Virtual Grappi is somewhat of a demonic incarnation of a “foreign” virtual pet simulator game, adapted from the equally quirky forum game of the same name. You can find that topic HERE.

Quite frankly, you can actually just view that forum to get the Grappi experience without even playing its game adaptation. Ultimately, Virtual Grappi’s biggest flaw, but at the same time its best accomplishment, is just how faithful it is to the original forum game. For those who haven’t seen the forum game before and played this game first, you’ll definitely receive a unique, mind-boggling experience that’ll leave you both laughing your heart out and shuddering in fear (or boggled in confusion), but to those who’ve already experienced the original forum game, expect more of the same.

GAMEPLAY:
Virtual Grappi plays exactly as you’d expect out of a virtual pet sim game. You use a cursor to select randomly generated toys and actions to make Grappi perform some sort of action, ranging from getting a new hat with the “tea” item or even summoning a giant, alien-looking monster after drinking a red potion. That is one of the more tame events that transpire from selecting the various tools at your disposal. The core gimmick of Grappi that sets it apart from “true” virtual pet sims is that everything you select tends to have atypical, unexpected effects. Selecting a piece of meat, for instance, doesn’t plop a hunk of meat for your pet to eat so much as it summons a grinning alligator out of nowhere. Similarly, selecting a mushroom causes it to rain outside of your Grappi’s home, and touching a gold key sends you to some sort of dark dimension where all sorts of blood and morbid things await you. Yep, it’s one of those games.

This game’s overall charm comes from the fact that it starts off innocent, and then quickly graduates to being off kilter, to being the disturbing nightmare fuel tailor-made for all creepy pasta enthusiasts everywhere. Be warned, this game may have a cute package, but hides an unsettling atmosphere and graphic imagery that isn’t for the faint of heart. You can find a slide puzzle with an image of two severed human hands in this game.

None of these are a real problem, mind you. Virtual Grappi is doing exactly what it’s forum game predecessor is meant to do. Keywords on “exactly.”

If there is anything truly “wrong” with Virtual Grappi, is that it barely offers more than what its predecessor already set in stone. Outside from two or so new items, Virtual Grappi plays like its web board counterpart from A to B, outside of the fact that you don’t need to tell the forum's original poster what command to select. This isn’t always a bad thing, since the result is a very faithful recreation, but at the same time, it ruins any possibility of suspense that is so vital in the horror genre, thus even this game’s creepy parts fail to strike a nerve once you’ve already experienced it on RPGmaker.net’s boards.

Aside from this issue the game’s heavy use of randomization is also one of its more potentially frustrating features. There are items that can easily kill Grappi as well as help him or just cause weird stuff, and sometimes these items come up as your only option out of a choice of three. The fact that everything is kept obtusely described (as in no discernible text for descriptions or anything) doesn’t help. Chances are, on your first time around, you are probably going to end up with a lot of dead Grappis before you “win.” While some careful observation and inference skills help alleviate that, this is still a game won through mainly trial-and-error. To its credit, at least killing Grappi can yield some entertainment depending on how your little blob kicks the bucket.

Other complaints I have come from the fact that the controls use a four-way direction input that always feels clunky for a game like this. At least diagonal movement would have been nice if you wanted to avoid mouse-based controls to preserve the “retro” feel. Lastly, not returning to the title screen and forcing a reset at the game’s ending screen is an evil practice that deserves to rot in its grave along with other ‘80s – ‘90s game design decisions.

GRAPHICS/AUDIO:
Virtual Grappi comes complete with an adorable 16-bit style of graphics slightly reminiscent of late ‘80s to early ‘90s console games. Call me crazy, but the style fits the Turbografx better than the SNES, or I guess it’s a matter of taste. Visually, everything works cohesively, and the palettes used fit the mood perfectly, even in this game’s darker scenes.

There are only two major tracks used in this game, and the one you’ll hear the most is a short, but catchy 8-bit loop that immediately takes you out of the mindset that you are playing an RPG Maker game.

Overall, every aspect of Grappi’s presentation, even down to its makeshift manual included in the download, works well. Everything gives this gem of a game a solid identity that more games in the RPG Maker community needs.

OVERALL:
Virtual Grappi is what it is. Nothing less, but rather unfortunately nothing more. The game is certainly competent enough to stand on its own, but at the same time it cries out for all the opportunities that it missed to distinguish itself from its forum counterpart. It really has the potential to be in the same league as other commonly Let’s Played games such as Can your Pet or the Slenderman games, and it could probably do well in its current form. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this game, but at the same time I also enjoyed the original forum game in much of the same way. Grappi is certainly a unique gem among the crowd of other parody/horror games, but at the same time it leaves some expectations unfulfilled.

Score:
3.5/5
Decent, but could be better!