izigame.me

I won't mince words, I'm old. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life that I can't take back, and that's something this game shares with me. But I wanna tell you, why I kept coming back.

The characters are all cute little rabbits, perfectly round and preciously fuzzy. Yet nearly right out the gate, you're made very clear that Stamp, the main character who you can safely compared to hard boiled detectives like Blacksad, is exceedingly comfortable with the thought of dying, casually referring to his corpse as rabbit meat when he finally passes away, and that he'll be himself until that point. Not only that, but his voice acting performance is great, even the other cast members.

Now, there are issues. The first hour is essentially all tutorial and learning about the other characters, however, they're intermingled. There's no skipping it. And there's a lot of voice acting. Honestly, arguably too much. Stamp loves musing to himself almost in excess. And while it's charming, there's just too much. As much as I think his line reads are great, I still just need to skip a bunch because there is just so much.

And not only that, but there's also a LOT of text to read, too. There's some stories on the side to read as well, and they're all charming, lovely to read, but it's so much.



I'm old. I know just from playing this game, someone else is feeling that age, too. Someone wanted to write a character, and live vicariously through him. Maybe find some way of expressing something he'd always imagined or felt, and do so in depth. Every character I've so far experienced is consistent, Stamp impressively so for the sheer amount written for him. Someone put their heart into this character and it shows deeply, so if you don't have the patience for a lot of dialogue and reading, you might end up crashing out of this game very quickly. Especially because it's very front heavy.

But what charms me is the tonal juxtaposition. I've played video games my whole life. I've seen cartoony adorable characters make silly sounds with happy adventures like Banjo, and make adult humor with Conker in brilliant excess.

This is different. I'm playing a little game about a cute little bunny complaining about being old, stifling his thoughts about his estranged daughter, wondering if she's okay, while he comfortably accepts his impending death. His life is over as far as he sees is, and a little string of his past life is dangling in front of him for maybe one last chance, or at least a chance to know what he did wrong. And then, five seconds later, doing a super particle heavy magical item grab sequence.

This game feels like an old person revisiting small, cute games. A simple little romp around a dungeon, digging and slapping monsters, everything is colorful and adventurous and fluffy, with exceedingly heavy overtones. It makes me think of just what it feels like if I were to play Yoshi's Island now at my age. It captures a feeling of an old gamer, something that I genuinely wasn't expecting.

I wish there wasn't so much dialogue, the long, grueling tutorial wasn't so handholdy, not so much to read. This game feels like a metroidvania made for RPG fans in that sense, so it might just push people who like the general absence of dialogue in games like Metroid a little upset.

But I like it. And if you like character examination type stories, you'll probably enjoy it, too. Especially with such nice performances.


Also, the combat kinda just sucks. Like it's really fucking clunky. I've experienced way worse still but, listen, you start out with just a drill and most of the damage you take is gonna be contact damage, and that sucks, but you DO get a gun and a sword later with way better range. The start of this game is just a slog in every way, so get ready for that.