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Akemi Tan – Struggling between two sides

Now, from 2004, let’s go forward of 10 years…
No, no. Take out two. Yes,exactly: 2012. The year the world was supposed to end.
The Costa Concordia Shipwrecked , Putin is re-elected, there is Expo 2012 in South Korea, the Montenegro tries to get into the EU…
In the field of RPG Horror this was a year of birth… Or to re-birth, having been there since 2005 a period of stalemate, to get to what we know today as the year of the boom of HOR-RPG: Ib, Mad Father, The Witch’s House, but also minor titles like The Crooked Man.

However, we will talk about those later: they are already part of Generation 1 of the HOR-RPG. Before going to these media phenomenons, we would like to consider a title that can represent a perfect transition between Generation 0, the Horror Experience, and Generation 1, the Character Drama.
So, while in London people were getting ready because there were only two days left before the thirtieth Olympic games, in Japan Akemi Tan was distributed for the first time.

Product history

Akemi Tan, or The Ballad of Akemi, does not have a development story full of events, evolutions or even particular controversies … Although it has a small peculiarity from the distribution point of view.

Akemi Tan was initially published in the “Horror Games” category of Freegame-mugen.jp, a still fairly active Japanese portal where free games of all kinds are distributed: from RPG Horror to bullet hell games in the style of Touhou Project, Akemi Tan was initially published on July 25, 2012, with a “score” of 65 points.

… But not only Japan.
Akemi Tan, in fact, can be found (even if this English version was published in 2014) on the well-known mainly English-American portal rpgmaker.net. And the game was not put on the site by some fans or someone who translated the game into English, but by the author himself, Kona Kona Kona Kona Kona, Kona5, or Outkataoka.

Exactly: Kona5 did everything alone from the distribution point of view, and the game was exported to America by himself.

The game has gained a good amount of comments in both countries, and there are also a lot of both Japanese and English gameplays, but the reception has been different from one community to another.

In the community of rpgmaker.net it was received with more enthusiasm, there are more positive comments to which the author himself replies (but we will talk about this in the author-work relationship), while on Freegame-mugen the opinions have been very mixed, also because it has been more widespread (perhaps also because the Japanese version has been around for more time) in Japan.

There are in fact many positive and negative reviews, ranging from five stars, to two stars, up to a single star.

Above all from the point of view of the plotthere were many users who found it unclear, even with the latest version (which seemed to partially fix these problems, according to what Kona5 himself said), others who instead understood it (and personally I, Ele, find myself among them) and they enjoyed the game together with its dramatic ending.

But on what triggered complaints or praise to the game, we will talk about it in the paragraph dedicated to the Trump Card.

Of this title, however, we can say that it was, as a phenomenon, a bit like a supernova: it had its period where many gameplayers played it, it grew for a while, but it never passed the niche like its colleagues who there will be in the next articles, or like the titles of the previous articles.

This is because the game did not have the appeal that would have attracted the general public due to its fairly simplistic plot (and, at times, which also expires in the so-called “wtf”), and which was mainly based on jumpscares and isolating atmosphere: such a game, unless it becomes a cult, in the HOR-RPG community does not last.

As has already been anticipated in the history of the product, we are facing a transition period.

It was impossible for us to ignore this title, finding ourselves faced with a product split in two between attempts to offer a plot with a background on one side, and on the other hand to make the player jump from the chair with its jumpscares.

Well, let’s try to understand together what is the trump card of this game.

The title screen shows us a deformed and brightly colored creature and a metallic sound as a background to the graphics.
It all starts outdoors, with a temple and a girl, Shimoko, who seems tempted to eat the offering of the village’s patron deity.

Only the sounds of the countryside are heard, just as following the introduction all our actions will be accompanied by an agonizing silence.

Silence is a way of expressing , a choice that will give us the constant presentiment of preparing ourselves for a disturbing sound or an ugly face that will present us on the screen.
The jumpscares, aimed directly at the player even before the character he plays, are not in this case the main ace of the title, although they are among the characteristics of the game most remembered and for which, among the public, it has spread by word of mouth. Not always the most prominent feature of a title, like we saw in Corpse Party, matches its trump card.
Akemi-Tan’s jumpscares are however interesting if you reflect on the historical context in which they are inserted, at least in the field of HOR-RPG, in which in the same year Ib came out which aimed at a totally different method to “frighten”, dramatizing the atmospheres according to the environment and following the narration.

These really seem like the latest cry that demons speak to the player willing to meet them, becoming less and less frequent as you change house.

I’ll probably be digressing for you now, so let’s get back to it.

What is Akemi-Tan’s trump card?

Here we are.

This is perhaps the best example to get closer to the topic.

Read here … From online dictionaries.

SUSPENSE

“A state of mind of apprehension, of anxious uncertainty, of those who await the solution of dramatic events; in particular, in a film or a story, a moment or situation that induces in the spectator or in the reader a feeling of suspension, of anguished waiting: a film, a novel full of suspense

Etymology: ← English; from loc. fr. (en) suspens ‘pending’, which is from lat. suspēnsum, part. pass. suspendĕre neutral; cfr. suspend.”

We see a monster in the next room. So, as for the whole first part of the game before reaching the forest where this wait seems to diminish little by little, it is not the jumpscares that distress us, but the awareness that they will come at any moment.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look at two types of images for a moment and summarize the context in which they were used.

A)
Of course, the yellow face that opens the mouth seems to have exactly the intention of making us jump out of the chair and then immediately dispel the fright. Would it have been the same if we hadn’t wandered around the house for a long time, in silence? These are figures whose thoughts are that they could appear at any moment allows the player to remain in suspense, in an atmosphere where Shimoko’s daily reality is broken piece by piece.

The images used are only part of the tension that you feel, the tip of the iceberg that emerges from all the preparation behind it. See other remembered events that often occur on the maps themselves in addition to the images; from the giant starfish to the face that appears from the wall.

… And then we have this other example …

B) This instead appears in the forest. We have already faced many enemies and passed the exploration of three houses. Furthermore, we have already seen from the photos the deformed face of Ebiko, and met Akemi, and we defended ourselves from a floating head hitting it with a hammer. Above all, we have already run away from the demon once.

There is no longer even silence, but alongside these images there is a more dramatized sound accompaniment: it is the final confrontation, the face to face with the demon. We can observe that we have the desire on the part of the game to make us live the scene with a certain climax, unlike the first commented image.

So, after commenting on the use of images in different contexts, we can say with certainty that the suspense surrounding these images assign them a certain value.

Mind you, though, that this is a feature that stands undisturbed only in the first part of the game. The second, which would like to focus more on the background and starts when Ebiko is saved by Akemi in the forest, seems to totally change language and therefore we will not, unfortunately, talk about it in this paragraph.

We conclude these first observations on the trump card of the title with these two images in particular.

On the one hand, Ebiko’s mom, whom we see breaking apart piece by piece. On the other hand, we have a close-up on Akemi to show us the life drained from her eyes.

They look like two totally different images.
Certainly their emotional functions are. One should impress us, the other seeks our empathy and identification with the character.
Tuttavia c’è un motivo per cui ve ne sto parlando in un unico paragrafo…Ed è la vicinanza che si cerca con il giocatore.
Similarly to the function of the sequence of images that appear in the forest during the final confrontation and differentiating instead of the images of the various jumpscars, these really want to build a certain relationship of intimacy with the player.

The communication that the game seems to want to establish with us directly in person. It is a topic that we alredy treated in the Ao Oni article, but which applied in these contexts, especially for the second image, reveals enormous potential for the future.
The close contact with the player is not only sought to offer him “a hit of fright”, but also to increase the duration of his anguish, or even to push him to empathize with the young girl.

A type of use of images that the cinematographic language knows very well.

And I dare say, with the use that has been made of these images, the function has been perfectly successful compared to, for example, the CG of the close-ups in Midnight Train, that we already reviewed.

Just look at the difference:

On the left Akemi. We have a close-up, the blood, the expression on her face is exaggerated, even if the drawing style is in conflict with the images of his facesets (and this could be considered a technical awkwardness, added to the quality of the image). We can see her eyes go out, directly in contact with ours.

On the right Neil, from Midnight Train.

A half close-up, the face is only half turned towards us and the background is treated only with a tint of color. A type of image from which we viewers, emotionally, we can only distance themselves and consider the character in this case only as a “nice little figurine” that the title has decided to show off at this precise point in the plot to make us understand that the character had reached the stage of a psychological journey.

There would be an observation by the way, since with this title we will close the circle of Generation 0: it is curious how a title of this generation seems to make better use of the language of an audiovisual product to create emotions unlike a title belonging to that that we call Second Generation, which would seem to want to appear more shamelessly to the narrative code of cinematographic origin.

Professionality meter

Perhaps having the thermometer at this level will seem quite obvious to you. Let’s take a closer look at everything …

Packaging

An excellent idea. The use of warm colors and the image that seems to be the result of a brush stroke are a good presentation of the title in contrast to the black background. The sound sector helps the player to feel immediately estranged, promising almost higher graphic expectations than what will be seen later on the maps and the faces of the characters.

The title seems to have been distributed by the author himself in a friendly way, not with the intention of offering a specific product to an audience. He is a player who turns to other players, a developer who turns to his peers.

We will talk about this in the next paragraph.

author-work relationship

If you see it on its rpgmaker.net page, you can immediately see the difference between Kona5 and other authors already analyzed here in Back to the Future, but also those that will be examined in the future.

In the article on Yume Nikki we talked about the “myth of the author”, about how he is not a person, but an entity among the community, which if he has to answer he does it in a very professional and detached way.

Here, with Kona5 this concept does not apply.

If we think of other authors, for example placing Kikiyama and Makoto Kedouin on two different levels, we will see how they both share an estranged image of themselves towards their audience.

An authorial identity then hidden by a professional production company, or a “mythical” identity based on the aura of mystery that has been built, both authors seem to distance themselves from users to which they turn. Regardless of whether they are intentional or not, it is important to consider how the authors of goods in industries always try to build a certain image and representation of themselves. It is an image that can be fatal for the way the public then receives the product, because it will precisely associate it with that type of image that an author has built.

Kona5 unfortunately does not seem to have done this reasoning, since probably his intentions for this title was not precisely to address an audience, but to his peers.

Although in the market this is a type of concept that is sought to convey for certain types of goods and services (see advertisements for food products for example, especially those in which a sort of patriotism comes into play), there is to consider the way these advertisements are done: I guess you also understand that there are two different ways (compared to the attitudes of the author of Akemi-Tan) to convey the same concept: one comes from marketing experts, the other comes from a real user who is distributing a game. And the difference can be seen.

On the Japanese site I assume that the authors themselves cannot respond to the comments received, so the author of Akemi Tan showed his personality more on the American site.

In fact, he responds to the comments (with good English too) so that he demonstrates an extrovert and playful nature, as well as his profile with an equally playful bio, with many emoticons.

defects

Unfortunately, the game failed in the two key points that define the success of a video game: storytelling and gameplay.

NARRATION

I guess my intervention in this area is not needed to bring back to the memory of those who approached Akemi Tan a sense of inadequacy and incompleteness as the story is developed.

True, we have a resolution of the main plot: demonic danger, long part of the development in which this danger is addressed and resolution of the problem with what appears to be a voluntary quotation from the biblical event of the death and resurrection of Christ in the Christian context. Well yes, we have foreseen and guessed the date on which to release this article. Happy Easter to you too, guys.

Going back to us, we said that there is a main-plot resolution, it’s true, but what about the background?

Akemi who complains about her loneliness, who hints at her past without this being further investigated.
We are not saying that it should have been developed necessarily, because unfortunately the game seems to be suspended in a pit with one foot planted on the priority of the gaming experience, and the other foot on the desire to tell us a story.
Perhaps for what the intentions of the game were, it would have been more honest (although perhaps less attractive if the author wanted to attract the attention of simple passing spectators in a certain sense) remove the background on Akemi and leave her 100% in mystery.
Although she looks like a mature and very sweet girl (she is a character who has put a lot of tenderness on one side I admit it) it would have been better, having come to these conclusions, that she wouldn’t reveal so much about her or at least not in this way.

It’s like showing candy to a child and then devouring it whole under his disappointed eyes, or as the master Miyagi says in Karate Kid addressing his pupil:
“Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later…Get squish just like grape.”.

An alternative would have been to fill the exploration phase with small clues about the village and the girl in order to leave more room for the background, but at this point one wonders if it would have been the same Akemi-Tan we know.

GAMEPLAY

Unfortunately this title suffers in many situations from an error that we have seen in the A Figment Of Discord review.
Do you once again expect a “Eeh ?!” like that of the first review?
Well, because you won’t have it … At least on those levels.

We can summarize this concept as follows: the error is the same, but in different fields, and at different levels of gravity.

Let’s take Akemi Tan first. In many, many moments of the game you have to find yourself doing one thing first and then making another happen.

Practical example (I took the worst case): Shimoko cannot put the offer to the Ou until the player goes up the stairs and the game tells you “This is the temple of the Ou, we have to make offers” etc.

In this case a solution could have been to put in another way, even more “forced”, the explanation of the temple and the Ou: for example those lines of text could be shown automatically, before the player could move .

Now I leave you with the old AFoD review, which complained much more … Angry way, an inability to manage the gameplay.

“Eeh?!

What is a cake doing in the kitchen now that I sifted to perfection ten minutes ago ?!

It is simple: first the riddle had not been solved, so the cake did not appear. All logical, everything runs smoothly, doesn’t it? It’s not true.

According to the game, that note about birds that love shiny things and desserts had to serve something … Yes, but actually… No.

The player remembers that in the kitchen there is nothing, and therefore it is normal not to control it anymore, so this damn cake can find it only in a raptus of desperation in which he searches again, for the seventieth time, in all the rooms … But has activated the pie switch, so it can go on. I’m sorry to be dramatic, but I’m freaking out. You don’t structure a gameplay this way…”

Well, the error described seems identical.

But I will tell you various reasons why in Akemi Tan these types of forcing are easier to fix and less serious in general as errors.

Before going to another moment of the game, let’s say why I don’t go crazy and I don’t fossilize on the initial scene. It is simply very easy to fix: it was enough to put the exact same lines of dialogue a few moments before, and it would have already been fixed: it is simply a lack of foresight, not a real incapacity.

Now let’s move on to another very particular moment of the game: Shimoko’s father’s drawer, the Nankin code and the shotgun.

Compared to the AFoD cake, here there is a not bad camouflage of the forcing, in part.
In fact, it is seen more easily by those who have already played the game, who knows that in the father’s drawer there is the rifle that will help the girl to escape from her home.

I will say that this part is also not perfect, but we go one step at a time, we will return later.

Since we are from Shimoko’s point of view, and that is her home, she probably knows that there is a rifle in her father’s drawer: when the house is still quiet, when she still does not know that “the village has become dangerous” through his mother, she probably found it unnecessary to have to take herfather’s rifle.

Before the call from Shimoko’s mother to her daughter, where she explicitly says “get out of the village, it has become a dangerous place” the game does not even give you the opportunity to enter a code in the father’s drawer for this reason.

At this point this thing had to be made more evident: in fact, before the mother’s call, the drawer does not even give a textbox that says “Dad’s drawer is blocked by a Nankin code”, or clearly say that there is a rifle , which Shimoko will find useful later.

At this point you simply had to add one or two textboxes that gave more relevance to the drawer, so that the player could also check it several times, in the worst case.

You see? Move the text a little earlier, make an important object a little more obvious … These are mostly communication problems. Communication problems are solved with little, simply by saying more, improving the focus of important objects, there are no flaws at the base.

Let’s still compare it to the AFoD cake, again quoting my part of the review.

“The player remembers that in the kitchen there is nothing, and therefore it is normal not to control it anymore”

Here, here comes another point in favor of the drawer we mentioned earlier.

In Akemi Tan, it was only meant to be more obvious, but it’s not like it never appeared in the room before. The player knows there is, the game simply had to make it clear that it was an important element.

For AFoD and its magic cake that appears out of nowhere … There is a real problem at the base, in fact.

The cake does not appear in any way until the player reads a ticket that mentions “sweet things”. The cake could have been there from the beginning, but the player connected it to something useful (and, from the point of view of the protagonist, it occurred to her to control it better) when they read the ticket, and therefore they can think “Ah, the sweets have something to do with this… The cake in the kitchen! ”

The game seems to make the player look foolish, as if they were unable to make connections between what they read and what they see, therefore as if they cannot instinctively remember a cake that they could see before and therefore everything in that puzzle is nauseating and meaningless .

Here, these are real flaws in gameplay that have problems right at the base.

Returning to Akemi-Tan, we also noticed that that’s not the only game who has difficulties communicating with the player: we have those problems even in Ao Oni. Here is a part of our article on Ao Oni:

“The riddles. We’re talking … About releasing the information.
Well, however ingenious they may be, many have failed to fully appreciate them, complaining of relative complexity.
This I believe is mainly given by the fact that often there is not enough communication of the game for the player, leaving it completely to himself without offering instructions that can make the user understand the nature of the puzzle.”

At this point we can assume that this is a real problem that characterizes Generation 0, because we have seen something similar in CORPSE-PARTY, but from a narrative point of view. Here is another part, this time of the article on Corpse Party, which talks about this:

“It goes from a frantic atmosphere, since Ayumi and Yoshiki have been reported in the real world until they discover that the parallel dimension is still behind them, at an incredibly slow one which is facing the accumulation of information that focuses all at one time. During the rest of the game, before this point we don’t even have clues that could have been left to assimilate gradually the with past events and that we are told in this scene.”

Conclusioni

And so, finally, we end the first part of our journey.

Perhaps not all readers will have known at first glance the titles we have proposed, but it must be considered that without these the characteristics of the Horror RPGs that we all know would not have developed.

The closeness that is sought with the player, the desire to offer an immersive experience, the spirit of wandering. This, ladies and gentlemen, was Generation 0.

Yume Nikki – A Surrealist success

The time machine does not move from 2004.
So much has happened in 2004. Only in the first two months, the Spirit probe from NASA gave the first images of Mars, then it was invented Facebook, at the cinema there was Mel Gibson’s The Passion and … Oh, right, in a month not well accurate Ao Oni was on some computers.

But a few months later to the summer of that year, the title silently as we mentioned previously here on Back to the Future, was released a game that would become a real cult of ” gaming abstractionism”.

In 2004, while some escaped from the blue monster, many players found themselves opening a disturbing and disorienting dream journal.

“This game, with a dark atmosphere, it allows you to explore the world within a dream. There isn’t a history or any special purpose. It is simply an exploration game “(Description of Yume Nikki on Kikiyama’s website)

A “simple exploratory game,” is how it is described by the author himself Yume Nikki. These are as simple premise, however, have given rise to what is almost 60% of the internet population knows or at least has had a taste, such as the strange creatures in the game.

In this regard we would like to mention one of those pages error that sometimes is seen in internet sites … Those who say, generally, “Error 404 Not Found” .here, Ele one day he saw one of these pages that had the background one of the OST game ( “Working, please wait …” or, in the original language, “ゆ め に っ き”), Even if the site was not in any way Yume Nikki related, judging by the address. Unfortunately this page no longer exists, even if we have evidence that there had been.

It must have been a deliberate choice because those who had the site previously knew the game? Or have found that music as well, hanging out in the internet?

In any case, Yume Nikki was one of those titles that he knew more than others and bring interest to the current even those who were not well versed on the RPG genre Horror. But this is because of what?

Let’s find out together.

 

Product History

Compared to Ao Oni, people have done more research about where Yume Nikki started.

The first proper forum in which it was published was 2Channel (at least, at the time, now has been renamed to 5Channel). Even just looking at Wikipedia, you can read that when the game just came out did not have much popularity, because when it was published the very first time it was also a rather incomplete game, which have followed many versions that were used primarily to fix bugs.

The latest version, in fact, dates back to 2005. After that year there were no more updates… But we’ll talk more in the section dedicated to the author-work relationship, because there is something more disturbing and complicated behind this lack of updates.

So, back to us, Yume Nikki became popular with time, also earning an English translation, which made it popular in the West.

And here, when it began to spread, we noticed a rather unusual phenomenon for the HOR-RPG current.

In a review of a fairly recent game we began a speech: that of the difference between “active spectators” and “passive.” We glue the definition here

“Those who watch an audiovisual product is obviously a passive spectator: can” sit there watching “and his actions do not affect the behavior of any of the characters, as well as the environment and so on, as opposed to video games: why a gamer we can consider an active viewer. “

Starting from here, in that review has been pulled out of the question that now the games considered HOR-RPG (but it will happen this right from the Generation 1 RPG Horror, The Character Drama) are followed and played mainly as passive spectators, given the lack of experience of active viewers, do not have a full understanding on the development of gameplay, and therefore tend to be many times also misconceptions about the titles they want to talk.

For example, Ao Oni has unfortunately suffered this treatment: some players born just as passive viewers have complained about the lack of narrative, instead who has always been an active spectator flew over, and he liked riddles, chases, etc.

Why Yume Nikki is a special case, then, from the point of view of the community?

The reason is that this gap between those who have actually tried it, and lived the 360-degree gaming experience; is because there is no history: Yume Nikki is much more to play than to see, there are very few passive spectators, if we look at the content published on the internet.

To indicate the type of community that generally has surrounded the HOR-RPG take two Italian YouTube channels, always one of the platforms that have caused the mouth of the genre.
The two channels are Rikkukun and Giulyagatta97.

Rikkukun has always treated and (I guess)will always treat video games. He will definitely had experiences as a passive spectator, but you can tell that its main industry, and the world which are the focus is gaming.

Quite classic games from gaming’s most iconic series: The Legend of Zelda, Dark Souls, Paper Mario, DOTA, although in the image we can see Lisa and Celeste, games with a bit more present narrative.

Let’s move on to Giulyagatta’s channel.

She already has a completely different channel. Yes, she also played some games (recently is carrying on a Dragon Age II series) along with creepypasta and other content-when she was starting her career on Youtube she was famous for AMVs, if you get the idea-but the games that she chose to treat have a particular criterion that departs types of video of a person born as an assiduous passive spectator, as a person born as a regular active viewer.

The importance and / or the preponderance of a narration.
I’m not saying that channels like Giulyagatta repudiate Zelda or those like Rikkukun repudiate a visual novel or a Telltale game, but just these channels have different selection criteria on what to bring on their channel.

Dragon Age II, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (there wasn’t however a real gameplay of this title, but only a fandub) Aria’s Story, various other RPG Horror belonging mainly to Generations 1, 2 and 3, and even among those the most narrative ones…

So massive plot and / or complicated, with characters that people would also become attached to “freak out” all together … It is what generally a criterion when choosing an audiovisual or literary work in many cases.

Here, channels like Rikkukun, for example, would not likely bring Aria’s Story. Simply because the criterion here I think is generally good gameplay. If there is a beautiful narrative,  that’s also nice.

And then? Aaaaaall this blah-blah-blah on Youtube what has to do with Yume Nikki?

Aaaall this blah-blah-blah was to bring this major question.

In your opinion, which channel brought Yume Nikki?

…

…

I don’t know what you said, but the solution is Rikkukun!

Giulyagatta first claimed to have read the manga of Yume Nikki instead, and then there’s just no video on her channel of any gameplay of this title.

Right now we talked about these two cases in the Italian community because they were more “extreme.” However, we can say that the cases of those who want a dominant narrative despite being a gamer are many. In the new decade, there are many examples even in the community of Youtube America: more and more channels, such as JackSepticEye and NicoB have expanded their entertainment at very narrative games (especially NicoB brought on his channel all Kingdom Hearts games, all Danganronpa games and i think also all Ace Attorney games) such as Life is Strange, Undertale, and a more recent case was Detroit Become Human, for a public often formed by many gamers, however … Those series had a lot of success.

Even in 2004 the situation was not too different: like, Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater and Half Life 2 were out! Resounding successes because of the story, the characters and the narrative in general…

But on that year made its way into the hearts of many players also Yume Nikki, who awakened the nature of 360° players, that just simply acknowledge wisely, thanks to their experience, the experience of playing also something that has no dialogue, nor any kind of cut-scenes: if we want to overdo it, almost a curse for those who are born passive spectator.

So the thing is that the Yume Nikki community, compared to other games considered HOR-RPG, is very unique because it’s not mainly formed by passive spectators that in the 60% (indicative measures) of cases have followed the game from their favorite youtuber but as active viewers who continued to play not to get excited about other people’s experiences, but “live their own”.

But what made this so-called actually so special and mystical experience? Why it was so addictive? We will begin to list here some points, but everything will be detailed in the section of the Trump Card.

The atmospheres (Generation 0, what can we say?) have greatly helped the game and have been given by her mesmerizing loop, the condition of general isolation, creatures …

… Well, that are a good part of the oddities that you may very well see in a dream world and vast environments, often disturbing but mostly confusing.

“Confusing” One of the first adjectives that can give Yume Nikki and connects it with the style of the maps, both with the gameplay, but more about that in the section.

Even outside his native land for these reasons the game was praised by many critics gaming sites (which is quite unusual given that these sites generally do not often treat games of HOR-RPG current), the public and even by many developers independent, including the game designer Derek Yu (who worked for I’m O.K. and Acquaria with Alec Holowka), who appreciated very much the game of comparing graphic style even at Earthbound.

“I really like this game. The lack of dialogue or any kind of “action” gives me this strange sense of terror. I also like the contrast between the tiny apartment and the huge world of dreams. And visually, the game reminds me a lot Earthbound (especially Moonside!) And cactus, which is a really fantastic and terrifying mix. ” -Comment Derek Yu on Yume Nikki on site tigsource.com

This popularity both in East and West earned the game … We have to breathe deeply once again …

A manga, a light novel, an album by Vocaloid (Wow, that’s  new!), A soundtrack published in two volumes and it’s also on Amazon Music, arrangements of this same soundtrack, a reboot (which will be discussed later but, gosh, I have already chills), an application for Android and iOS from minigame of NASU and … Fangames.

Ah, here we go again! Kikiyama, like their companion noprops, had various titles inspired by their work. These include Yume 2kki and .flow

Yume Nikki, however, had more luck than Ao Oni: first of all, these games can’t be defined as clones or copies, but simply games inspired by the style, the gameplay of the game or its initial ideas because, returning to the community speech of before, they were made by gamers (and it has to be considered as a criterion, believe us).

Comparison of the two nexus: Yume Nikki (left) and Yume 2kki (right)

The main difference is that Yume Nikki is not an easy game to replicate as Ao Oni from the point of view of the atmosphere, for example, and this has somewhat ” forced ‘the authors of these games to man up and also have some original ideas that can deviate much more from what the original author had created.

Screenshot from .flow

The biggest problem of what came after Yume Nikki, surprisingly, were not in fact the fangames… Rather the ancillary works (we will talk mostly of the manga, as the light novel is specifically only an interpretation of the game by Akira, the writer, while the manga is official) and a really painful reboot (which will leave at the end of this long paragraph on product history) that were also approved by the author!

Let’s talk briefly about the manga. You may wonder everyone “How do you adapt Yume Nikki in a manga ?!”. We like to be blunt, then we say, “Badly!”

… But this is not just a thought, as even the community does not see this manga with a very good eye, in fact in the fandom is considered not more of a fanfiction.

“Apart from the story of Madotsuki, also we are told the stories of Poniko and Masada. Another change was that the story was told with dialogue, unlike the original pointing around the interpretation of the player. (From the official wiki)

Read the paragraph above at least three times.

…

Draw your own conclusions. We can only conclude that this adjustment if the community Yume Nikki would be greeted with more enthusiasm was mainly made up of passive spectators, and this hatred again demonstrates the origin of this fanbase.

Let’s go on talking briefly (because this is not a review of this title, if you want to know more of the game you can search Google for a review and any) of the so-called “Reboot” Yume Nikki: Yume Nikki – Dream Diary.

This title was released on Steam in 2018, then moved to PS4, Xbox One and Switch. And here I do a question: if deserved all these consoles? Alas, I think not.

It must be said that this Dream Diary also gave a lot of hype, because the development team has worked closely with Kikiyama … At least that’s what Kadokawa and Active Gaming Media say, but there is no real evidence of his collaboration in all this.

Dream Diary would not be a “remake” of some sort, it is called reboot by convention. It is defined by developers as a tribute to the work of Kikiyama, a modern reinterpretation.

This “re-interpretation” then, satisfied at the end gamers, or was a case like Duke Nukem Forever (but with less years of waiting)?

…If we want to continue on this way (because the case of Duke Nukem has its own peculiarities, such as the 11 years of production, we are talking primarily about not satisfied hype in general here), we can say that the game dedicated to little Madotsuki suffered the same fate of the game dedicated to the Duke: waiting with growing hype from fans because “the game (or the series, in the case of Duke Nukem) would be reborn” but eventually end up with something far below expectations.

Yup, with too flat textures, scripted chases like a classic horror game, puzzles that simply require a specific object and little logic, frustrating platform sections with not responding commands, most of the times and, above all, very linear paths in the different worlds in which Madotsuki enters , Yume Nikki: Dream Diary made by Kadokawa (which, personally, we always despised so… From a certain point of view, we already knew how it would have ended) was generally an almost total disappointment for the fans.

So, distancing from these… Things, the next section will analyze more carefully what Yume Nikki had to now become a cult.

With this title we live the gaming experience peak of anguish promise from Generation 0 of HOR-RPG.

Author’s intention or not, the environments in which the player decides to dive in and obscure the psyche of surrealist nature. I will personally determine how these maps could be linked to this artistic language of ‘900 (remember that of the twentieth century many artistic movements showed that -as well as all- artists were no longer able to rely on the old certainties, and so between Dadaism, Futurism, Expressionism and Surrealism attempted to distort and look for a new perception of reality).

From left: Totenklage (Max von Moos, 1936) and Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Salvador Dali, 1936)

Let’s try for a moment to compare them with screens of the game …

Let’s see what Wikipedia tells us about.

“Surrealism had as its main theoretician the poet André Breton, who channeled the destructive vitality of Dadaism. Breton was influenced by the reading of The Interpretation of Dreams Freud 1900; after reading it he came to the conclusion that it was unacceptable that the dream and the unconscious they had so little space in modern civilization, and then decided to found a new artistic and literary movement in which they had a key role. “

It’s still…

” Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express in words or writing or otherwise, theactual functioning of thought. Control of thought,in the absence of any control exercised by reason, outside of any aesthetic and moral concern. ”
Surrealism is therefore a psychic automatism, or the process in which the unconscious, that part of us that emerges in dreams, emerges when we are awake and allows us to associate clear words, thoughts and images without inhibitions and foreordained purposes. ” (The bolding is ours)

And here it revealed the heart of a game like Yume Nikki. This is not nothing but a wonderful manifestation of the unconscious journey that many, because of the different worlds, they interpreted in a pessimistic. This definitely comes looking bleak title and its dark colors. After all,with Ao Oni We have already introduced the theme of isolation of the player, recurring element in almost all kinds of horror games of Generation 0.

So what conclusions can we draw?

Certainly the horror and RPG videogame titles that have relied on these cornerstones of the genre between 2004 and 2012 had in common the exploration experiments in this Yume Nikki was only said the peak of exploration activity, but until at least some highlights of the First Generation (the Character Drama) environments used to play an important role in ensuring the recognition of their games online.

It is always the environment to triumph in these types of HOR-Japanese RPG titles; they are claustrophobic in appearance or widespread these always have the effect of making you feel poor and dispersed player depersonalized his subjectivity is the “outside world” to prevail on the individual. An unknown outside world that can hide dangers, but mostly scary because it goes beyond what we can know. Yume Nikki (as the Surrealists’ 900) there is suggesting that these mysterious environments reside in our unconscious together with all the thoughts that we put in and repress the social order view, perhaps giving us the pessimistic view that the first great environment that does not we know it is our brains, making us aware of our monstrous unpredictability.

Maybe we should not even be surprised that we have tried to revive the atmosphere of the game experiencing the 3D rendering techniques …

… Just as it happens today with many museums for which artistic currents develop new technologies to try to impress and at the same time to immerse the visitor to the maximum.

Photos from the museum “Getting Inside Van Gogh”

In conclusion, the language of the game, his authorial nature as a “product of the web” and the mystery that has been built around its author (we’ll talk about that later) when added contributed, together with the numerous theories that have been made and none seems to inscribe the title in a precise pattern, to build its own aura.

This is a concept we are stealing from the work of Walter Benjiamin ( “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”). I will try to explain here the best that I can, they speak essentially a concept that involves the personality of a work, the value of its uniqueness for which no other element or artistic product will equalize this work. Not randomly, as you can read from the title of the essay “technical reproducibility is appointed”, it is addressed in particular the issue of commodification and serialization that meets the cultural industry.

So yes, we are equating this game to a work of art.

I interrupt my ramblings here to measure with you the professionalism thermometer.

 

Professionalism Meter

And being left hanging with a reference to the aura speech on mechanical reproduction and the “depersonalization of art” we reflect for a moment again on the intent of “Back to the future“…

You are surprised to see, after all these accolades, the thermometer of professionalism with half liquid, aren’t you?

Here we are at the moment of truth.

Well, we told you in ‘Introduction that our intention was to understand how the HOR-RPG would move within a growing market …

… And the answer is that unfortunately Yume Nikki, no matter how well made, it is not a marketable product. That’s why the liquid is left on half of the meter; one half of “symbolic” in which one can recognize the maximum value of this work and its “confinement to authorial” nature.

We will explain it better in the following paragraphs …

Packaging

In its simplicity reveals an unparalleled elegance: the labyrinth as a logo and title of the game prevail over pink little frame that contains the start of the game functions, continuous and output.

I see these traits in a love for the gaming universe and its stylized and geometric shapes, as was the case for the identity of the first video games of the 90s.

There are many details that make the attractive title, as the circle that opens and closes on the character during rescue actions, animations and extra features (such as walking with the chair of the room) that make the gaming experience delicious.

Author-work relationship

As we promised by previous article, finally here’s the study on the issue concerning the relationship between Kikiyama and Yume Nikki.
Maybe it was not wanted, but not only the game itself had theories and speculation in general, but also the author / smoke (even its gender is unknown) of this surrealist cult is one of the most mysterious in the current, and for a long bit ‘of time, in the years between 2005 and 2014, it’s been topic of discussion.

There are in fact various oddities that surround the figure of Kikiyama and their behavior.

We begin by saying that it is unknown whether they worked hard to distribute the game properly. In “product history” it is written that the first forum on which it is spoken of Yume Nikki is 5Channel, but that post (also currently unavailable on the site) do not know whether it was done by Kikiyama themselves, since it seemed You only put on your site and did not seem to have or blog, or social profiles … And didn’t post on any forum. The only pseudo-distribution business was to put the game on their site … Maybe. Because it may be also promoted with another account but we don’t know anything.

So as we begin our own personal list of mysteries:

-Who really made Yume Nikki known?

Let’s go forward in years. The game has its English version, it became popular, Kikiyama continues to update and this is the only contact he has with the “outside world” of the web.
Eventually the game arrives at 0.09 version.

Kikiyama disappears into thin air. There are no game updates, and given the lack of any kind of other way to communicate with the user, and we assume that he had not even responded to any e-mail that were sent. Here we have the First Kikiyama Disappearance from the entire web … Until September 17, 2005, in which releases a version named 0.10, which fixed some bugs. Then we have the Second Kikiyama Disappearance after the fixed version 0.10, released around the same time, perhaps Kikiyama felt they had done their work and disappears for seven years.

In fact, in February 2012, the publisher Playism “took control of the game” and published on its distribution platforms (including Steam) a new version of Yume Nikki, version 0.10A, stating that it was created by Kikiyama on the same day he put on his website version 0.10. This version adds several points to the list:

-Why Kikiyama has not posted immediately version 0.10A ? Why make us wait seven years?
-How did Playism contact Kikiyama, if they don’t answer to any kind of email?
-And if exceptionally Kikiyama had answered Playism why Kikiyama, which seems to have not even put to put the game out of forum at the time when it came out, would have to worry about having a publisher and then transfer rights to companies?

Unfortunately even today these questions do not have answers. So we can only move forward.

From 2013 begins the mysterious, shoddy and commercial ancillary works dedicated to Yume Nikki, the manga and light novel … The companies involved in the publication of these works said that Kikiyama gave permission, but all we wonder why.

And… We don’t have any news of Kikiyama, not even game updates (because it seems that the game was still in need of updates), then we have the Third and final Kikiyama Disappearance (from the web, remember).

Their site became unavailable for an unattainable period in 2015 and the fans went into a panic: they also began to also assume their death because of an earthquake that in 2011 that hit Japan and made many victims, and then it was decided at a certain point that Kikiyama was among them. But the site came back in 2018 … But with one small difference.

The site in July 2008, which remained like this until 2018

The site 10 years later, March of 2018

You see that logo in the second image? Yes, it is the logo of the 20 EUR infamous reboot.

For the thousands of questions from fans about the state of Kikiyama, Kadokawa said they were fine, that they were alive and had actively contributed to the reboot … But no, we have the same questions that have been presented above, in the case of Playism. In fact, many have even suggested that Kikiyama is effectively dead and or (less likely theory, because it would be really risky for companies) Playism, Kadokawa and whoever is behind the manga and light novels, is lying on the rights given by Kikiyama; or (perhaps more plausible theory) if we assume that after their death the rights have passed to someone else.
Something that for some people has fueled the theory of Kikiyama’s death is the game itself. According to this other theory after having released the latest version Kikiyama did not die for the 2011 earthquake, but he committed suicide … Just like you see in the game’s ending, then according to this hypothesis Yume Nikki could also be the last wills of Kikiyama.

On one hand, this would answer the question of why Kikiyama has not posted immediately 0.10A version, and maybe it was found by Playism somehow (here could also join the theory of the rights given to someone, maybe one of Kikyama’s acquaintances)

And, on the other hand, since 2005 Kikiyama, if they really committed suicide, would not be the only case of suicide in the HOR-RPG current.

We would like to open a brief parenthesis on Re: Kinder, remake (made by the same author) of the game Kinder, originally came out in 2003, created by Horafuki Yokochou who takes the pseudonym of Parun.

Screenshots from Re: Kinder

On February 3, 2011 a post on Parun’s blog wrote by a distant friend announces the sad news: September 10, 2010 Yokochou jumped from the ninth floor of his house.

Given our ignorance of the Japanese language, and the crappy translation of Google Translate, we could not understand what the post meant, but if Parun jumped… Yes, it is very likely that he suffered from some problems too, although this could also be a conspiracy theory, in Kikiyama’s case.

Here, then, how they have developed a series of circumstances that favored the construction of theories, a path that led to only one certainty: in the HOR-RPG community the creator disappears definitely. They aren’t a user who creates content, but “abstract entity”, someone or something that shows us a hidden world that turns out some kind of sick revelation of his subconscious.

He often does not even look over to these people as professionals or aspiring. Unfortunately, many times this is part of the “social game” that these types of products are going. Consider the issue of the collective-social. For those who did not know what it is we are talking about images and recurrent themes in a society, in fact-that sometimes some call platitudes or urban myths, and this is a very expensive matter to the entertainment industry. Well, according to this idea we, as people, tend very often to work on imagination rather than seeking concrete data to observe the world around us.

 

-For the “development history” Yume Nikki: Podcast “Nelle storie” by Sara Gavioli,Kikiyama and the dream diary

Defects

Well, that was that we watched when we spoke of the professionalism thermometer. It is a thorny issue that we mentioned in the product’s history, when we appointed the many unsuccessful ancillary works that tried to revive Yume Nikki with completely different types of tones and languages.

This is not a product that can survive in the complex world of marketing, A world first that provides a broad line of communicability. In practice it uses a “plain language for all” which originated in the classical Hollywood narrative, an element that often characterizes these types of works “for the masses.”

The said commercial world is a complicated world, particularly in the entertainment industry. An industry that allows a viewer (or player, why not), by the partial identification with the characters, to exorcize the fears that haunt her daily life.

First of all, commercial work chooses a main theme and argues as clearly and legibly as possible, which is why often in danger of falling into the mainstream.

Often however, the aura of ‘ “art” has always been associated with a strong individualism thanks to which each, through interpretations same or realization of a work, you can feel the protagonist.

Yume Nikki, needless to say, fits perfectly in the second case. The estrangement of the title during the explorations (a completely opposite concept identification: Ao Oni even seemed to have had better luck with ancillary works), the subjectivity that every player feels call him when talking about their thoughts on the product and the nature of “creative entity” author contributed, again, on the one hand to build an important personality aura of the game but on the other hand have made it almost impossible to adapt, as it is in its nature, in a commercial manner.

Conclusion

We elect Yume Nikki pillar of individualism, a member of the melancholy memory of something that nowadays you might not realize (as has happened to other more recent works and which will be discussed, such as the strange case of Faust Alptraum and Pocket Mirror, a title that will be present in Back to the Future) because of constant social changes that change from year to year, from decade to decade and that also occur here, on the World Wide Web.

A change that is observed in the type of audience and the types of people we become. A change that will be observed from the next article, with the very first approaches to construction of the characters that will anticipate the Character Drama.

Ao Oni – The web creature

Ao Oni, or for real Romans Aoh! Oni (okay, we’re kidding) leads us to finally enter the world of amateur HOR-RPG games.

Welcome(…Or welcome back) in this new article of Back to the future…

AO ONI, CREATURE OF THE WEB

Our dear demon with an intense photoshopped gaze is the true protagonist of the series.
We are talking about a game that has grown slowly from unknown places on the web – as we will see later in the paragraph “Product history” – and then spread visibly.

And how could this have happened, if not with let’s plays? Youtube has always been an important channel for the diffusion of the HOR-RPG current, the most awaited reactions were the scares of the web stars.
Ao Oni perfectly reflects the characteristics of his generation.
We recall that Generation 0 presents a particular care for the atmospheres, especially by exploiting the sound plane (generally this is the “generation of ambient music”, compared to other Horror RPGs) as we will see by analyzing the game we are talking about.
The plots almost never dominate the gameplay made up of the total exploration which, alas, is sometimes also a defect that makes one ask “how should I understand that I had to do this?” in some situations. It focuses mainly on the puzzles that a developer goes to insert: if they are easy, too easy, difficult or too difficult and if the difficulty is justified or given by information management defects, and the originality of these was also very important.
And let’s not forget the chases: the tension they put to the player, the difficulty or even if there are various ways in the game to escape the creature in turn. In the trump card we will analyze just this: the puzzles in the context in which they are inserted, and the system of pursuits.

What exactly was the path that led the title to be so well known?

Product history

Compared to the first title we covered in this section, on Ao Oni there is not much information on the “background” of the game development.

We only know that the pseudonym used by the author is noprops, which published a first version of the game on its official website and if you probably guess it on Japanese forums, but we have no reliable sources on the latter statement.

noprops’s official site

Already from this little information … Have you noticed the dissonance with Corpse Party?

Unlike Makoto Kedouin, to whom we have been able to give a precise face and name, here the story of the HOR-RPG definitively begins, developed by authors who are almost all under pseudonyms …

Where do you use pseudonyms many times, or commonly usernames?
Here, with Ao Oni (and Yume Nikki) in fact  people of the Internet try to move in HOR-RPG production with this tool that meanwhile has grown over the years up to the 2003 version (of which, however, we will not talk about here) and XP version.
Then the further creation of online distribution platforms where everyone could publish their titles gave even more space to amateur developers precisely from the reality of the web.

In this environment Ao Oni was born, developed with RPG Maker XP and published for the first time on the official noprops website and perhaps distributed on other sites. There have been no other distribution jobs, no type of producer has ever touched the original game. Yes, there have been Ao Oni 2 and Ao Oni 3 taken by publishers to put them on Android, but … They have not made as much luck as the first one, even if they tried to do something more in the graphic and background fields.

Here, the first Ao Oni … In his homeland, the web, has made quite a lot of success: it has brought all kinds of youtubers to it almost all over the world.
This gave him various inspired external works: the aforementioned sequels, clones (which we will discuss later), a manga, an animated adaptation (however parodic) and a live action film.

We all ask ourselves at this point: how did this game, among all the indie HOR-RPG ( we don’t take it into consideration Corpse Party, as thrown on the gaming market) to have all these adaptations, these interpretations?

Usually in these cases these operations are done when something is successful and this fame makes it rise from the web. Well, let’s see what the web has to say about Ao Oni and let’s take notes.

“goddammitanxiety game”
Comment under FavijTV’s video

-Tension, anxiety

 


“When that guy popped out I let out a scream… I feel dumb.”
Comment under FavijTV’s video

-Well done jumpscares

Comment under PewDiePie’s video

Comment under PewDiePie’s video (the comment cites one of his lines): Pewds re-recorded a gameplay of Ao Oni, after playing it years before on his channel.

-Industrial quantity of puzzles

 

-The Oni, despite its appearance (which we will discuss later), manages to frighten

 

So in general Ao Oni, although part of the current RPG Horror gives the same sensations of Outlast, Slender and other games of the same genre.

And all this even if there is not even a particularly macabre plot, and that very little that is known is not very thorough. What does everything in the game is the management of the atmosphere (but we will talk about this in detail later). Let’s compare the two images, the one on the right from Slender: The Eight Pages, and the one on the right of the game we are talking about. Both games work on tension, even in Slender the Slenderman may appear at any moment, but in that game you can clearly see a more accurate lights than Ao Oni. This Horror RPG managed to recreate a tense atmosphere even with objectively very minimal tilesets and sprites and lights reduced to the minimum (in the main structure there are none, and in the attached structure there is only a slight darker screen tint) , and this is demonstrated by the comments.

Its popularity was also based on the imagination of both the producers together with the author himself (see the cases of Ao Oni 2 and 3, which we imagine have been approved by noprops) and fans of the game.

There were in fact several clones of Ao Oni. The main one was Nira Oni, although there were many others including Twilight Oni (which went viral for being ugly), Mura Oni and Heta Oni (based on the anime Hetalia). The most successful clone, however, was Nira Oni.

Screen shot of the title of Nira Oni, the best known and appreciated fangame of Ao Oni: you can immediately notice the lack of minimalism and approximation that the original game had.

These fangames have re-imagined the same context – abandoned structure (or, in the case of Mura Oni, a village), group of teens and, above all, the Oni – but with different characters, different structures or both. The meeting point was simply the blue demon.


“The game and the gamer”

As we previously mentioned, we’ll see the triad of features that make up the game.

  • Relationship between scenography and ambience
  • The intertwining of the puzzles
  • Randomization of the chase scenes

All enclosed in a single password chosen by the same author in his nickname (no props = no props needed): minimalism, which we have already mentioned.

Here the importance of contextualization comes into play, with regard to a small detail that we had talked about in an old review…

……FLASHBACK……

…….

………………

…….

….

Kill Bill Vol.1

……

Eh-Eh. We got there.
You will think… Who knows… Now they will have to piss off as if there was no tomorrow, right?

We know it … We know you are waiting for criticism… But do you know what?

If you expect it, it means that all the speeches we have made so far in the previous articles have been useless.

Okay guys, let’s look for a meeting point: Ao Oni by its nature, especially if compared to a predecessor like CORPSE-PARTY and a respectable successor like Yume Nikki, it can’t be called a title that shines, if not for the ingenuity of puzzles and chases. And with this I intend to conclude, in fact, that the maps do not enhance the scenography as many would like

In that review, however, we were talking about a game that had as its main objective to tell you a story, and from when it was created the classic narration always builds its foundations on the scenography, the environments and the context in which it chooses to represent itself.
Do you find any similarity with Ao Oni? Do you find in Ao Oni a promise of story telling by the game and the poor events that follow one another?

No. Nothing like that: from the classic incipit and context of many works (even the most scarce) that want to call themselves “horror” the player understands that there will be no real storytelling: this gives less depth (and in some cases nothing of that) to plot, characters and environments and much more depth to the gameplay: if the game isn’t meant to make the player passionate, he must entertain them in the most primitive sense of the term.

The trump card is in fact the riddles: it is a game very coherent with itself.
Even the graphics defined by many … Questionable, they are simply functional to what they must do: there was no work of “eye-candy” because simply noprops didn’t feel the need, didn’t feel to give a certain “personality” to characters and environments, the intention was not to make the player become attached to them.

The only exception is the Oni that we will meet almost always during the game. He is the only one to have some kind of personalized sprites (because you can see that those of the boys are clearly made or with a generator, or any external program that creates them semi-automatically), with a grotesque and almost comic appearance, especially when it will have the hair of the characters who will gradually die by the hands of the “Ao Oni senior”.

Look at him: the face of an ordinary man is deformed. Giant eyes and nose, together with an external narrow face on the part of the chin and eyes. Not to mention the body: you can see it from a mile that is stylized to the improbable, and with a realistic face … It creates that dissonance that makes it bizarre and grotesque.

To “make an impression” these types of creatures are used a lot. Maybe it will be just my point of view (the article passed into Ele’s hands), but I think it is also a characteristic of Japanese culture. In this regard, I would like to offer you an image.

From “The Art of Spirited Away”, Viz Media, Studio Ghibli library

Do you recognize these beings? From the caption of the photo it is easy to understand what film I am talking about: “Spirited Away” by Hayao Miyazaki and Akira Kurosawa.

Do you see how they are aesthetically? They are fat and have wide eyes, and above all this last detail makes the viewer say “oh god, what is that ?!” even if they are simply ducks with some particular characteristics.

This film in fact gives a vast representation of the Japanese culture, made mainly by these strange entities with a deformed appearance.

With the Ao Oni the same work as the ducks was done: the normal was deformed (like the face of a man like many others) and became abnormal, giving a completely new image.

So the role of this creature has never been to “scare” with particularly disturbing details, but rather “make an impression” on the player with his monstrous appearance.

The fright stems from the jumpscare when the Oni appears and from the tension following it during chases.
The latter generally play a lot on the fear of killing our character, but above all that of not being able to go on and start again from a point not close to where you arrived or, especially in many retrogames, to start  everything over.

Ao Oni follows this very idea: if the Oni takes you you have to start from where you saved and, unless you are a compulsive “save-person”, you have to do a lot of actions before moving forward, and in the long run it becomes frustrating.

But we won’t talk about a particular complexity of the chase scenes.

In Ao Oni there is a constant tension during the game but not because there are chase scenes in general, we find them in many other HOR-RPG, but because this title introduces into the genre a mechanic present more than anything else in horror games such as Outlast or Slender: the random appearance of the chaser.

In the game there are few “scripted” scenes in which the Oni appears at the same time for each player: for the rest of the game it could appear at any moment, and due to this perennial randomness even the scripted scenes do not seem such, many times .

Also to escape the monster you can hide in closets.

Here, during this moment we feel the breath of … “Hiroshi”. Do we care about him? About his safety?

Not exactly. That breath is ours, it is our fear of being discovered. Here the game is experienced in the first person and we abandon every filter that wanted to present it to us in third: we don’t only see Hiroshi hiding in a closet, we don’t look as “omniscient players”. The point of view changes: we live the experience.

As we have already said, the “horror” does not lie in particularly macabre or disturbing textures or images, but in the tension that the player feels in the fear of jerking seeing the blue monster, being caught or seeing his beautiful face on the big screen.

So let’s draw conclusions for a moment.
We repeat that the title, although not the best of its time, remains true to its promises.
We have the weakening of the incipit if not a real cancellation; a feature that had instead distinguished Corpse Party.

You will notice that among this …

And this….

There is a big difference.
The three lines of introduction should speak clearly: Ao Oni leads the player to a total identification and immersion in the experience he is living.

Even if “RPG” indicates by acronym a third-person game now, the games seem to be closer to the use of the first person, letting the player let himself be totally carried away in the videogame experience not for the sake of being “amazed” ( see the needs of today on the quality of the graphics) but often to indulge in the exploration of places of which the game itself perhaps only becomes an excuse to repeatedly listen to the sound of the wind or rain their your headphones.

Here we have the highest expression of the HOR-RPG genre as a current devoted to individualism and isolation. There are only two subjects involved, the game and the player, so here is the paradox of inserting titles like this within a market that counted in the production of secondary works.
An operation, this, born from the hope of attracting an audience that has been able to transform, through the intervention of the web stars, anguish into laughter. The silence of the characters, the monster and the author has been replaced by the youtuber’s scream and entertainment for its users.

Professionality meter

PACKAGING

We certainly cannot say that the distribution of the game, as well as its packaging, has professional intent.

Yes, there isn’t even an image for the title.

The screen is all black, you can only decide whether to start the game, continue it or exit. We are asked to enter a name for the character and then the short incipit introduces us to the context in which we will move: a group of friends wants to explore a mysterious abandoned villa. The-End.
This is one of those games, as we once heard, beautiful to “discover from scratch” and experience them to experience the degree of tension they offer you and the ingenious tests they subject you to. A type of game, precisely, adopted and grown by the web. A game that even before belonging to some “producer” or “company of professionals” belongs first of all to its players who donate their imagination to build interpretations, theories that explain the events but first of all that feed the characters with characterizations. and they keep offering the game the characteristic of narration, a phenomenon that we will observe in particular in its first explosion with Yume Nikki in the same year.

Author-work relationship

As already said in the history of the product, this title is also left to itself by its author, but a true culture is born from him: that of the author without a precise identity, without a face and a first name to associate it with .

However, this phenomenon will be better discussed in the article dedicated to Yume Nikki and its author Kikiyama.

Defects

We will talk about two in particular.

  • First of all, the aforementioned lack of care for the scenography greatly penalizes the title which would otherwise have increased the quality and would certainly have given it more recognisability, unfortunately given only by its creature of which the other dedicated titles have lived off their income. Even if the author had wanted to be consistent with his “minimal” approach, he could have taken care of at least photography and added lights and shadows, or used particular colors. This is a serious flaw, if considered especially in the context of its generation, in which even if the development of a plot was not desired, the needs of the developers voted for the immersion of the environments.
    Although, as we said before, we do not feel like insisting too much on this point because we are talking about elements that go beyond what the game wanted to offer.
  • The second flaw, on the other hand, has to do precisely with the other side of his ace up his sleeve, which is perhaps why it affects him more.
    The riddles. We’re talking … About releasing the information.
    Well, however ingenious they may be, many have failed to fully appreciate them, complaining of relative complexity.
    This I believe is mainly given by the fact that often there is not enough communication of the game for the player, leaving it completely to himself without offering instructions that can make the user understand the nature of the puzzle.
    Let’s examine one of the most well-known puzzles … And the one that has more guides: the piano puzzle

    We present the solution. In the latest version of the game (6.23) the numbers that will appear on the piano after cleaning the blood stain on it are random and there are about 5 possible combinations for a nearby safe. Now, how to find this combination? To get the solution to this puzzle, you need to match the numbers on the piano keys to the shapes of the keys on the safe.

This is defined as one of the most difficult puzzles in the game, but not because of an actual difficulty, but because of the management of the information about it: it is not possible to understand that those signs on the safe (in the old versions it was even necessary to find a leaflet in another room) would be the shapes of the keys on the piano, they were not highlighted in any way.

This is unfortunately only an example. In short, the puzzles in Ao Oni are the most ingenious that we have seen so far among all the Horror RPGs we have played, but the management of the information on them makes them in certain situations even frustrating.

CONCLUSION

We also finished our stop on the second stop, finally entering the myth of the HOR-RPG as a “game of desolation, suspense and hours lost in exploration”. Ao Oni has only taken the first step in the construction of this definition, being therefore an excellent pioneering experiment but which will soon be passed…

Ao Oni – La creatura del web

Ao Oni, o per i veri romanacci Aoh! Oni (okay, stiamo scherzando) ci porta ad affacciarci finalmente nel mondo dei giochi HOR-RPG amatoriali.

Benvenuti (…o bentornati) in questo nuovo articolo della rubrica Ritorno al futuro…

AO ONI, LA CREATURA DEL WEB

Il nostro caro demone dall’intenso sguardo photoshoppato è il vero protagonista della serie.
Stiamo parlando di un gioco cresciuto pian piano da luoghi ignoti del web –come vedremo in seguito nel paragrafo “Storia del prodotto” – e diffusosi poi a vista d’occhio.

E come potrà essere accaduto, se non con dei gameplay? Youtube è da sempre stato un importante canale per la diffusione della corrente HOR-RPG, le reazioni più attese erano gli spaventi delle web-star e i loro scleri.
Ao Oni rispecchia perfettamente le caratteristiche della sua generazione.
Ricordiamo che la Generazione 0 presenta una cura particolare per le atmosfere sfruttando soprattutto il piano sonoro (generalmente questa è la “generazione delle musiche ambience”, rispetto ad altre degli RPG Horror) come vedremo analizzando proprio il gioco di cui stiamo parlando.
Le trame non preponderano quasi mai sul gameplay composto dall’esplorazione totale che ahimè, a volte è anche un difetto che fa chiedere “come dovevo capire che dovevo fare questo?” in alcuni frangenti. Esso si focalizza principalmente sugli enigmi che uno sviluppatore va ad inserire: se sono facili, troppo facili, difficili o troppo difficili e se la difficoltà è giustificata o data da difetti di gestione delle informazioni, ed era anche molto importante l’originalità di questi.
E non dimentichiamo gli inseguimenti: la tensione che mettono al giocatore, la difficoltà o anche se ci sono nel gioco vari modi per scampare alla creatura di turno. Nell’asso della manica analizzeremo proprio questo: gli enigmi nel contesto in cui sono inseriti, ed il sistema di inseguimenti.

Qual è stato esattamente il percorso che ha portato il titolo ad essere così conosciuto?

STORIA DEL PRODOTTO

Rispetto al primo titolo che abbiamo trattato in questa rubrica, su Ao Oni non si hanno molte informazioni sul “background” del development del gioco.

Sappiamo solo che lo pseudonimo usato dall’autore è noprops, che pubblicò una prima versione del gioco sul suo sito ufficiale e se si va ad intuito probabilmente su dei forum in lingua giapponese, ma non abbiamo fonti certe su quest’ultima affermazione.

Sito di noprops

Già da queste poche informazioni… Avete notato la dissonanza con Corpse Party?

A differenza di Makoto Kedouin, a cui abbiamo potuto dare un volto ed un nome precisi, qui inizia definitivamente la storia dell’HOR-RPG sviluppato da autori che sono per la quasi totalità dei casi sotto pseudonimi…

Dove si usano molte volte gli pseudonimi, o comunemente username?
Ecco, con Ao Oni (e Yume Nikki) infatti  si prova a muovere nella produzione HOR-RPG il popolo di internet con questo tool che intanto è cresciuto con il passare degli anni fino ad arrivare alle versioni 2003 (di cui però non parleremo qui) e XP.
Poi l’ulteriore creazione di piattaforme di distribuzione online dove tutti potessero pubblicare i propri titoli ha dato via ancora più spianata agli sviluppatori amatoriali appunto provenienti dalla realtà del web.

In questo ambiente nacque Ao Oni, sviluppato con RPG Maker XP e pubblicato la prima volta sul sito ufficiale di noprops e forse distribuito su altri siti. Non ci sono stati altri lavori di distribuzione, alcun tipo di produttore ha mai toccato il gioco originale. Si, ci sono stati degli Ao Oni 2 e Ao Oni 3 appunto presi da dei publisher per metterli su Android, ma… Non hanno fatto fortuna quanto il primo, anche se si è provato a fare qualcosa di più in ambito grafico e di background.

Ecco, il primo Ao Oni… Nella sua terra, il web, ha fatto un bel po’ di successo: l’ha portato ogni tipo di youtuber in quasi tutto il mondo.
Ciò gli ha dato varie opere esterne ispirate: i già citati seguiti, cloni (di cui parleremo dopo), un manga, un adattamento animato (per quanto parodico) e un film live action.

Tutti ci chiediamo a questo punto: come ha fatto proprio questo gioco, tra tutti gli HOR-RPG indie (Corpse Party non lo prendiamo in considerazione, in quanto gettato proprio sul mercato videoludico) ad avere tutti questi adattamenti, queste interpretazioni?

Di solito in questi casi si fanno queste operazioni quando un qualcosa ha successo e questa fama lo fa risalire dal web. Bene, vediamo cos’ha da dire il web su Ao Oni e prendiamo degli appunti.


Commento sotto il video di FavijTV

-Tensione, ansia


Commento sotto il video di FavijTV

-Jumpscare riusciti

“Io e mia sorella guardavamo questi video tutt’in una volta e ricordo ancora i BRIVIDI.”
Commento sotto il video dello youtuber PewDiePie

“Sono venuto per la nostalgia ma tutto quello che ho ottenuto sono ENIGMI”
Commento sotto il video dello youtuber PewDiePie (il commento cita una sua battuta): ha ri-registrato un gameplay di Ao Oni, dopo averlo giocato anni prima sul suo canale.

-Quantità industriale di enigmi

“Ricordo che guardavo vecchi let’s play di questo gioco, ma io e mio cugino/a ci spaventavamo, e pensando che l’Oni voleva venirci a prendere prendavamo mazze da baseball e coltelli mentre correvamo per la casa… Nostalgia.”

“So che il mostro fa quasi ridere, ma non posso dire la stessa cosa quando sono al buio e sto per andare a dormire”

-L’Oni pur con il suo aspetto (di cui parleremo più tardi) riesce a far paura

Quindi in generale Ao Oni, pur facente parte della corrente RPG Horror dà le stesse sensazioni di un Outlast, Slender e altri dello stesso genere.

E tutto ciò anche se non c’è neanche una trama particolarmente macabra, e quel pochissimo che si sa è poco approfondito.  Quel che fa tutto nel gioco è la gestione delle atmosfere (ma di questo ne parleremo nel dettaglio in seguito). Mettiamo a confronto le due immagini, quella a destra da Slender: The Eight Pages, e quella a destra del gioco di cui parliamo. Entrambi i giochi lavorano sulla tensione, anche in Slender può apparire da un momento all’altro, appunto, lo Slenderman, ma in quel gioco si vedono palesemente luci un più curate rispetto ad Ao Oni. Questo RPG Horror è riuscito a ricreare un’atmosfera tesa anche con dei tileset e sprite oggettivamente molto minimali e luci ridotte all’osso (nella struttura principale non ce ne sono proprio, e nella struttura annessa si ha solo una leggera tinta schermo più scura), e ciò lo dimostrano i commenti.

La sua popolarità è stata anche basata sulla fantasia sia dei produttori assieme all’autore stesso (vedasi i casi di Ao Oni 2 e 3, che immaginiamo siano stati approvati da noprops) sia dei fan del gioco.

Ci sono stati infatti vari cloni di Ao Oni. Il principale è stato Nira Oni, anche se ce ne sono stati molti altri tra cui Twilight Oni (diventato virale per essere brutto), Mura Oni e Heta Oni (basato sull’anime Hetalia). Il clone che ha fatto più successo è stato però Nira Oni.

Schermata del titolo di Nira Oni, il fangame di Ao Oni più conosciuto e apprezzato: si può notare già da subito la mancanza di minimalismo e approssimazione che aveva il gioco originale.

Questi fangame hanno re-immaginato lo stesso contesto – struttura abbandonata (o, nel caso di Mura Oni, un villaggio) , gruppo di ragazzi e, soprattutto, l’Oni – ma con diversi personaggi, diverse strutture o entrambe le cose. Il punto d’incontro era semplicemente il demone blu.

“Il gioco e il giocatore”

Come abbiamo già anticipato in precedenza, volgeremo un occhio alla triade di caratteristiche che compongono il gioco.

  • Relazione tra scenografie e ambience
  • L’intreccio degli enigmi
  • Randomizzazione dell’inseguimento

Tutto rinchiuso in un’unica parola d’ordine scelta dallo stesso autore nel suo nickname (no props=no props – oggetti di scena- needed): minimalismo, che abbiamo già citato.

Qui entra in gioco l’importanza della contestualizzazione, a proposito di un piccolo dettaglio di cui avevamo parlato in una vecchia recensione…

……FLASHBACK……

…….

………………

…….

….

Kill Bill Vol.1

……

Eh-Eh. Ci siamo arrivati.
Penserete…Chissà…Ora dovranno imbruttirsi come se non ci fosse un domani, no?

Lo sappiamo…Lo sappiamo che state aspettando la critica…Ma sapete cosa?

Se ve l’aspettate, vuol dire che tutti i discorsi che abbiamo fatto finora nei precedenti articoli sono stati inutili.

Okay ragazzi, cerchiamo un punto di incontro: Ao Oni per sua natura, soprattutto se messo a confronto con un predecessore come CORPSE-PARTY e un successore di tutto rispetto come Yume Nikki, non può dirsi un titolo che brilla, se non per l’ingegno degli enigmi e degli inseguimenti. E con questo intendo concludere, appunto, che le mappe non valorizzano la scenografia come molti vorrebbero.

In quella recensione stavamo parlando tuttavia di un gioco che aveva come obiettivo principale narrarti una storia, e da che mondo e mondo la narrazione classica costruisce sempre le sue fondamenta sulla scenografia, gli ambienti e sul contesto in cui sceglie di rappresentarsi.
Ci trovate qualche somiglianza con Ao Oni? Trovate in Ao Oni una promessa di story telling da parte del gioco e delle povere vicende che si susseguono?

No. Nulla di tutto questo: dall’incipit e contesto classici di molte opere (anche delle più scarse) che vogliono definirsi “horror” il giocatore capisce che non ci sarà uno storytelling vero e proprio: ciò dà meno spessore (e in alcuni casi nullo) a trama, personaggi e ambienti e molto più spessore al gameplay: se non deve appassionare il giocatore, lo deve intrattenere nel senso più primitivo del termine.

L’asso della manica infatti sono gli enigmi: è un gioco molto coerente con se stesso.
Anche le grafiche da molti definite… Discutibili, sono semplicemente funzionali a ciò che devono: non c’è stato un lavoro di “eye-candy” perché semplicemente noprops non ne sentiva il bisogno, non sentiva di dare una certa “personalità” a personaggi e ambienti, l’intenzione non era far affezionare il giocatore ad essi.

Unica eccezione è l’Oni che ci ritroveremo davanti quasi ogni tre per due durante il gioco. È l’unico ad avere un qualche tipo di sprite personalizzata (perché si vede che quelle dei ragazzi sono palesemente fatte o con un generatore, o qualsiasi programma esterno che le crea semi-automaticamente), con un aspetto grottesco e quasi comico, soprattutto quando avrà le capigliature dei personaggi che man mano moriranno per mano dell’“Ao Oni senior”.

Guardatelo: la faccia di un uomo qualunque deformata. Occhi e naso giganteschi, assieme ad un esterno faccia stretto sulla parte del mento e degli occhi. Per non parlare del corpo: si vede da un miglio che è stilizzato all’inverosimile, e con un viso realistico… Si crea quella dissonanza che lo rende bizzarro e grottesco.

Per “fare impressione” si usano molto questi tipi di creature. Forse sarà solo un mio punto di vista (l’articolo è passato nelle mani di Ele), ma credo sia anche una caratteristica propria della cultura giapponese. A questo proposito vorrei proporvi un’immagine.

Da “The Art of Spirited Away”, Viz Media, Studio Ghibli library

Li riconoscete questi esseri? Dalla didascalia della foto è facile capire di che film io stia parlando: “La Città Incantata” di Hayao Miyazaki e Akira Kurosawa.

Vedete come sono esteticamente?  Sono grassi e hanno gli occhi spalancati, e soprattutto quest’ultimo dettaglio fa dire allo spettatore “oddio, cos’è quello?!” anche se sono semplicemente papere con qualche caratteristica particolare.

Questo film infatti dà una vasta rappresentazione della cultura nipponica, fatta prevalentemente da queste strane entità con aspetto deformato.

Con l’Ao Oni è stato fatto lo stesso lavoro delle papere: si è deformato il normale (come la faccia di un uomo come tanti) e si è reso anormale, dando un’immagine completamente nuova.

Quindi il ruolo di questa creatura non è mai stato quello di “spaventare” con dettagli particolarmente inquietanti, ma bensì “fare impressione” al giocatore con il suo aspetto mostruoso.

Lo spavento deriva infatti dal jumpscare quando l’Oni appare e dalla tensione seguente ad esso durante gli inseguimenti.
Questi ultimi in generale giocano molto sulla paura di far morire il personaggio di turno, ma soprattutto quella di non poter andare avanti e ricominciare da un punto non vicino rispetto a dove sei arrivato o, soprattutto in molti retrogames, ricominciare da capo.

Ao Oni ricalca proprio quest’idea: se l’Oni ti prende devi ripartire da dove hai salvato e, a meno che tu non sia un “salvatore” compulsivo, bisogna rifare molte azioni prima di andare avanti, e ciò alla lunga diventa frustrante.

Ma non è di una particolare complessità degli inseguimenti che parleremo.

In Ao Oni si ha una perenne tensione durante il gioco ma non perché ci siano inseguimenti in generale, li troviamo in molti altri HOR-RPG, ma perché questo titolo introduce nel genere una meccanica presente più che altro negli horror come Outlast o Slender: l’apparizione casuale dell’inseguitore di turno.

Nel gioco ci sono poche scene “scriptate” in cui l’Oni appare nello stesso momento per ogni giocatore: per il resto del gioco potrebbe apparire in ogni momento, e per via di questa casualità perenne anche le scene scriptate non sembrano tali, molte volte.

Inoltre per sfuggire al mostro è possibile nascondersi in degli armadi.

Ecco, durante questo momento sentiamo il respiro di… “Hiroshi”. Teniamo a lui? Alla sua incolumità?

Non proprio. Quel respiro è il nostro, è la nostra paura di venire scoperti. Qui il gioco si vive in prima persona e si abbandona ogni filtro che voleva presentarcelo in terza: noi non vediamo solo Hiroshi che si nasconde in un armadio, non osserviamo fuori da “giocatori onniscienti”. Il punto di vista cambia: siamo noi a vivere l’esperienza.

Come abbiamo già detto, l’ “horror” non sta in trame o immagini particolarmente macabri o inquietanti, ma bensì nella tensione che il giocatore prova nella paura di sobbalzare vedendo il mostro blu, venendo presi o vedendo il suo bel faccione su gran parte dello schermo.

Dunque, tiriamo per un attimo le somme.
Ripetiamo che il titolo, seppur non sia il migliore dei suoi tempi, rimane fedele alle sue promesse.
Abbiamo l’indebolimento dell’incipit se non un vero e proprio annullamento; caratteristica che aveva invece contraddistinto Corpse Party.

Noterete che tra questo…

E questo….

“Era una serata piovosa dopo la scuola, come oggi…”

“Correndo per le scale, l’insegnante ha perso l’equilibrio. È inciampata, è caduta… Ed è morta.”

Ci sia una bella differenza. 
Le tre righe di premessa dovrebbero parlare chiaro: Ao Oni conduce il giocatore ad una identificazione ed immersione totale nell’esperienza che sta vivendo.

Anche se “RPG” indica per acronimo un gioco in terza persona in questo periodo i giochi sembrano più avvicinarsi invece all’uso della prima, lasciando che il giocatore si lasci totalmente trasportare nell’esperienza videoludica non per il gusto di essere “stupito” (vedasi le esigenze del giorno d’oggi sulla qualità delle grafiche) ma spesso per abbandonarsi nell’esplorazione di luoghi di cui il gioco stesso forse diventa solo un pretesto per ascoltare a ripetizione il rumore del vento o di pioggia con le proprie cuffie.

Qui abbiamo la massima espressione del genere HOR-RPG come corrente votata all’individualismo e all’isolamento. I soggetti coinvolti sono solo due, il gioco ed il giocatore, perciò ecco qui spiegato il paradosso di inserire titoli come questo all’interno di un mercato che contava nella produzione di opere secondarie.
Un’operazione, questa, nata dalla speranza di attirare quel pubblico che è stato capace di trasformare, per via dell’intervento delle web-star, l’angoscia in risata. Al silenzio dei personaggi, del mostro e dell’autore si è sostituito l’urlo dello youtuber e l’entertainment per i suoi utenti.

Termometro della professionalità

PACKAGING

Non possiamo affermare certamente che il la distribuzione del gioco, così come il suo packaging abbia intenti professionali.

 Non c’è nemmeno un’immagine per il titolo.

Lo schermo è tutto nero, puoi decidere solo se iniziare il gioco, continuarlo o uscire. Viene chiesto di inserire un nome per il personaggio e dopodiché il breve incipit ci introduce il contesto in cui ci muoveremo: un gruppo di amici vuole esplorare una misteriosa villa abbandonata. Punto.
Questo è uno di quei giochi, come sentimmo dire una volta, belli da “scoprire dal nulla” e viverli per sperimentare il grado di tensione che ti propongono e i test d’ingegno a cui ti sottopongono.  Un tipo di gioco, per l’appunto, adottato e cresciuto dal web. Un gioco che prima ancora di appartenere a qualche “produttore” o “compagnia di professionisti” appartiene anzitutto ai suoi giocatori che donano la loro fantasia per costruire delle interpretazioni, delle teorie che spieghino gli eventi ma prima di tutto che nutrono i personaggi con delle caratterizzazioni e tengono ad offrire al gioco la caratteristica della narrabilità, un fenomeno che osserveremo in particolar modo nella sua prima esplosione con Yume Nikki dello stesso anno.

RAPPORTO AUTORE-OPERA

Come già detto nella storia del prodotto anche questo titolo è lasciato a se stesso dal suo autore, ma da lui nasce una vera e propria cultura: quella dell’autore senza un’identità precisa, senza un volto e un nome di battesimo a cui associarlo.

Si parlerà però meglio di questo fenomeno nell’articolo dedicato a Yume Nikki e il suo autore Kikiyama.

DIFETTI  DELL’OPERA

Ne parleremo di due in particolare.

  • Anzitutto, la già citata mancanza di cura per la scenografia penalizza di molto il titolo che altrimenti avrebbe aumentato la qualità e gli avrebbe dato sicuramente più riconoscibilità, purtroppo data soltanto dalla sua creatura di cui gli altri titoli dedicati hanno vissuto di rendita. Anche se l’autore avesse voluto essere coerente con il suo approccio “minimal” avrebbe potuto curare perlomeno la fotografia e aggiungere luci e ombre, o utilizzare dei colori particolari. Questo è un difetto grave, se considerato in particolar modo nell’ambito della sua generazione, in cui anche se non si auspicava lo sviluppo di una trama le esigenze degli sviluppatori votavano all’immersività degli ambienti.
    Anche se, come abbiamo detto prima, non ci sentiamo di insistere troppo su questo punto perché si parla di elementi che vanno aldilà di quello che il gioco voleva offrire.
  • Il secondo difetto ha a che fare invece proprio con l’altra faccia del suo asso nella manica, e per questo forse che gli tocca di più.
    Gli enigmi. Stiamo parlando…Del rilascio delle informazioni in merito.
    Ebbene, per quanto possano essere ingegnosi molti non sono riusciti ad apprezzarli fino in fondo, lamentato una relativa complessità.
    Questo credo sia dato soprattutto dal fatto che spesso non c’è sufficiente comunicazione del gioco per il giocatore, lasciandolo completamente a se stesso senza offrire delle istruzioni che possano far comprendere all’utente la natura dell’enigma.
    Prendiamo in esame uno degli enigmi più conosciuti… E di quelli di cui si sono cercate più guide: l’enigma del pianoforte.
    Presentiamo la soluzione. Nell’ultima versione del gioco (6.23) i numeri che compariranno sul pianoforte dopo aver pulito la macchia di sangue su di esso sono randomici e ci sono circa 5 possibili combinazioni per una cassaforte vicina. Ecco, come trovare questa combinazione? Per avere la soluzione a questo enigma bisogna abbinare i numeri sui tasti del pianoforte alle forme dei tasti sulla cassaforte.

Questo è definito uno degli enigmi più difficili del gioco, ma non per un’effettiva difficoltà, ma per via della gestione delle informazioni in merito ad esso: non è infatti possibile capire che quei segni sulla cassaforte (nelle vecchie versioni bisognava addirittura trovare un foglietto in un’altra stanza) sarebbero le forme dei tasti sul pianoforte, non sono state evidenziate in alcun modo.

Questo purtroppo è solo un esempio. In breve gli enigmi in Ao Oni sono dei più ingegnosi che abbiamo visto finora tra tutti gli RPG Horror che abbiamo giocato, ma la gestione delle informazioni su di essi li rende in certi frangenti anche frustranti.

CONCLUSIONE

Abbiamo terminato anche la nostra sosta sulla seconda fermata, entrando finalmente nel mito dell’HOR-RPG come “gioco della desolazione, della suspense e delle ore perse in esplorazione”. Ao Oni ha solo fatto il primo passo per la costruzione di questa definizione, essendo per questo un ottimo esperimento pioneristico ma che sarà presto superato…

Introduzione

“Grande Giove!”

Questa fu la reazione di Doc in “Ritorno al Futuro” quando vide la sua macchina del tempo funzionare. Questa rubrica ricorda qualcosa di simile… Ma non parleremo del viaggio nel passato di Martin McFly che c’è nel film di Zemeckis, bensì di un viaggio nel passato nel campo degli RPG Horror (una corrente che sintetizzeremo, per comodità, HOR-RPG) ripercorrendo loro storia iniziata, all’incirca poco meno di dieci anni fa.

Perchè non allarghiamo questo discorso ai titoli creati su RPG Maker in generale?

Fin dai primissimi titoli usciti, il genere RPG Maker Horror si è molto differenziato da altri giochi fatti con lo stesso tool per tipi di trame, personaggi, stili, e personalità generale del titolo tanto che, vedendo il tool, a tratti non ci credevamo che quelle atmosfere che vedevamo in quei giochi fossero state sviluppate con un tool fatto prevalentemente per videogiochi fantasy.

Ma ripercorriamo per un attimo alcuni periodi di questo tool, in circolazione dal 1997 in Giappone.

Per l’analisi di più o meno tutti i periodi consigliamo prima di tutto un articolo del sito pcgamer.com e se il lettore è interessato, anche Ele ha avuto l’occasione di analizzare meglio la storia di RPG Maker.

Ecco, “voliamo” direttamente al periodo che va dal 2007 fino al 2016.

Nel 2007 uscì RPG Maker VX con Degica come publisher, che plasmò meglio la community dando dei forum, mettendo l’intera serie su Steam e altre belle operazioni… Ma creò anche gli RTP. Le intenzioni di Degica erano prettamente dettate dalla necessità: nei primi periodi di RPG Maker fino a VX si saccheggiavano risorse da altri giochi e si adattavano al tool, ma questi “Run Time Packages”  (risorse di default integrate nel programma) hanno creato una vera e propria piaga nel periodo VX e anche VX Ace, con sviluppatori fuori controllo che mettevano sullo Steam Greenlight, anche a pagamento, giochi tutti uguali con le stesse sprite, gli stessi tipi di mappe e in generale risorse tutte uguali.

Per questo RPG Maker iniziò ad avere una ben visibile cattiva reputazione.

Ma, secondo noi, una corrente ha sempre in parte salvato il programma (soprattutto in questa fase critica) anche prima di quest’ondata di titoli.
Fin da Yume Nikki nel lontano 2004, l’RPG d’orrore giapponese ha sempre avuto una marcia in più e fu quasi sempre acclamato dal grande pubblico, stimolando l’interesse nei confronti del tool.

Noi stesse, finchè non ci siamo addentrate nella community, non sapevamo nemmeno della cattiva reputazione di RPG Maker, e pensavamo solo “wow, con questo programma è stato creato X”.

In breve, per noi la corrente HOR-RPG è stata importante anche nella storia del programma perché ha saputo creare un’impronta nel panorama videoludico generale usando RPG Maker.

Ebbene, tutto questo ci aiuterà anche nella scrittura e nel confronto con le normali recensioni…

  • Nella rubrica Back to the future saranno presenti i giochi, analizzati in maniera diversa dalle normali recensioni, che hanno avuto una grande influenza nella corrente RPG Horror, contribuendo a definirne un’immagine-tipo. Per fare un rapido esempio, aldilà dell’ormai classico Ib, tra i giochi di Uri quello che ha avuto più influenza nella corrente e perciò nel grande pubblico è stato “The Crooked Man”, non “Paranoiac” o “The Boogie Man”. Questo vuol dire che questo titolo potrebbe comparire nella rubrica, gli altri no.

Come analizzeremo allora questi titoli? Con che faccia li gerarchizziamo a questo modo?

  1. Storia del prodotto

    – A volte potrebbe comprendere la ricerca e l’analisi della storia dell’opera dalla sua creazione a distribuzione, ma nella maggior parte dei casi saranno analizzati (spesso per mancanze di dati) l’impatto che questa ha avuto sul pubblico –grande pubblico– e in che contesto è stata lanciata. Parliamo di “grande pubblico” quando intendiamo tutti quei tipi di spettatori o giocatori che con la community di RPG Maker non hanno niente a che fare, che spesso nemmeno sanno cosa sia questo tool. Il pubblico diventa quindi per noi un metro di misurazione dell’impatto dell’opera nel “mondo esterno” , analizzare che tipi di fandom sono nati dai titoli che sono diventati un’icona della corrente, quindi diventano in certi casi veri e propri fenomeni mediatici, e nel prossimo punto cercheremo di capirne anche il motivo.

  2. Asso nella manica

    – O come si potrebbe definire, l’individuazione di una linea di riconoscibilità

  3. Termometro della professionalità

    a) Packaging – Distribuzione del titolo. C’è stata una ricerca del target? Da cosa si intuisce?
    b) Rapporto autore-opera – È possibile dare un profilo all’autore? È una singola persona o un team? Come può definirsi il suo rapporto con l’opera, c’è un legame emotivo o un distacco completo?
    c) Difetti dell’opera – Di che tipologia sono? Possono considerarsi gravi o no?

Ahi ahi ahi. Sì sì, vedo qualcuno di voi storcere il naso sul terzo punto. Già, con quale presunzione ci mettiamo a giudicare la professionalità degli altri?

Un auto-gol da parte nostra, una mossa ipocrita, visto che diventando a nostra volta produttrici attive di contenuti faremmo accuse che ci si potrebbero ritorcere contro forse più delle recensioni.

Lasciateci offrire una valida spiegazione: con professionalità NON intendiamo parlare della capacità produttiva degli autori.

Innanzitutto per lungo tempo la corrente HOR-RPG non è stata altro che una minima parte della più larga produzione di giochi indie, spesso che si trovavano in maniera casuale sul web (citando un post di un gruppo Facebook dedicato: “il piacere della scoperta”). Con questi tipi di giochi normalmente i casi eccezionali che riescono a raggiungere effettivamente un largo impatto a livello mediatico sono pochi (citiamo il caso “Undertale” o già citato in una recensione, “Doki Doki Literature Club”). Normalmente si giocano questi titoli per relax, non ci si preoccupa di sviluppare dei metri di giudizio perché le aspettative sono relativamente basse.

Eppure al giorno d’oggi stiamo assistendo a dei cambiamenti, e non ci riferiamo soltanto ai più recenti reboot (quelli potrebbero essere oggetto di recensione ma non trattati nella rubrica) o ai giochi che stanno diventando a pagamento.

Le possibilità che si sono aperte ad alcuni (come il team di “Pocket Mirror” che ha fatto la fortuna da quel gioco e ora sembra star distribuendo un titolo su Playstation), o team che producono titoli con un certo incarico al fine di venderli a un certo prezzo e svilupparci del merchandising ed elevato grado di distribuzione con altri media e console (vedi caso di Angels of Death) ci sembra il caso di iniziare a fare il punto della situazione: entrambi i titoli vengono orgogliosamente introdotti nella corrente “RPG Horror”, in cui anni fa Ib (ma forse prima ancora Yume Nikki e Ao Oni) vedeva introdurre il boom mediatico e poi con Fummy (autore/trice di The Witch’s House) e Sen (autore/trice di Misao e Mad Father) sono state gettate le caratteristiche che hanno definito il genere.
Stiamo parlando di possibilità interessanti nate dalla “semplice produzione di titoli RPG Maker”, considerato tra i tool di produzione videoludica più semplici da usare.

Devi sapere, caro lettore, che la primissima recensione che abbiamo fatto tempo fa riguardava un gioco sviluppato su RPG Maker (non era della corrente horror) che si intendeva portare sugli scaffali –da quanto se ne intuiva–. Quindi la grande domanda a cui cercheremo delle risposte è questa:

Davvero l’universo RPG Maker è relegato ad essere un fenomeno amatoriale? O si potrebbe investire su un nuovo mercato?

Da “Les cahiers du cinéma” a “Les quatre-cent coupes”

Questo potrebbe rispondere più in generale alla domanda: perché fate critica e recensioni degli altri giochi?

Nella storia del cinema in cui i nuovi criteri messi in gioco dalla critica francese hanno contribuito alla nascita di un nuovo modo di guardare il cinema: come arte. Spesso gli stessi critici sono diventati autori di film, questo in un contesto nel quale il cinema era visto come mera industria, in cui, secondo alcuni storici, non si puntava a raggiungere un alto livello espressivo.
Ebbene, noi non ci troviamo ovviamente in un contesto simile, sappiamo bene che stiamo parlando di realtà totalmente differenti. Tuttavia vogliamo trovarci una similitudine con la situazione di cui stiamo parlando: proprio perché questa corrente come altre ha indossato per lungo tempo il costume dell’amatorialità –anche se crediamo che sia quella che, di titoli prodotti con questo tool, si è avvicinata di più al grande pubblico–, ora quel costume si sta sfaldando per far spazio a un’identità di mercato.
Se proprio deve nascere un mercato in cui investire, quello che speriamo è che noi, come spettatori e giocatori, saremo tutti pronti a riceverlo.

 

– Se per la nostra prima recensione abbiamo voluto rendere omaggio alle nostre fonti di ispirazione, tra queste non possiamo non citare, dato il diverso spirito critico che cerchiamo di mettere in atto, Flame88tongue, che sviluppa ottimi discorsi critici sui film d’animazione.

Introduction

“Great Scott!”

This was Doc’s reaction in “Back to the Future” when he saw his time machine working. This format is reminiscent of something similar… But we’re not going to talk about Martin McFly’s journey into the past in Zemeckis’s film, but about a journey into the past in the field of RPG Horror (a current that we’ll summarise, for convenience, HOR-RPG) by retracing their history that began, about a little less than ten years ago.

Why don’t we extend this talk to titles created on RPG Maker in general?

From the very first titles released, the RPG Maker Horror genre has very different from other games made with the same tool for types of textures, characters, styles, and general personality of the title so much that, seeing the tool, at times we did not believe that those atmospheres that we saw in those games had been developed with a tool made mainly for fantasy video games.

But let’s look back for a moment some periods of this tool, which has been around since 1997 in Japan.

For the analysis of more or less all periods we recommend first of all an article of the site pcgamer.com and if the reader is interested, Ele also had the opportunity to analyze the history of RPG Maker better.

Here, we “fly” directly to the period from 2007 until 2016.

In 2007 RPG Maker VX was released with Degica as publisher, which better shaping the community by giving forums, putting the entire series on Steam and other beautiful operations… But he also created RTPs. Degica’s intentions were purely dictated by necessity:in the early periods of RPG Maker up to VX they plundered resources from other games and adapted to the tool, but these “Run Time Packages” (default resources integrated in the program) created a real scourge in the VX period and also VX Ace, with out-of-control developers who put on the Steam Greenlight,also paid, games all the same with the same types of all the same.

For this reason RPG Maker began to have a visible bad reputation.

But, in our opinion, a current has always partly saved the program (especially at this critical stage) even before this wave of titles.
Since Yume Nikki back in 2004, the Japanese horror RPG has always had an extra edge and was almost always acclaimed by the general public,stimulating interest in the tool.

We ourselves, until we went into the community, we didn’t even know about RPG Maker’s bad reputation, and we just thought “wow, this program created X.”

In short, for us the current HOR-RPG was also important in the history of the program because it was able to create an imprint in the general gaming landscape using RPG Maker.

Well, all this will also help us in writing and comparing with normal reviews…

  • In the Back To The Future format will be present the games, analyzed differently from normal reviews, which have had a great influence in the current RPG Horror,helping to define an image-type. To give a quick example, beyond the now classic Ib, among the games of Uri the one that had the most influence in the current and therefore in the general public was “The Crooked Man”, not “Paranoiac” or “The Boogie Man”. This means that this title could appear in the address book, the others could not.

So how will we analyze these titles? How do we prioritize them like this?

  1. Product History

    – Sometimes it may include research and analysis of the history of the game since its creation to distribution, but in most cases it will be analyzed (often due to data deficiencies) the impact that it has had on the public – large public – and in what context it was launched . We talk about “big audiences” when we mean all those kinds of viewers or players who have nothing to do with the RPG Maker community, who often don’t even know what this tool is. The audience then becomes for us a measure of the impact of the work in the “external world”, analyze what types of fandom are born from the titles that have become an icon of the current, then become in some cases real media phenomenon, and in the next point we will try to understand also the reason.

  2. Trump Card

    – Or as you might define, the identification of a line of recognition

  3. Thermometer of professionalism

    a) Packaging – Distribution of the title. Was there a search for the target? From what you  can guess it?
    b) Author-work relationship – Is it possible to profile the author? Is it a single person or a team? How can you define your relationship with the work, is there an emotional connection or a complete detachment?
    c) Work defects – What kind are they? Can they be considered serious or not?

Ouch. Yes, yes, I see some of you twisting your nose on the third point. Yes, how do we judge the professionalism of others?

A self-goal on our part, a hypocritical move, since becoming active content producers we would make accusations that we could backfire perhaps more than the reviews.

Let us give you a good explanation: with “professionalism” we DO NOT intend to talk about the production capacity of the authors.

First of all, for a long time the current of HOR-RPG was nothing more than a small part of the larger production of indie games, often found randomly on the web (citing a post by a dedicated Facebook group: “The pleasure of descover”). With these types of games normally the exceptional cases that manage to actually achieve a wide impact at the media level are few (we mention the case “Undertale” or already mentioned in a review, “Doki Doki Literature Club”). Normally you play these titles for relaxation, you do not bother to develop meters of judgment because expectations are relatively low.

Yet nowadays we are seeing changes, and we are not only referring to the latest reboots (those could be reviewed but not covered in the heading) or the games that are becoming paid.

The possibilities that have opened up to some (such as the “Pocket Mirror” team that made their fortune from that game and now seems to be distributing a title on Playstation), or teams that produce titles with a certain assignment in order to sell them at a certain price and develop merchandising and high degree of distribution with other media and consoles (see case of Angels of Death) we seem the case to start to take stock of the situation: both titles come proudly introduced in the current “RPG Horror”, in which years ago Ib (but perhaps before Yume Nikki and Ao Oni) saw the introduction of the media boom and then with Fummy (author of The Witch’s House) and Sen (author of Misao and Mad Father) were thrown the characteristics that defined the genre.
We are talking about interesting possibilities born from the “simple production of RPG Maker titles”, considered among the easiest video game production tools to use.

You must know, dear reader, that the very first review we made was about a game developed on RPG Maker (it wasn’t the current horror) that you intended to bring to the shelves – as far as you could guess –. So the big question we’re going to look for answers to is this:

Is the RPG Maker universe really relegated to the phenomenon of authorship? Or could you invest in a new market?

From “Les cahiers du cinéma” to “Les quatre-cent coupes”

This might answer the question more generally: Why do you criticize and review other games?

In the history of cinema where the new criteria put by the French critics have contributed to the birth of a new way of looking at cinema: as art. Often the same critics have become film authors, this in a context in which cinema was seen as a mere industry, in which, according to some historians, it was not aimed at achieving a high level of expression.

Well, we are obviously not in a similar context, we know that we are talking about totally different realities. However, we want to find a similarity to the situation we are talking about: precisely because this current like others has worn for a long time the costume of amateurism – although we believe that it is the one that, of titles produced with this tool, has been closer to the general public–, now that costume is crumbling to make room for a market identity.

If a market is to be created in which to invest, what we hope is that we, as spectators and players, will all be ready to receive it.

 

– For our first review we payed homage to our sources of inspiration, among these we cannot fail to mention, given the different critical spirit that we try to implement, Flame88tongue, which develops excellent critical speeches on animated films.