Curate of Curiosities

You know, when I first found out about this game, my instincts told me that it would be a pretentious, overwrought attempt at gaming artistry, even before I read the handful of reviews on Backloggd. And as you can see, the game met that expectation and then some. And just when I thought I had enough, the game goes so far as to quote that one Last Of Us meme without irony. Just to remind you, this won an award. The Canadian indie scene must have been pretty dire if this managed to make its way to the top. Either that, or boring minigames and lectures about society are the indie gaming equivalent to Oscar bait.

Now, there are a few points I have to make regarding the overall experience, especially when you compare it to other games like it.

First of all, this is an RPG Maker game, and there are some that I've enjoyed, or at least tolerated. Despite its production values (weirdly scaled starting town buildings aside), I expected it to be on the lower end of quality, though not to the same level as, say, Escape From Detroit. Of course, what I got was, suprisingly, most similar to I Hate You, Please Suffer, in that both of their plots involve a down-on-their-luck protagonist being shaken down for rent, and that their gameplay entails the player struggling to make money. Though it makes me wonder if this game would be any more interesting if its main character had a vengeful ghost living in their head, or if they ran afoul of necromancy cults.

Next question: how does it compare to the other Canadian media that I've showcased? Obviously, I doubted that it would be anywhere close to being as enjoyably savage as The Bellybuttons, or even to the masterwork of ineptitude that The Demon Rush was. At the same time, I expected it to be around as dull as Longstory was, especially since it's narrative-focused in a way that visual novels tend to be. To my surprise, repetitive minigames aside, it was not quite this dull, but most of the game failed to engage.

Speaking of The Demon Rush, why did I decide to bring Brooks Cracktackle back from the dead to take on this journey? Maybe its that it just made sense to have my avatar in one Canadian indie game be a character from another. Maybe it's because he was so much of a meme back in the day that his influence simply could not be confined to a single game.

Going outside the realms of RPGs and Canadian media, its fondness for platitudes is similar to Moe Era's, though this game doesn't even have the courtesy to open with a SpongeBob reference, or rip off Chrono Cross' credits sequence, or have a knockoff Touhou character monologue about kids these days.

Lastly, I brought up that it had the potential to be one of the most unhinged things that I've showcased on the site, but what does it have that can compare to a kindergartener coming on to the player, even if sarcastically, playing through the corrupt business dealings of a real-world fast food chain, a dog getting plowed on-panel, or lizard people forcing their females into a rape dungeon? Well, this playthough had the main character selling dogs to a fighting ring, exposing a doctor's BDSM fetish, rigging a mayoral election, growing weed, pooping in a dog bowl, and spouting nihilism to a grieving bride. Pretty messed up, to be sure, and I'm sure it would be more so if I had bothered to cut that guy's brakes in the third town. But then you consider that it's all part of some story a hobo is telling to some guys they met in a casino once, then you realize that, if it weren't for the fact that the game's events have been adapted into a book, all of this could easily be dismissed as inane rambling.

One last thing: the game did get a sequel, imaginatively titled Sometimes Always Monsters. It would have you play as whoever ended up getting the book deal in the original game as they go on a road trip to dodge plagiarism accusation. So I guess Sam getting the journal is the canon ending. I tried looking up gameplay footage on YouTube, and I could not even get 5 minutes into any given video, so telling you what's that like is a non-starter.

So yeah, not the best that RPG Maker is capable of. A few impressive moments here and there, but overall, pretty underwhelming.