By Terry
I love RPGs – at any given moment I’m making several of them, in fact. I think a big part of my affection for the genre is that it often feels so alien to rest of gaming – my favourite RPGs have long drawn out interactive dream sequences, characters controlling younger versions of themselves reliving tragic memories, characters entering people’s subconsciouses to fight personified nightmares, interactive time travel paradoxes, teenagers summoning mythological creatures by shooting themselves in the head, and so on. As someone who loves concept driven games, you can see why this sorta stuff appeals to me.
Space Funeral is an RPG that feels alien to other RPGs. And it’s not just the story – I love that this thing is made in RPG Maker. It means that the game comes with decades of expectations; what the default menus are supposed to say, what inns are supposed to look like; more than just the setting itself, having the game not-quite-fit into its standard tropes is what makes it feel so wonderfully bizarre.
Space Funeral is free, and can be downloaded for Windows at gamejolt.
Great game. Love it. You said you forgot Hero Core yesterday so I think you’ll add it in the next days. Great choices so far 🙂
Dude, I never would have guessed you’d be into the Persona series – those are my favourite video games of all time!
Downloading now! This looks interesting.
I want to go back and play Persona. At the time I tried it I don’t think I was mature enough to understand it properly.
Let’s see… Alundra, probably?
Yep; the specific games I was talking about are Final Fantasy VII, VIII, Alundra, Chrono Trigger and Persona 3!
One of those works of art which gets better with time spent apart from it. I’ll definitely revisit this, as it was one of my games of 2010 for sure.
[…] — Games of 2010: Space Funeral – Cactus Block — L’Abbaye Des […]
Reminds me of Yume Nikki, with the grotesque heads all over the place and the RPGmaker03 design. Brings in interesting mechanics, but is far too easy and the special moves feel crappy. The mystery option is fun, but a slight letdown due to its deterministic function: using speedy and mystery against the thief boss always gave me the jrpg limit break.
Thanks for recommending; just finished this, and it was definitely awesome. I agree with The Brass that it’s way too easy though, and there was basically no need to use anything other than the standard attack option in every combat, especially once I got the zorg cannon. All the fights, even the final boss fight, was over after just a couple hits from that. So as a game, it was kind of disappointing, but as an experience it more than made up for it.
Thanks for the recommendation! I finally got around to playing this and it is my game of the year so far.
The writing is just so wonderful. I love how it veers giddily between RPG-parody, high-nonsense and contemporary-smarts.
The art is brilliant too.
And the music is sublime.
Also, it is exactly the right length.
Glad you liked it! It really is a work of brilliance 🙂
I should really get around to posting the rest of these games soon…