Nov '23 Monthly Game Club- February 2003

KingTubb

Yes, you read that right; this month we will be playing Feburary 2003!

This is an RPG Maker indie game nominated by @Mnemogenic :

I played this game a long while ago and thought it was really cool and mysterious. It’s a big love letter to Glorious Trainwrecks in an RPG Maker package. I never finished it because I got stuck.

here’s your opportunity to finally put a fork in it!

The itch.io page is sort of impossible to read, there’s not really any descriptions of the game, but the tags are:
2D, Ghosts, Horror, hylics, Pixel Art, RPG Maker, space-funeral, Undertale, yume-nikki
Overall, seems to be a spooky, mysterious, and possibly surreal indie RPG. Excited to see what y’all think

EDIT: I know I’m a day early, apologies, but with trick or treat tonight, and a pretty busy day planned tomorrow, this is when I had time to put this up!

Mnemogenic

Oh wow! Okay so, this game. I don’t remember how I found this game. Probably some twitter account. I thought it was so interesting, but when I was playing it, it felt like I was the only person in the world who was doing so. The mysteries in the game were real mysteries because there was nobody I could turn to for help, and also sometimes the game was just broken. So, I thought a group setting would be good for this game, just to make sense of it together.

This is a game that is something I want to see more of: the video game museum.

I’m excited to see what everybody makes of this. I remember it being very sloppy but cool and sincere. I’m also interested to see what I make of it now.

JXUA

Mnemogenic I have a great rec for you!

https://scratchingpost.itch.io/gbcg2022

Played this on my Pocket and found several creators/GB photographers through it!!

Mnemogenic

Well, I still think the Moby MIDI is funny.

FaulteredBeast

This is an awesome idea and cool odd looking game. Can’t wait for a monthly I caught early! Would love to see more left field choices like this

FaulteredBeast

May have spoke too soon. Life as an M1 Mac gamer :(

JXUA

Whoa. I have played about two hours so far and I’m kind of hooked. I really love the community art project feel, like, I can almost see the different artist and makers contributing from all these different perspectives. Shout out to Plant/Farm day. Loved all those. Can’t wait to explore more.

Mnemogenic

I put the game up on google drive for anybody who’s not into extremely abrasive web design (I love the itch page for this game lmao). I promise that I didn’t put any viruses in it.

Link

(don’t forget to rate on itch if you play it though!)

JXUA I have a great rec for you!

This looks like it rules.

rejj

Holy heck, the itch page for this game is cursed. Not only is it illegible in general, trying to find it within the itch desktop launcher is difficult – and even after doing so, the launcher thinks that there are zero installable games on that page.

KingTubb

rejj Yeah… When I was looking at it after the magic die rolled it… I almost considered re-rolling. But all games are valid and deserve a chance to be ICMGCGotM, or as I like to say Ick-em-Gock-GOT ’EM!

Selig

Lmao this looks funny. On it like Kong Donkey.

Bbtone

PSA: You might have to use EasyRPG Player (link) if the game doesn’t run on your system. It’s been released for Windows, Linux, and macOS (@FaulteredBeast). It’s also available on Android and as a libretro core.

To install the standalone version, just extract the executable into the game folder and run it. Hope that helps someone!!

FaulteredBeast

Bbtone that did the trick! thanks!

Snowdecahedron

I played this like 2 years ago and remember getting obsessed and trying to get people here to play it lol.
I don’t remember specifics, but I jumped in what I hope is my latest file and here’s what I think I was stuck on, spoilers:

There is a room in the basement (right of the main museum room, probably locked originally) with some devices that required finding gems(?) and a guy in the middle saying that the room is a map that corresponds to another location (attached below) and their secret hideout is where he’s standing. In the alternate world version of the room there are 7 pieces of furniture that require 7 mustaches that look like minecraft creeper faces. I had 3 and don’t know where I found them.
Additionally, I have the airship, crowbar, alien finder, strange device, keycards A,C,D.

Mnemogenic

Snowdecahedron Oh cool, I didn’t expect anyone else to have played it! It figures that somebody here would have. Where you are sounds roughly where I remember getting, but that was one laptop ago so I can’t say for sure.

Bbtone

Started playing yesterday and I am eating this game all the way up lol. I always find these whacked-out, collage-y RPG Maker games so inspiring, and I loooove virtual museums. Really good pick.

KingTubb

This game was not was I was expecting. I thought it would be a survival horror/walking sim “creepy pasta” thing, and thus far it hasn’t really been any of those things. That being said, it still make me a little uneasy. I’ve only played a few of the games, but I took the recommendation of an NPC I met on the first and jumped to the 18th. Had a very blunt interaction with a skeleton, and I can honestly say that this might be the first time a video game has made me feel that awkward and uncomfortable in a very specific way.

Mnemogenic

I got to The Orange Room and remembered how that puzzle doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me and how I had to go digging into discussions that took place among the authors of the game jam, during the game jam, to get the answer. I had to do that a second time.

KingTubb Was it the one that calls you a slur? I forgot that was in the game and I would have included a content warning if I had. Sorry if that made you uncomfortable in the wrong way.

KingTubb

Mnemogenic Oh god, fortunately, no. It was one that asked me if it wanted it to fuck me. I thought I was at an optometrist, but I was really at a club for people that like to have sex with skeletons
It was just such a record scratch tonal shift. I hadn’t experienced any vulgarity or profanity up to this point, and it came across the same way when you run into a person at a party that stares you dead in the eyes and really pushes out them cuss words with intent. They clearly pronounce their "t"s and "k"s, you know?:

“Hi, I’m Matt. Is that a Bonk costume?”
“Hi! Yeah, I FUCK-KING love Bonk!”

Something about that just makes me anxious

Mnemogenic

KingTubb Oh yeah that’s a pretty bizarre one. There’s another skeleton out there (maybe in the game where you’re a fish?) that calls you the f-slur. Which I was pretty shocked by; I didn’t remember that sort of thing being in the game. I don’t think it’s included with any malice, but it’s there. That fish game is also extremely vulgar in a weird way, now that I think about it. I wonder if it’s the same author for both.

I’ve been really enjoying going through the games again. There’s such a broad level of quality throughout, where some are just one joke and others are legitimately interesting, which seems like what would happen if you tried to make one game every day. I just did Horace and The Plant recently and that’s a real good one.