s high difficulty level.
Chances are, most gamers nowadays may have heard of Undertale. After all, it won GameFAQs “greatest games of all time” contest and beat out games like Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII. Some may argue that the victory doesn’t count because it most votes came from Tumblr users who don’t frequent GameFAQs, but it does not change the fact that it was always intended as a popularity contest and that every vote was from an individual who thought it deserved to win. So yes, it did in fact prove that Undertale is very highly regarded in the gaming community.
Keep in mind that this was all for a game created in Game Maker and that did not even have a press kit when IGN approached Toby Fox. So no this is not the same as some crap like game publications proclaiming a multi million dollar AAA title to be the Citizen Kane of gaming within a minute of putting the disk in the console. The only boost that Toby Fox got with Undertale was a successful Kickstarter campaign, and regardless of how one feels about Kickstarter, this shows how good it can be when used correctly.
CW: Suicide
There are certain games that I hear mentioned a lot as being “inspired by Earthbound/Mother.” Among these include games like Undertale, Off, LISA, Contact, Opoona, and the subject of this review; Yume Nikki. I have had a bit of an on again off again relationship with this game kinda like those ones in bad sitcoms where they try to pad out the drama across multiple seasons. Needless to say, I just didn’t get it at first. However, I decided to finally finish it up recently and I still don’t get it. Okay technically, I kinda understand why people like this game, but it didn’t do much for me personally.
Yume Nikki has often been described as Eraserhead in RPG Maker. For those that don’t know what Eraserhead is, it is an art house film directed by David Lynch that is known for being highly disturbing and also difficult to understand. It tends to be a case of “you either get it or you don’t”
And welcome to the other variation of JRPG Update that we currently hold. This series is meant to post a round up of news related to indie RPGs that are reminiscent of what are often considered JRPGs, regardless of the country where they were developed. Anyway, this one will be a bit different than JRPG Update Pro given that obscure indie titles tend to get far less coverage, so a lot of the news is basically “this game exists.” Anyway let’s get started.
I have stated in the past that I have grown tired of people asking whether or not games can be art due to various reasons. One of the main reasons that I dislike this topic’s consistent appearance is because it seems to be causing a general insecurity on the part of a lot of developers. The more that people believe that games are not art, the more people will sacrifice quality in an attempt to make an artistic statement simply because they think the latter is more important. Normally the best case scenario is a well designed game with a pretentious story that tries too hard to be deep and the worst case is having a game that uses bad game design as an excuse to support said pretentious story. Eversion, however, manages to be a game that actually succeeds in using its gameplay as a story telling tool and being fun at the same time.
The survival horror genre has always been a rather unique case when it comes to games. Typically, the most important part of any game to most people is the fun factor. While it is true that some more recent games have had a higher emphasis on cinematics and cutscenes, it can be argued that those are a different kind of fun to some people. While it is not necessarily true that games need to strive for being exclusively fun, they mostly need to try and evoke some type of emotion that makes the player want to continue.
The survival horror genre, however, is probably the only genre of game I am aware of that tries to intentionally make its gameplay stressful and chaotic for the purpose of an artistic statement. This can be either done to be “realistic” or, in the case of Five Nights at Freddy’s, it can be done in an attempt to give the player an adrenaline rush that makes them panic and lose control. In other words, it is trying to be scary; which it succeeds at doing. There are plenty that have argued that Five Nights At Freddy’s is not truly scary because it relies solely on jump scares and that it is rather simplistic in how it handles it. This is a statement that, to an extent, I both agree and disagree with.
I’m going to clarify that I am reviewing this game off of memory from playing it back during the summer, and my memory is not entirely clear. The reason for this is not just because of how long it has been, but also because this game is only fifteen minutes long. As such, it is naturally tough to remember all of it. On top of that, I got a refund for this game after playing it and I’d rather not buy it again just for the purpose of trashing it so I’m going to go based off of memory. Anyway yeah, Midnight Carnival is pretty shit.
I know, when an article of mine is prefaced with “Steam Greenlight Landfill,” that is usually an indicator of the overall quality. I use this title because I don’t usually think about these games that much. That is also because these games are also shallow and lacking in depth or content. A number of games I reviewed on GameFAQs definitely fit the “Steam Greenlight Landfill” category and I currently of a library of over 500 Steam titles, a lot of which are highly obscure and low in price. Of course, I do usually feel the need to review these games for a few reasons, and no it isn’t because “le edgy gamer rage.”
I am generally intrigued by the concept of video games that cause real world danger. The reason why is because there is already a sense of curiosity and intrigue when playing a new game for the first time and discovering more about it. When you use someone’s unfamiliarity with a video game against them by putting them up against a game that hurts them in the real world, there is a sense of horror that most gamers can relate to.
As a result, I became rather curious about BAD END (yes it is spelled with all caps) when I stumbled upon its Steam page. The premise of BAD END basically comes down to “what if there was a visual novel that killed you in real life if you make the wrong decision?” Of course, such a game would be impossible to make, so closest choice was to make a game about someone playing the game in question. What makes this even more confusing is that BAD END is the title of both the game you are reading, and the game in the story.
I’ve been meaning to try and bring back my JRPG Update series for quite a while now. It was one of the few things I did that was more than just spouting my opinion, and helped provide people with useful information, but it just wore me out and was too hard to keep up with. If I were to bring it back, I’m thinking of doing so with a different focus seeing as how a lot of the appeal was just showing off all the various different sections of the JRPG market.
Chances are, a lot of my reader base will be familiar with even the niche middle market titles localized by Atlus, XSeed, Namco Bandai, NISA, and Aksyss, but there isn’t a lot of attention paid to the notable JRPG influenced titles in the indie gaming scene. Unless something is entirely unique like Undertale or LISA, it’s usually not going to get much attention. After all, what even is there, RPG Maker Fantasy Quest VII (Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series & Knuckles)?
I got Vickinachi through a trade with someone on Indiegala for a spare code I had for a game I had no interest in playing. Going into this game, I knew it was going to be bad based on the Steam reviews, and I decided to go with it due to morbid curiosity and because it can usually be fun to tear into terrible games in reviews. I did not expect it to be THIS bad though. Steam Greenlight Landfill is a bit of a misnomer when applied to Vickinachi as the more accurate descriptor would be Steam Greenlight Septic Tank, along with the likes of The Interview, The Graveyard, Tokyo Hosto, and Pregnancy (and also technically because it was released in 2017, but Steam Direct Landfill just doesn’t sound the same).