Hylics 2

I’ve covered many bizarre games, yet few caught my interest as much as Hylics. It’s not that complicated; it’s a turn-based RPG made on RPG Maker, nothing special there. What sets it apart is that it was entirely designed in Claymation – there’s been a lot of hand-drawn games, but ones created with clay characters and worlds are rarer (Wikipedia's likely incomplete list of Claymation games has 25 entries).

Even the Wayne bedroom is weird.

The art style you could get used to; but then, there was the bizarre plot, and how it was presented. Most unimportant NPCs’ text bubbles were randomly generated, Mad Libs style, and made no sense. And when something plot-relevant was said, it made sense, but used archaic or uncommon words to convey the message, leading to a whole other kind of confusion. That game is an experience, I swear.

And if the first game is an experience, then Hylics 2, also developed by Mason Lindroth and released on June 22nd, 2020, must surpass it… while also being a good game on its own, a tough tightrope to walk with absurdism. Can it pull it off? We’ll see.

When even the title screen sets the tone...

An interval of renovelled tempestuousness

(…Yes. I’m gonna indulge in that silliness.)

Good boy. I bet you can't wait to have legs.

In the first Hylics, our main character was Wayne, a crescent-headed guy. This game keeps it ambiguous whether we’re following the same Wayne, or one from a new generation of Waynes. In this one, we’re introduced to an Old Wayne, a wise mentor (maybe the previous protagonist?), and to baby-Waynes that are slugs on the ground, which our Wayne can pet like they’re dogs. “Wayne” is just a species in this world, that starts and ends as slugs, and is human-shaped in the middle.

It's only gonna get weirder from here.

Exploring the Switch's Nintendo Classics #3

I'm still working towards the next major review, so in the meantime, I'm taking today for another review of games I played on the Nintendo Classics. This time, I'm doing something different; two different consoles! Today, we're starting on known ground with the SNES, and then moving on to games from a console I've never played, the Sega Genesis!

The SNES: Fighters

I found out there was an undercurrent I hadn't heard about from the SNES era: The massive success of Street Fighter II Turbo led to a swath of copycats trying to hit the same level of fame by repeating the formula. But it's like I said a while ago: "If you follow the leader, you stay behind them". I bet you haven't heard of these games!

I mean, it does look a lot like Street Fighter II...

Fighter’s History: Developed by Data East, first released in arcades in 1993, then for the SNES in 1994. Play as one of nine fighters from around the world, each with their own reason to be in this competition; and learn to use your moves against each opponent. This game reminds me of Street Fighter II Turbo in terms of setting; it does try to set itself apart with new mechanics, however. One such mechanic is the “weak point” system, where you can temporarily stun a fighter once per round by hitting their weak point. But with that aside, it didn’t feel too revolutionary or special on its own – in fact, it looks so much like Street Fighter that Capcom sued Data East over it, though Data East won the suit by claiming that several elements in their game were inevitable for the genre.

Oh yeah, that's not Ryu at all.

Tuff E Nuff: Another trend-chasing “clone”, released in 1993 and featuring only four fighters. In 2151, the world is in shambles after an apocalyptic war. Something about one powerful guy rising above all others using technology and becoming like a god, and setting up a worldwide tournament to find the strongest among the survivors… I guess. Anyway, you can only play as one of four different characters, going up against the other three as well as seven additional opponents in Story Mode. It’s… well, if we put aside the stupid story and the lack of playable characters, this one just doesn’t catch my interest at all. It fares even worse than Fighter’s History.

Exploring the Itch.io Collection #4

I’m in-between big articles, so I figured I’d do one more of these in the meantime.

However, I must bring up something important first, while I’m at it. Earlier this year, online gaming platforms such as Steam and, yes, itch.io, faced a major problem. An organization known as Collective Shout wrote an open letter to all payment processors, lobbying them to act against online gaming platforms that housed video games containing heavy topics such as incest, rape or child abuse. Payment processors (PayPal, credit card companies, and so on) acted with a swiftness, threatening to pull their services from Steam and itch.io unless adult-only games with those themes were pulled or impossible to purchase from now on. A request that Steam and itch.io agreed to follow!

Okay, so let me start by saying that these topics are horrible things in the real world. Do I really need to state such an obvious? However, video games are a medium for fiction, and as such they, too, should be allowed to cover these topics, in the same way that movies, TV shows, music and novels have for decades. Imagine if, at the height of the popularirty of Game of Thrones, VISA or MasterCard decided, "Nope, some people don't like the stuff in there, therefore we won't let you buy that Blu-Ray set or subscribe to HBO!"

By the same metric, we can assume that people who purchase and play those games consent to experiencing these themes (bonus points if the game does come with a trigger warning just in case), and have enough of a head on their shoulders to understand that what’s going on in the game is NOT glorification of those themes. (If a video game seriously advocated for rape, incest, child abuse, whatever, you’d be able to tell, and such a game would be rightly called out for it.)

Tons of games were stricken down that had nothing pornographic about them, and were either portrayals of LGBTQ+ experiences and/or were autobiographical in content. Experiencing something difficult safely through the medium of fiction can mentally help those who have lived through similar things in the real world, with the barrier of fiction giving some distance. Use of these themes in fiction can also help others recognize when such situations are, in fact, happening in real life.

That payment processors suddenly get to decide what the average person can and can’t do with their own money is outrageous, ‘cause last I checked it wasn’t illegal to buy fiction. The response from the Internet has been to organize campaigns and mass-call the credit card companies and PayPal’s phone lines to tell them to reverse the decision. As far as I can tell, a first step was made by the platforms enacting their own rules to circumvent some of the payment processors’ new requests, and even today I don't think all the games are back for sale. Despite the Internet rersponse, don’t be fooled; if Collective Shout's ploy has worked once, even temporarily, it will be attempted again.

Call it what it is: It’s censorship. It may benefit a small group in the short term, but it will penalize everyone in the long term, and we can NOT let this slide. We must never forget that this happened. We must not let up in calling the payment processors who took part in this, and admonishing them for it. They do not have a right to block legal purchases, based solely on their content. Nor can we forget the gaming platforms that bowed. Slippery slope is a sophism, fair; but we must be prepared for the possibility that another group tries to make this happen once more. I did not address it until now because I just didn’t have the time to write about it at the height of the issue in July; I figured I’d use this article to talk about it in the intro, since the itch.io platform was affected in a significant manner due to its creative community being struck hard by that controversy. Anyway, in short: Prepare yourself, just in case this happens again, because it could.

Sorry about the downer starter. Anyway, here’s a bunch of games under 13 minutes long.

Experiences

Yeah, that thing ain't right.

ring ring: A mysterious phone found on the beach, which functions without electricity or a phone line. Calling any 4-digit number leads to odd discussions, but something’s off. Someone contacted, named George, tells you that everyone you’ve spoken to is trapped in the phone, and so your goal is to avoid getting taken as well (which is a Game Over) while looking for a way to defeat the evil spirit it contains within that's causing all this. This one’s simple, you use the rotary dial to make random calls, occasionally get proper phone numbers to call and further the plot. The only thing on the screen is that clay sculpture phone, so it’s minimalist yet does things very well. Be aware, there may be jump scares!