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Innovative Interactive Storytelling

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  • 03/05/2015 05:53 PM
  • 1793 views
This was a cute game that shined in the innovative way it told its story.

You are... well, you're you. The protagonist is some little cat dude named Niko (oh, I just got it...). You wake up one day in a strange world, where a robot thing tells you you're the messiah meant to revive their sun, which is a lightbulb. You set off on a quest to save the world. The gameplay is simple-- you walk around, pick up items, and combine them into things you can use in innovative ways. The puzzles were logical and clear without being too easy, and I was satisfied every time I put 2 and 2 together. The world is nicely absurd, with characters such as a dude whose head is a six-sided die, and I thought the dev had a really excellent grasp of color and how to use it to create mood, as well as which colors worked together and in what ways. The pixel art was pixel art. Good for what it is, but still pixel art. The CGs were very pretty, though.

The really neat thing about the game, though, is that it takes advantage of its platform in a kind of incredible way. It pulls your name off the computer, and you are treated as an entity from another world who is "god," which of course is true. The other entities in the game use your computer as a computer-- a way to deliver hints, for example. At one point you have to go find a file with a code in My Documents; at another the background on your desktop changes. It's not even breaking the fourth wall, because you and your world are fully part of the game. There is no fourth wall, because there's never any attempt at a divide. It's really incredibly clever and very well done.

The biggest thing this game needed was a goddamn in-game map. The maps, especially the first one, were really big-- too big, IMO-- and it was really hard to figure out exactly how things fit together. And then sometimes I would remember the NPC I had to talk to but have absolutely no idea where they were and wander around in circles forever and it was super-frustrated. The gameplay experience would have been exponentially improved for me if there was even a crude map that Niko "updated" with locations of NPCs, major buildings, etc. Being able to fast-travel was nice, but there was no way of knowing what the names of each region were beforehand, and if you even needed to go there.

Its hard to say how long it was since I played it sporadically, but it was very cute and if you're into the rpgmaker game scene, check it out.

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Sweet, thanks for the kind words and feedback! We'll def be fixing some of the more frustrating maps in the extended game.

Also, minimaps? GENIUS. Def saving that idea! Do you think it would work better as an item, or integrated into the fast travel system?
Speaking from my experience, I kind of accepted not having a minimap when I played the game. In an extended edition, however, I think it would be cool to have one in the fast travel system, and have a "paper unfolding" kind of sound every time you go into the FT menu, to give the impression that Niko looks at the map whenever s/he fast travels. Just my 2 cents.
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