Once upon a time, there was a lonely little boy who lived deep in the woods with his parents... and that's about all we can tell you when it comes to Terry Cavanagh's very short but very odd retro RPG. It'll only take you about five minutes to play, but the heebie-jeebies may stay with you a bit longer than that.
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I enjoyed the title, I didn't think the secret was too well hidden, but maybe that's because everyone who has posted this game has basically all but said what the reveal is. Encourage people to play it before they read! Unspoiled and unexpecting is the best way to approach this game in my opinion.
Now, anyway. The game is well done, it was funny and based on a good idea. I think execution left a little bit to be desired, but I'm sure it achieved all it set out to do, though I still feel more could have been done.
I wish it was longer, but other than that, it was a good game.
how old is this kid? he can set fire to things and he carries around POISON?! that's messed up!
Freaked out? No. Kinda expected it, to be honest.
But really? That's the message we're sending? That it's all okay and there will never be any repercussions.
Pretty disgusting, actually.
Hehehe alright I think it was pretty funny. Not that I think the subject matter is funny at all, but the way the game approached it made me chuckle.
Well that was definitely a "what the heck did I just do?" game.
Ha, yes. Not the cutest subject matter but a great one-liner of a game.
Urge to play A Mother in Festerwood rising. https://jayisgames.com/archives/2011/02/link_dump_friday_200.php
This was pretty much what I expected from the moment I saw the "experimental" tag at the top of the post. (actually, the first thing I saw was the link to Terry Cavanagh, so I knew there would be an "experimental" tag without having to look, and then I knew what to expect.) But it's done well enough that the game is entertaining
even without the twist being any kind of surprise. It's a very mild but amusing satire, especially considering the legitimate questions it raises. Like, if killing rats could make you substantially stronger, smarter, and more agile, and cause you to suddenly learn new skills and magic spells, wouldn't we consider it a reasonable and healthy thing to do? Though I suppose you could take a grimmer view and decide that the killing is real, but the XP are in the protagonist's imagination.
Great idea. See, this is the kind of thing I would consider an "art game". It's provocative, yet still fun, and everybody got the point. Kinda makes you wonder, was Michael Vick simply a Pokemon trainer? Nobody really knows what those "rare candies" were all about.
That was brilliant! I didn't know whether to laugh or feel bad, so I kinda did both. :b
@JIGuest
I think you may need to investigate how satire works. That is not how it "sends messages".
Freaky and hilarious!
It's amazing how one little sentence can completely alter the tone of a game.
I knew something was going to happen when I investigated that thing at the end of the forest...I just didn't expect my reaction was going be "OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING?" It takes an expected convention and subtly twists it into something horrifying.
It makes me think a little of Can Your Pet?, which pretty much does to virtual pets what this game does to RPGs. Subtle as a bulldozer, though.
Dark, dark little game!
I liked it. A beautiful satire of the genre. And I always thought it is weird to promote
killing hundreds of different creatures, often humans, just for your personal selfish interest (xp) and then on top of killing/murder you search them and rob the dead of their belongings like lowliest of thieves (lootz). You, savior of the planet..
Makes you think of heroes like Mario and Link, all those creatures they killed.
This was amazing. I really did not expect that. Also what freaked me out
Of course I did hear this from tv (criminal minds), that some serial killers start with small animals and move up from that to humans. Freaky! =P
What the...?
"... and everybody got the point."
I don't know about that - just look at the other comments.
Some appear to actually think the game is saying it's okay to kill small animals.
I'm not sure I get it, honestly. It was well-executed. I liked how
it played on your RPG-trope expectations then brutally reversed them on you. But I am not sure it's intended as a satire of the genre. If it is, it's decidedly NOT a gentle one, and I'm actually offended. I prefer to think it's a witty and disturbing appropriation of the trappings of RPGs, rather than a blistering commentary.
I liked it, despite the rather quick trip it made for. As it was, did anyone else have the thought that
"A new serial killer is born..."?
It reminds me of peter from enders game.
That whole character/reasoning persona would be worth fleshing out.
to dora
i don't understang this game or whatever it is. pls explain. just one question out of context. which is favourite game for this year till now and which is your favourite nitrome game for this year till now?
thanks
@CatalystParadox
I don't really see why you'd be offended. I don't see how this could be anything other than a commentary on rpg conventions. Maybe it was made for laughs and maybe it was just to give people something to think about, but it's nothing more than that.
Tried loading it 4 times, watched 4 30 seconds commercials only to get a "LOADING" screen that never loads.
[I'm sorry, Zeke. That, obviously, isn't supposed to happen. I'm not sure why you're having a problem with it, it's the first I've heard of anyone having an issue. The game is site locked to JIG and it will only show the loading screen if the game detects it running on an unauthorized domain. It's possible that your configuration is preventing the game from seeing where it is loading from, but I wouldn't have any idea how to test or fix that. You can try playing the game over at Kongregate. -Jay]
For those that like this game, I also encourage you to check out the Klik of the Month Klub on Glorious Trainwrecks! We make games every third Saturday of the month using Klik and Play, which is free and easy to use for even non-programmers!
I'm a little disappointed that Dora did not provide a link to the website so that others may bask in the glory of our monthly wrecks.
[Dora did provide the link initially, but I edited it out due to a misunderstanding. I just restored it. -Jay]
well that was interesting...
isnt this the way serial killers are made?
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who
thought of serial killers by the time I got to the stray cat. The burial of the bones was just hardening the cement.
Man, what is the music at the end of this? It is like the official Artsy Experimental Game Music. I don't mind! It's quite pretty. But I'd love to know what it is. (And why it's in so many games, haha)
Wow, I guess it had to happen eventually; someone made a game about my life...
Mmmm. I've seen this basic premise done, possibly (IMHO) better, for tabletop roleplaying games by Power Kill, and for text-based interactive fiction as [title redacted for spoiler reasons].
One particularly striking aspect of this game, and the one that doesn't quite make it work for me, is that
the player doesn't get any choices. Now, it's true that the average casual game player won't hesitate to kill the animals, because of course that's how these games work. But the problem is that you have to; there's no option to "flee", or to just turn around and go home and not do anything. I think this sort of thing works better when, at the end of the game, the player is actually left thinking "What have I, myself, just done?"; in this case, all I did was walk through a story the author wrote, and I didn't really feel any more horrified than if I had read a short story with the same plotline.
Or such is my take on things, anyway.
@Tahnan,
Those were my thoughts exactly.
I figured out pretty quickly what the catch in this game was going to be, and tried to go the peaceful route...only to discover that there was no flee option. I agree that this takes most of the sting out of the whole thing. After all, I'm not responsible for the "Hero's" actions; the game itself made me do it.
I don't understand why people are getting crazy philosophical about this.
This game wasn't made to promote OR oppose the killing of small animals. The killing of small animals isn't the point.
It's not meant to make you look at the serial killer within yourself and denounce RPG games forever since obviously they are evil and convince people to kill small animals for no reason.
Most importantly, it's not "sending a message."
The point is to show the 'normal' actions of an RPG hero in a new context, creating an incongruity of a humorous nature. Because it's kind of funny how psychopathic RPG protagonists actually act in spite of their supposedly heroic nature. It's that ironic contrast that this game highlights.
That's it.
Macabre and awesome.
I'm not sure if I missed something that everyone else got, but I just wasted 12 minutes of my life on what looked to be a promising casual game...
Does anyone have a walkthrough for this?
I'm
pulling your leg.
Fabulous.
I jumped when I encountered the first animal-I didn't actually expect fights, heh. Nice music, anyway.
fathem:
Me too :D
@Verne: The end music is the same as the music from the beginning stages of K.O.L.M. As may be expected from a piece of music thus broadly used, it is from Kevin MacLeod, but even he doesn't remember the names of his pieces. It'll be somewhere in this list of collections, probably in the "Film Scoring" section.
(Sorry for the double post.)
Verne:
The ending music is Wounded by Kevin McLeod:
http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/index.html?keywords=Wounded
The guy's music is used extensively in indie games, including the excellent Small Worlds (half of the success of which, in my opinion, came from the great choice of soundtrack)
@ Jay - Thanks for the follow up. It did work "over there" but still doesn't work here. No idea why either.
@SirNiko - Instead of being disappointed in Dora, you should have been thanking her for even bothering to review this piece of tripe. Been to your website, once, and it doesn't deserve to be linked to her or JIG. Scatalogical references might make a 10 year old giggle but it can't compete with the class act at JIG. You're lucky they saw fit to review this.
I did find it disturbing and a bit pointless, but some small things telegraphed the reality of the hero's world and let me know something was wrong.
Someone in previous comments mentions that there are no choices per se in the game, and I noticed it right away. There's no menu to open, and you don't start from level 1. You can "attack", but what are you attacking with? When I first attacked something and noticed that I was getting XP, I wanted to know where it was going, but I couldn't. Also, hitting three different mobs in random encounters is really unusual.
I think it would have been icing on the cake if
you gained prayer points by burying the bones...
walkthrough:
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When the first
Animal
appeared, the music change scared the crap out of me.
-Trev
Would've been better if
you leveled up after you buried them, and maybe the screen turned to super bright colors
Yeah, neat little twist/catch but...yeah.
Since when does this happen in general RPGs. In Dragon Quest (Yeah I'm going back far!) you fought creatures who hunt down travellers and attack them. Mostly slimes, the ocassional vicious bat but primarily monsterous and otherwise dangerous creatures. In Final Fantasy 7, you do kill a sad amount of corporate goons with families but alas, some games subscribe to this better than other. The people accepting this premise carte blanche are silly. You are all silly people.
(Earthbound probably handled this best. Returning most enemies to 'normal' with a swift bonk on the head)
Also, that Power Kill link was nothing short of hillarious. So perfect and good. Thank you.
The effectiveness of this depends really heavily on two things:
a) the player's familiarity with traditional Japanese RPG trappings, and willingness to go along with them (ie, fight the animals instead of sparing them, which makes the lack of choice irrelevant)
b) the player's expectation being that the game will be longer and more involved than it is
With those two conditions being met, the punchline is really effective and it definitely left me creeped out. I got a "The Day" vibe from the opening, so I was expecting a twist, but not something like that.
Quite a nice bit of interactive flash fiction (no pun intended).
Ewww. It's like stepping in dog doo.
I see the point (hard to miss), but it was pretty contrived and not as interesting as I hoped upon reading the review.
I giggled. More of a joke than a game, really, but I was quite entertained, if only for a short time. Didn't see the twist coming, either. Too many RPGs, I guess.
I've noticed no one commented on
being worried when you returned to the house. Since I'd noticed you couldn't run, I was rather bracing myself, but no, you just wash your hands. Whew!
It was supposed to be a joke, like thinking you're awesome for dressing all the orphans in sweaters, but they all end up in the hospital cause they're allergic to wool. It's all about perspective.
I'm surprised more people haven't come down on Catalyst's side on this one. It's a little disturbing, to be frank, to see so many comments insisting this is "just"
a joke or a satire of genre conventions. To me, it is quite clearly appropriating those conventions in a rather sinister way. I know I wasn't laughing, though I did appreciate the cleverness, and the fact that so many people are laughing has me a little worried...just a little, though.
A bit off-topic, but why is it always the things with blatant subtext that bring out the "you're overanalyzing it" brigade?
Yeah, a bit sad the reveal was built-in to most descriptions, but enjoyed it all the same. Nicely done.
I'm pretty sure my playthrough of this game was affected by my having played Mardek (the first one) before. And, thank you Dora for reviewing this without spoilers! I had no clue. Put me in the "extremely funny" camp.
I feel that:
This game somewhat have a point but honestly now that I think about it I never played a game that require you to kill harmless animals beside RuneScape which even then you could easily choose to be evil or go and kill Goblins and work your way up to demons.
Mother 3 - You tamed the monsters, never killed. Matter of fact I believe only two people in the game have died and one was by natural causes while the plot related one was to move the plot along.
Dragon Warrior (All I believe though I only play 1 and 3) - Slimes and other baddies are clearly bad and needed to be killed. They are spawns from the Dragon Lord (Name right?) and only exist by him. Otherwise you only see ghosts and such.
Mario RPG - Pretty much the same as Dragon Warrior.
A few games like Legend of the Dragoon and Mother 3 have special battles that ask the player to NOT randomly attack but simply wait it out.
So in my case this game was a hit and a miss.
I played the game unspoiled, armed only with the knowledge that it was a parody (from the tag).
I thought
the punchline was laugh-out-loud hilarious, and I'm a vegetarian.
Then again, I'm
also 37, blissfully child-free, and a big fan of the Addams Family, if you catch my drift. Definitely not a game for the kiddies, though.
I liked that you didn't have a choice.
It gave me an OH MY GOD WHAT AM I DOING WHY DON'T I JUST QUIT feeling as I tried option after option and they were all horrible.
I got a sinking feeling about the game when I 'encountered' the
stray cat
. I actually saved a
stray cat and her kittens two summers ago, she was in real tough shape but is way better now
.
Other then that, a dark but different kind of game
Note: first time posting so I hope I haven't screwed it up :)
Point of order: laughing at satire is not necessarily funny-ha-ha. I'm pretty sure Jonathan Swift wasn't writing about orphans to add to his clown act. Again -- kindly understand what exactly satire is before passing judgment on others. Some of us are laughing because we can draw parallels in our real lives.
Also: I agree it's too short.
Omigoodness. I had a spaz attack when that first rat appeared. o_o
........I am just sitting here, in shock. :O
My hair is still standing on end.
JiGuest,
I too had a creepy feeling when I got back to the house after burying the animals. When I saw the father gone from outside the house, I dreaded what I might find inside.
Creepy game.
I'm sorry, but the first time I played this I didn't get any subtext or creepy feeling at all.
that the enemies were small animals
and the burying of the bodies
were unusual realistic touches, and I guess this game counts as a deconstruction. But I did not feel "this is wrong" the first time through (for one thing, I only picked Attack).
The second time I felt the creepy, but only because I knew I was supposed to.
See, in most actual RPGs the random encounters are trying to kill you. If you don't fight, they WILL kill you. This game is more like the boy imagining he's in an RPG than what RPGs usually are.
RPGs are a fanciful imagining of our barbarian days, when it was fight or die. We still have those instincts within us; violent video games, movies, etc. are a catharsis of those feelings, a way to get them out without hurting anyone. Some part of us finds this safe gilded cage we built for ourselves boring and stifling. That part is placated by entertainment.
I'm not sure why this was reviewed, as it doesn't seem to be a "game" so much as someone telling a joke with 8-bit pictures. The "gamer's" actions are pretty much the equivalent of going "uh-huh, yeah" as someone boring talks to you. And the 'joke' was about as subtle as a +4 Sword of DID I FOOL YOU? to the forehead. My only reaction to the "twist" was "so what?" If you're going to carry an entire game with one gag, best to at least run with it for more than half a minute. As short as it was, the gag would be more appropriate as a page of a webcomic.
@tia: it's not so much a joke (I don't think it's funny at all) as it is something to make you think and reflect upon, and to hopefully strike up a discussion, as this one clearly has. So, mission accomplished, that's why we reviewed it.
While I'm sure the more cynical out there may have only reacted with "so what", that's not going to be the predominant reaction from people who go into this without any preconceived notion of what's to come. Even our little spoiler-free blurb is enough, I believe, to ruin the effect for some... perhaps even you.
For me, I went through each of the battles as I would have any RPG just to see what was on the other side. For anyone who has played any kind of RPG before with random battles such as this has, there will be very little analyzing what's happening unless you expect there to be some trick or "twist" coming up.
I also disagree that a web comic is more appropriate for something like this because a web comic offers absolutely zero interactivity on the part of the viewer. I believe interactive experiences are more effective at evoking emotion since the player is more likely to become involved in the story. Besides, without interactivity for these experimental games, we wouldn't have had I Wish I Were the Moon, The Majesty of Colors, Don't Look Back, Loved, ...But that Was Yesterday, You Have to Burn the Rope, and the list goes on.
My HEART!
X_X
That first battle...so noisy...
My first thoughts playing this game:
"Ah! There are three human heads in niches in the wall! He killed his parents and brother, decapitated them, put their heads on display, and now pretends they're still alive, carrying on both sides of conversations! … Oh, wait, those are pictures."
@TimCurry
It took you 12 minutes????
I knew that it was going to be evil from the description, but i thought it was going to be like hansel and gretel or something. i got that sinking feeling after the stray cat, but even when he came home, i kept thinking his parents were going to eat him.
I really got it after he "washed the blood off his hands" and heard his parents talking. Then i was like "he is going to murder his parents tomorrow.
Incredible.
Right up to the last second I was expecting it to continue. I thought "Um, this is a bit dark. I wonder what will happen next morning. Why did I bury those animals?" This was shortly followed by "OMIGOD WHATDIDIDO?! There is no magic! I'm actually a psychopath!"
This was brilliant! To a degree, this made me feel like I did when I completed Cactus's game, Psychosomnium. Took my mind a second to catch up with the rest of my body after the
abrupt ending. This totally made me think of what Rob Zombie did with Meyers in his remake of the Halloween film.
I got the point of the game as soon as I encountered the poor stray cat and
using MAGIC made me set fire to it. Gruesome!
And very good. I didn't think twice about attacking that first rat. I play perhaps too many RPGs.
The sudden changes in music during the fight scenes from sweet forest background tinkling to ARRGH! ARRGH! made me jump and laugh.
Now I want to play again to see what horrible, horrible things the other fight options do.
That's not disturbed, is it?
It has the KOLM song at the end...
This game makes me think to the movie Good Son... Except with 99% less Macaulay Culkin being an evil version of everything he was in Home Alone.
Uh is that it
Hmmmm, is that IT?!?!?!?!?
To your spoiler: Yep! That actually is true! (I'm studying psychology, that is how I know.)
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