Game report: 198X
Apr. 9th, 2020 05:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indi_timberpathThis is one of my first homeschool reports from last summer. It's about 1700 words long under the cut (from 1000 words assigned; I tend to be wordy. ^.^;)
198X is a video game created by Hi-Bit studios, which I played on Windows. Naming a genre for the game is difficult, unless that genre is 'anthology'; the meat of the game is actually five distinct late-80's-style arcade games, with non-interactive narrative elements between them. (I'll refer to these as mini-games in this report, to clarify discussion of them compared to the overall game, but they are substantially longer than that term usually implies). The frame story consists of vignettes from the life of "the Kid," an unnamed high-school-aged individual (who reads as a white male human visually, but with voice-acting that is more ambiguous), trying to find a place and peace in their life. Information on the game's website and Kickstarter page indicates that the game is part one of two, with the second part expected next year.
The full game is short, playable in about two hours. Most of the mini-games are structured as a series of at least three distinct areas or levels. Dying or failing a mini-game usually just means restarting the current level; there is no full game-over mechanic, and thankfully no need to provide quarters to restart, though each mini-game does need to be completed successfully before moving to the next narrative segment.
The whole game is visually stunning, in a refined pixel-art style with beautiful use of limited animation and color contrast. The Kid's mundane suburban existence is portrayed in drab earth tones in stark contrast to the deep purples and bright neons of the arcade and city that the Kid longs for. Each mini-game has a distinct style and palette that makes it distinct from the others and the real world.
After the title screen, the game seems to be showing a narrative section of the Kid riding a subway, but this quickly segues into "Beating Heart," the first mini-game, modeled on beat-em-ups like Streets of Rage. The mild fake-out beginning sets the stage for the interplay of the rest of the segments, reminding the player to question what the interaction might be between the games in the arcade and the feelings in the real world. The game itself is fairly simple punch-and-jump, and is easy to get through with no real failure setbacks. With a protagonist that looks a lot like the out-of-game Kid beating up countless street punks and criminals, it immediately suggests how the main character feels under attack by the whole world.
After the final tough-guy boss is defeated in Beating Heart, the game presents the first longer narrative segment, a stark contrast to the fighting-filled city streets with the Kid feeling trapped and board in suburbia, always looking toward the presumptive excitement and freedom of the city lights in the distance. In the course of exploring their small town, the Kid discovers an arcade in an abandoned factory building. It's populated by "the coolest uncool people I'd ever seen," rather than other teenagers. The Kid notes their absorption into the other worlds of the games, seeing it as something they want to be apart of, and this sets the scene for the second mini-game.
Out of the Void is a stylish shoot-em-up in the style of Gradius, where the player flies a fragie ship through tunnels filled with enemies. The techno-organic style of the mini-game is beautiful, standing up easily to its archetypes and providing plenty of incentive to get to the next zone to see what else might be there. I found the gameplay is fairly challenging, but the ship can fortunately withstand three hits, rather than the more common one-hit destruction. It features escalating boss battles with a giant cyborg that finally explodes into blood and gore at the end of the final encounter. The striking style and intricate detail underscore the idea of being in another world, just as the Kid wished to be.
The next vignette again contrasts, with the Kid in a dreary school setting, with the one point of interest being an older girl, dressed in punk style and driving a muscle car. Rather than a love interest, the Kid sees her as an example of the kind of freedom they wish for, which leads smoothly into the third mini-game, a third-person-view car-racing game called The Runaway. I found this to be the most difficult game, partially because I am not very good at racing games, but also because it was the only one that required the player to restart from the beginning when the timer runs out. There are three time extend checkpoints the player must reach, after driving through wide-open desert, a mountain pass, and a cramped tunnel.
When the last time extend gate is finally reached, a huge amount of time gets added to the clock and the player begins driving through the twilight to a city, as a narration from the Kid plays. This is the first and only time the narration plays over a game segment. The Kid talks about the freedom they found in the arcade as the player experiences the freedom of so much time on the clock. I found this section to be particularly affecting and resonant, especially after the struggle I'd had to complete the racing game. This was one one of my favorite moments in the game.
From there, the game moves to a more standard narrative cutscene where the Kid ponders the losses of growing up, involving restricted expectations, wondering if a part of them has died by growing up, reflecting on how when they were younger, everything was "more terrifying and more exciting at the same time." This phrase drops the player directly into Shadowplay, a ninja-themed mini-game that doesn't have a clear parallel in games from the 1980's. The best way to describe it is as an endless runner with set levels, as a ninja in a fox mask moves forward automatically, with the player needing to cut down, jump over, and slide under everything in their way. The mini-game gets progressively more complicated and ominous as it progresses, eventually leading up to a boss encounter where all the player can do is quickly dodge to avoid an overwhelming evil spirit, before being devoured by it anyway as the game ends. This was my favorite mini-game of the five, the fast-paced action combined with learnable patterns reminded me of a rhythm game, and the level progression kept introducing new challenges as just the right pace. The dark and helpless tone of the game also meshed well with the protagonist's fears of the inevitable, as discussed in the cutscenes before and after.
The next cutscene gives a bit more specificity of the difficult times in the Kid's life, referring to when "this thing with Dad happened". It remains unstated if the father left or died, but whatever happened left the Kid feeling more and more hopeless and worried about how the rest of their family will hold up. The cut scene shows them walking to the arcade in search of escape, resulting in the encounter where, in the Kid's words, "everything changed." This leads directly into the final mini-game.
Kill Screen feels intentionally out-of-place in the arcade. Instead of being based on an arcade-game archetype, it is based on long-form first-person computer RPGs like Wizardry. The player is tasked with killing three dragons, and moves through a wire-frame maze fighting techno-organic enemies while being taunted by a computerized voice. The game seems to break the fourth wall (at least between the Kid and the arcade) not only by its name, but by the content of the AI-themed taunts, messages that begin with "I am Motherboard, I will keep you" and then alternately echo the Kid's anxieties about growing up, and parental admonishments such as "Stop dreaming" and "Go to your room".
Like most RPGs, Kill Screen features an escalating sense of power and capability as the player gains levels and learns enemy weaknesses, until the dragons (named Pain, Fear, and Grief) that seemed overwhelming at first are defeated easily. Each time the player kills a dragon, the world gets more glitchy and the messages from Motherboard become less aggressive and more fearful. I found this progression to be very emotional, feelings of both confidence and anxiety raising within me as the world around me changed. After the third dragon is defeated, the player faces Motherboard itself, in a battle that brings back all the aggressive taunting, and seems hopeless as all attacks are resisted and then the player's commands themselves are progressively taken away. Just when everything seems hopeless, the arcade-game screen shuts off, and the player is left in the dark for long enough to wonder if the actual game has crashed.
Finally, the scene comes back up on the Kid sitting outside a darkened arcade, with the power having gone out. The player is prompted to "push button to get up", the same prompt when recovering in Kill Screen. As the player repeatedly presses buttons, the arcade's power starts to back on, and elements from the five mini-games flicker into reality around them and they stand up in the form of the similarly-dressed Burning Heart protagonist. "The game was not over," says the voiceover, "It was just beginning." Then it shows the 198X title screen, and credits.
The whole experience did indeed give the impression that it was mainly setup for the second half of the game. Nothing is really resolved for the Kid, and most of what I did get from them was mood and tone rather than specifics, with many things set up for further exploration: What happened with their family? How will the Kid handle growing up? What part do the games play? I was left eager for more, and pondering these questions. The game clearly shows how even the supposedly solitary and escapist arcade experiences helped the Kid find strength to keep going in the face of the increasing uncertainty and difficulty in their life. It was an engrossing, deeply affecting experience; I resonated with the longing of a restricted and tenuous teenage life, and felt my eyes fill with tears of defiance as I worked through the last moments of Kill Screen. Even though the game felt incomplete, I'm glad I played it when I did, and I look forward to replaying it when the second part comes out, and likely revisiting some of the mini-games in the meantime as well. 198X is a stellar example of the artistic potential in video games, with gameplay adding a lot of weight to its simple story, helping the player feel what the protagonist is feeling in a way that would be difficult to do in another medium.
198X is a video game created by Hi-Bit studios, which I played on Windows. Naming a genre for the game is difficult, unless that genre is 'anthology'; the meat of the game is actually five distinct late-80's-style arcade games, with non-interactive narrative elements between them. (I'll refer to these as mini-games in this report, to clarify discussion of them compared to the overall game, but they are substantially longer than that term usually implies). The frame story consists of vignettes from the life of "the Kid," an unnamed high-school-aged individual (who reads as a white male human visually, but with voice-acting that is more ambiguous), trying to find a place and peace in their life. Information on the game's website and Kickstarter page indicates that the game is part one of two, with the second part expected next year.
The full game is short, playable in about two hours. Most of the mini-games are structured as a series of at least three distinct areas or levels. Dying or failing a mini-game usually just means restarting the current level; there is no full game-over mechanic, and thankfully no need to provide quarters to restart, though each mini-game does need to be completed successfully before moving to the next narrative segment.
The whole game is visually stunning, in a refined pixel-art style with beautiful use of limited animation and color contrast. The Kid's mundane suburban existence is portrayed in drab earth tones in stark contrast to the deep purples and bright neons of the arcade and city that the Kid longs for. Each mini-game has a distinct style and palette that makes it distinct from the others and the real world.
After the title screen, the game seems to be showing a narrative section of the Kid riding a subway, but this quickly segues into "Beating Heart," the first mini-game, modeled on beat-em-ups like Streets of Rage. The mild fake-out beginning sets the stage for the interplay of the rest of the segments, reminding the player to question what the interaction might be between the games in the arcade and the feelings in the real world. The game itself is fairly simple punch-and-jump, and is easy to get through with no real failure setbacks. With a protagonist that looks a lot like the out-of-game Kid beating up countless street punks and criminals, it immediately suggests how the main character feels under attack by the whole world.
After the final tough-guy boss is defeated in Beating Heart, the game presents the first longer narrative segment, a stark contrast to the fighting-filled city streets with the Kid feeling trapped and board in suburbia, always looking toward the presumptive excitement and freedom of the city lights in the distance. In the course of exploring their small town, the Kid discovers an arcade in an abandoned factory building. It's populated by "the coolest uncool people I'd ever seen," rather than other teenagers. The Kid notes their absorption into the other worlds of the games, seeing it as something they want to be apart of, and this sets the scene for the second mini-game.
Out of the Void is a stylish shoot-em-up in the style of Gradius, where the player flies a fragie ship through tunnels filled with enemies. The techno-organic style of the mini-game is beautiful, standing up easily to its archetypes and providing plenty of incentive to get to the next zone to see what else might be there. I found the gameplay is fairly challenging, but the ship can fortunately withstand three hits, rather than the more common one-hit destruction. It features escalating boss battles with a giant cyborg that finally explodes into blood and gore at the end of the final encounter. The striking style and intricate detail underscore the idea of being in another world, just as the Kid wished to be.
The next vignette again contrasts, with the Kid in a dreary school setting, with the one point of interest being an older girl, dressed in punk style and driving a muscle car. Rather than a love interest, the Kid sees her as an example of the kind of freedom they wish for, which leads smoothly into the third mini-game, a third-person-view car-racing game called The Runaway. I found this to be the most difficult game, partially because I am not very good at racing games, but also because it was the only one that required the player to restart from the beginning when the timer runs out. There are three time extend checkpoints the player must reach, after driving through wide-open desert, a mountain pass, and a cramped tunnel.
When the last time extend gate is finally reached, a huge amount of time gets added to the clock and the player begins driving through the twilight to a city, as a narration from the Kid plays. This is the first and only time the narration plays over a game segment. The Kid talks about the freedom they found in the arcade as the player experiences the freedom of so much time on the clock. I found this section to be particularly affecting and resonant, especially after the struggle I'd had to complete the racing game. This was one one of my favorite moments in the game.
From there, the game moves to a more standard narrative cutscene where the Kid ponders the losses of growing up, involving restricted expectations, wondering if a part of them has died by growing up, reflecting on how when they were younger, everything was "more terrifying and more exciting at the same time." This phrase drops the player directly into Shadowplay, a ninja-themed mini-game that doesn't have a clear parallel in games from the 1980's. The best way to describe it is as an endless runner with set levels, as a ninja in a fox mask moves forward automatically, with the player needing to cut down, jump over, and slide under everything in their way. The mini-game gets progressively more complicated and ominous as it progresses, eventually leading up to a boss encounter where all the player can do is quickly dodge to avoid an overwhelming evil spirit, before being devoured by it anyway as the game ends. This was my favorite mini-game of the five, the fast-paced action combined with learnable patterns reminded me of a rhythm game, and the level progression kept introducing new challenges as just the right pace. The dark and helpless tone of the game also meshed well with the protagonist's fears of the inevitable, as discussed in the cutscenes before and after.
The next cutscene gives a bit more specificity of the difficult times in the Kid's life, referring to when "this thing with Dad happened". It remains unstated if the father left or died, but whatever happened left the Kid feeling more and more hopeless and worried about how the rest of their family will hold up. The cut scene shows them walking to the arcade in search of escape, resulting in the encounter where, in the Kid's words, "everything changed." This leads directly into the final mini-game.
Kill Screen feels intentionally out-of-place in the arcade. Instead of being based on an arcade-game archetype, it is based on long-form first-person computer RPGs like Wizardry. The player is tasked with killing three dragons, and moves through a wire-frame maze fighting techno-organic enemies while being taunted by a computerized voice. The game seems to break the fourth wall (at least between the Kid and the arcade) not only by its name, but by the content of the AI-themed taunts, messages that begin with "I am Motherboard, I will keep you" and then alternately echo the Kid's anxieties about growing up, and parental admonishments such as "Stop dreaming" and "Go to your room".
Like most RPGs, Kill Screen features an escalating sense of power and capability as the player gains levels and learns enemy weaknesses, until the dragons (named Pain, Fear, and Grief) that seemed overwhelming at first are defeated easily. Each time the player kills a dragon, the world gets more glitchy and the messages from Motherboard become less aggressive and more fearful. I found this progression to be very emotional, feelings of both confidence and anxiety raising within me as the world around me changed. After the third dragon is defeated, the player faces Motherboard itself, in a battle that brings back all the aggressive taunting, and seems hopeless as all attacks are resisted and then the player's commands themselves are progressively taken away. Just when everything seems hopeless, the arcade-game screen shuts off, and the player is left in the dark for long enough to wonder if the actual game has crashed.
Finally, the scene comes back up on the Kid sitting outside a darkened arcade, with the power having gone out. The player is prompted to "push button to get up", the same prompt when recovering in Kill Screen. As the player repeatedly presses buttons, the arcade's power starts to back on, and elements from the five mini-games flicker into reality around them and they stand up in the form of the similarly-dressed Burning Heart protagonist. "The game was not over," says the voiceover, "It was just beginning." Then it shows the 198X title screen, and credits.
The whole experience did indeed give the impression that it was mainly setup for the second half of the game. Nothing is really resolved for the Kid, and most of what I did get from them was mood and tone rather than specifics, with many things set up for further exploration: What happened with their family? How will the Kid handle growing up? What part do the games play? I was left eager for more, and pondering these questions. The game clearly shows how even the supposedly solitary and escapist arcade experiences helped the Kid find strength to keep going in the face of the increasing uncertainty and difficulty in their life. It was an engrossing, deeply affecting experience; I resonated with the longing of a restricted and tenuous teenage life, and felt my eyes fill with tears of defiance as I worked through the last moments of Kill Screen. Even though the game felt incomplete, I'm glad I played it when I did, and I look forward to replaying it when the second part comes out, and likely revisiting some of the mini-games in the meantime as well. 198X is a stellar example of the artistic potential in video games, with gameplay adding a lot of weight to its simple story, helping the player feel what the protagonist is feeling in a way that would be difficult to do in another medium.
