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dam shibe


In Pom Gets Wi-Fi, you play the net-obsessed Pomeranian Pom, who, while in a website-checking stupor blocking her senses from any and all stimulants around her, is engulfed in a house fire along with her doggy brother Shibe. Naturally, they go to doggy heaven, a transcendent place in the clouds where all dogs are happy and inhabit the land, in the highest and holiest place. But without access to Wi-Fi, Pom's life is meaningless, she feels out-of-place, she finds it hard to socialize. Her speech and behaviour are inspired by tumblr, facebook and twitter, with intentional misspellings, derogatory insults flung without care, and the ever-so-present light-hearted spirit of "IDGAF bitch". Pun intended. She will not stop until she receives her Wi-Fi reception, and until then nothing else matters, not even the friends made along the way nor the adventures had nor even Shibe himself. And that's why the character of Pom is interesting.


life is suck, i kno


The tumblr crowd was inarguably a major contributor to Pom's success as a game, and before long, the game went, you know, viral, and a YouTube gaming channel favourite named "PewDiePie" got a hold of the game and plunged it into the world's spotlight from out of the the relatively unpopular and largely polarising RPG Maker circle. This game was a game made for the masses from the start, with cute colourful graphics, simple art style and uncluttered gameplay. I urge you, do not play this game while thinking about how popular it is. That can only mean one thing, that "someone has set you up the trap". If you think "this game has 80k downloads, it must be good, otherwise it sucks", then re-check your priorities and start judging the game based on how good it is regardless of popularity. Be proud for other developers rather than envious of them. It never was about the spotlight in the first place, wasn't it? If that's what it has become, a pure want to be seen and heard for expressing yourself regardless of what actual content is in there, I suggest you recheck your priorities.

The graphical style is vibrant, colourful, and entirely custom-made. You can tell Me-Patra is a swell drawer (and artiste!) because the portraits, sprites, tileset, and animations are pretty darn freaking flawless, looking like candy fresh-bought from the store, and you're the little kid staring at your giant lollipop, eyes wide open and wateringly cute, after your first lick which sets your tastebuds ablaze. Pink (as a colour) features heavily in the scheme, from the windowskin to Pom's bow and laptop, to the roofs and walls of houses. I think I iterated this before, but I must re-purgimate it, then upburpicate it: the game looks like no other RPG Maker game I have ever seen, graphically. If anyone says that this looks like a developer's average first game, they are lying, because the graphics are better than 95% of games that are released first, especially at first glance.


Pom: TL;DR gaem is beautiful hehe tel me somethig i dont knw.


If there is anything to attribute the game's immediate success to, I can list it as:

  • The warmly inviting graphical style

  • The offbeat modern humour

  • The overall light-hearted tone of the game

  • The subject matter (cute dogs, social media and pop-culture references), and

  • The game's overall polish/presentation.


Everything about this title is geared towards the player just having a good time, with no care for "mechanics", or "elaborate story arcs", or even "storyline" per se. I say that with caution because of how I tend to review Pom Gets as a title. This is how I see it: through the context of a fable, the characters have been placed in a world where they do not feel at home, and they are free to play around in this visual sandbox as they please, until some resolution arrives. When the resolution arrives, it comes in two formats: a good ending and an evil ending. Depending on which ending you get, you will get a different ending. And that ending will end differently depending on you. In-game. It will end varying based on in-game things and stuff. You will experience a path unique each time you culminate. Finishing provides separate eventualities from the last. A changed trail of events will transpire when creating a decision that is neither the same nor has been done ever before. Taking the trail less traveled if you choose so will then happen once it does.

Gameplay consists of receiving quests from characters to retrieve doodads for them in return for their service. At points throughout the game you will have the opportunity to make implicit or explicit decisions that will change your alignment, and thus the ending. Some have said that this is too light a mechanic, and those people might be right. A game with a light-hearted tone like this deserves to have some kind of light mechanic to fit its general tone. A game like this shouldn't have complicated RPG battle systems, stats, movesets, etc. because it does not demand it. The scope has been pared down to bare essentials like a game should, and shipped with the concept of having to do the least variation of tasks and interesting decisions possible.

BUT THIS DOES NOT DETRACT FROM THE GAME

Only a little bit. Criticizing this game for lacking depth is like criticizing a film for lacking big-name stars. Big-name stars are not required to make a good movie, neither is depth of mechanics required to make a good game. Good acting is beneficial to a movie, just as a good assimilation of gameplay with story is beneficial to a game. What matters more is the pacing and arrangement of the game, which in Pom Gets could use some improvement.


more like star-biutiful, amirite


You as a player have to browse the world of scattered locations to find where the next quest is, and this is a common fault in games everywhere. And by common, I mean, almost every freaking game. So it's no biggie, except in this game there are only about 3-5 quests you have to actually do. So I can see how it's easy to get bored and lift your hands up, saying "what makes Pom Gets Wi-Fi so good", but you can finish the game so quickly anyway that it doesn't even matter how bored you got. It just matters...

How it ended. The culmination of the experience that you have while playing Pom Gets Wi-Fi makes the evil ending far more potent than the good one. When (spoiler ahoy!)
Show
Pom becomes Dog
, there is more reason for her, despite loving Shibe, to make the wrong decision and abuse her power to check the social media circle, than to make happen what happened in the Good Ending.

The Verdict
Pom Gets Wi-Fi is a game that should have been popular, and was. It's not the greatest game to grace RPG Maker, but it's far from the worst. Highly distinctive art style, portraits and sprites, a light-hearted story about a 1337-speaker trying to get what is hers, and the characters around her are well drawn-together. Mostly, this game will be offensive to purists, but who gives. Eff haters. Get pomeranians.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed dog is king. Let this be a lesson.

Ratings for Pom Gets Wi-Fi

  • Presentation: 7.5/10 || Highly accessible to non RPG-Maker diehards, but lacks depth for those looking for more.
  • Graphics: 9/10 || Some of the most cutesy game art I've seen. At least in the RPG Maker circle, anyway.
  • Story: 7.5/10 || Cool characters. Plot is sufficiently scatterbrained.
  • Gameplay: 6/10 || Yeah, it's shallow but so is life. Again, it's not the point.
  • Lasting Appeal 8/10 || The uniqueness of the title and its ending overwhelms its faults.
  • Overall: 7.8/10 || Pom is pretty much essential gaming for RPG Makeroons. It's short and fast, and if you hate it you hate it, if you love it you're a dog too. Word.


Edit: I meant... "Woof".