One summer day as a kid (I am guessing around seven years old), I saw my friend sprinting through our backyards to the sliding glass door at the back of my parent’s house. Like he always did, he knocked on the glass, cupped his hands, and pressed his face up to the door to see inside — the difference was this time he seemed frantic. I walked over and slid the door open to hear him exclaim that his little brother had been kidnapped! He told me his brother had been kidnapped that morning by a witch that lived in our neighborhood. Pretty sure I knew at the time that what he was saying couldn’t possibly be true, but I went along with it anyway. I laced up my shoes and we snuck through the neighborhood’s combined backyards over to where the witch lived. Turns out, the witch was Mrs. Dema - the mother of a girl from my class at school (sorry Mrs. Dema). We didn’t really have a plan to get my friend’s brother out, we were just doing reconnaissance for the time being. We decided we weren’t going to be able to do it with just the two of us, so we knocked on the doors of our other friend’s houses, explained the situation to them, and recruited them for the mission. After a few more hours of reconnaissance and deliberation, we saw my friend’s mom’s car pull into the neighborhood with his brother in the back seat, safe and sound. Turns out he was just at his Kumon lesson the whole time. Soon enough, it was time for dinner and the day ended rather anticlimactically, but none of us have ever forgotten our adventure the day my friend’s brother got “kidnapped”. The game we played this round doesn’t have TOO much to do with that story, but while playing through it, I kept thinking about the adventures I would go on with my neighborhood friends when we were kids and how much those days mean to me.
Hylics is a Japanese-style role-playing game released in 2015 and developed by Mason Lindroth. Playing this game feels like stepping into an old, forgotten dream. One where the colors are brighter and everything is made of clay. Hylics doesn’t just throw you into a weird, bizarre world — it pelts you with it. Every character looks as if they were molded from mashed potatoes and the environments look as if they are covered in pastel-colored play-doh. The result is a game that is visually unique and extremely interesting.
If what you want is a deep, coherent story, I wouldn’t recommend Hylics. Hylics is about as straightforward as a bowl of spaghetti. You play as Wayne - a cool, stylish, bipedal humanoid with a crescent moon-shaped head. Wayne’s goal is to defeat Gibby, king of the moon, but much of the text in this game is randomized so it is really unclear as to why Wayne needs or wants to do this. It is pretty unclear what is going on throughout most of the game, actually. Here and there along Wayne’s journey, he will meet a few other people interested in tagging along on his quest. They all have very strange, difficult to pronounce names and very little is known about them. That said, I did find comfort in having a few companions to run around the absolutely insane-looking world with.
Although the game has an interesting and unique visual style, the way it plays is not too far from the JRPG norm. Your basic physical attacks and a reserve of magic points (will) to cast spells. Weapons are bought in the main town or found around the world. New spells can be learned from TVs found scattered throughout the map. Battles play out in first person and allow you to see some really interesting animation work for each of your attacks and spells. All in all, gameplay is pretty standard JRPG fare, but could have used a touch of polish throughout.
I didn’t quite like Hylics as much as I expected to. Randomizing text in the game made the story pretty incomprehensible and I really wanted to be able to follow some sort of plot line. It presented a pretty strong vibe, though and that carried me through until the end. Strongly recommend the game if you want to play something visually unique, but otherwise there are probably better games to scratch the indie RPG itch.
It was fun to spend some time thinking about when we pretended Mrs. Dema had kidnapped our friend. I haven’t seen those guys in a while now and it has got me missing them. I think I might just reach out. Thanks, Hylics.
"Somsnosa best girl"
"N/A"
"Will change the way you see paper cups forever"
