#hetalia fangames
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Text
AsaKiku bonus to this post... their fight together is one of my fav scenes in HetaOni
#hetalia#hetaoni#asakiku#hws england#hws japan#personal#making a separate post for this one bc i wanted to keep the other one gen/ship free but also i had to. it's too fitting lol#they straight up talk about their powers being twice as strong with the link... they even get an 'island country' combo move 🥺#the music in this part goes so hard also. far too many favorite moments in hetaoni but gameplay wise especially this one is soo much fun#while i'm talking about hetaoni and asakiku in the same post shout out to the fic 'don't forget to breathe' by apple_fairy#hurts so bad but it's soo good ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ tense and painful throughout but the horrors make the sweet moments shine brighter#ooughhh ive been thinking about hetaoni all day bc of my hetaoniversary and i'm feeling unwell about it again. fangame of all time
56 notes
·
View notes
Text
I’m making a Hetalia fangame, so I’ll be sharing my progress here!
First up, character icons!
#Hetalia#aph america#aph england#aph canada#hws hetalia#aph hetalia#hws#aph#alfred f jones#matthew williams#arthur kirkland#hetagame#fangame#game#art#illustration#digital art#fanart#rpg maker#anime
615 notes
·
View notes
Text
All roads lead to Dreamtalia
#ya see my friend and I were discussing the similarities between a Disney Anime Boy mobile game and a Hetalia fangame#anyway we predict Silver is gonna get gutted in the chest—#twisted wonderland#dreamtalia
26 notes
·
View notes
Text
HETADVENTURE: THE HIDDEN KINGDOM [DEMO Ver. 0.3]
Synopsis: As a child, Hong Kong, before he was sent to live with England, was gifted the White Tiger medallion from China. In the present, Hong Kong is now a teen, grappling as all nations do with responsibilities and the passing of time. When people hunting for a lost kingdom invade begin searching for ancient medallions with magical properties, Hong Kong is left to join with his friends and find the treasure before it falls into the wrong hands.
(The current demo covers a few introduction scenes and some tutorial gameplay.)
Click on the keep reading to get the download link.
PLATFORM: RPG Maker XP
GENRE: Modern Fantasy / Adventure
CHARACTERS: Hong Kong, South Korea (Playable), China
RATING: 10+
DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Any connections to real-world incidents, places, or people are coincidental. Some of the characters belong to the webcomic series Hetalia. This is a fan-created game that makes no profit.
Dev Notes: This game is officially discontinued due to a lack of interest in the project over time. Maybe I'll rework the concept with different characters, but I thought that I might as well post this so that potential interested fans can check out what I had of the idea so far.
BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD:
To play this game, you need to make sure that you have the RPG Maker XP RTP downloaded, you can find a link to it here: (Link)
DOWNLOAD LINK: HERE
Credits regarding the game's content are found in the notepad document.
Hetalia © Hidekaz Himaruya.
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
hell yeah i cant wait to make it pretty
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Concept doodles for the townies!
The original sneak peek ver of Porcelain Blue was pretty empty, but that was mostly because of time restraints.
While the town in game will most likely still be pretty deserted, there's definitely more than 4 people living there.
#hetalia fangame#hetagame development#hetagame#concept doodles#hetalia#hws sweden#hws sealand#hws belgium#hws thailand#hws nyo england#Porcelain Blue
34 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hello, I am Rei! I'm currently working on a hetalia fan game. I thought that I might go to this app knowing that this is where the hetalia fandom mainly started :P. The attachments are what we have so far as of the 5th of July (2024), a.k.a. today. The plot is also on one if the attachments, we currently need people to code for sure haah! (Most screenshots aren't cropped because I couldn't really be bothered to)
3 notes
·
View notes
Photo
i can relate to this when writing the story for my game
90% of my writing experience is doing this
106K notes
·
View notes
Text
star rail being turn-based brings me back to my roots I love it sm (hetalia fangames made on rpgmaker. god the memories)
0 notes
Note
Okay, this is dumb and I haven't watched the original material myself too, but... Hetalia AU? XD
(suggesting this because I just watched an amazing fangame, but it was abandoned somewhere halfway through last chapter, so I'm currently heartbroken and desperate)
@adambrainrot
I'm gonna need more I have no idea what game that is lol
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
What is up everybody i may be wiping off the dust from this blog because i listened to a HetaOni song too many over the past few days and now i have a severe case of the brainworms
#personal#i havent even actually replayed it yet and my memories of the specifics r fuzzy but the memories of its emotional impact are strong as ever#excited to get around to replaying it... i opened it to check the version and the title screen felt like it was playing a siren song at me#the last time i played hetaoni was when i was last consistently active on this blog which was. like 5 years ago? wtf time flies#the everlasting grip this silly country men anime horror fangame about timeloops and tragedy and friendship has on me is fascinating tbh#btw hetaoni songs meaning stuff like sapph's many fansongs to its soundtrack and the animations like uninstall. hetaoni douga. u know#if u don't do feel free to ask those are always fun to introduce to ppl#i remember watching the uninstall one around my cousin who didnt care for hetalia and she got curious enough to play it w/ me years ago LOL#anyway i'm just rambling at this point 😠but yeah just thought i'd mention i'll likely be more active here while the brainworms last :>#i missed the silly country men...... they r like family to me
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
More fanart for @cookies-hetaoni !!
#aph Russia#hws Russia#Hetalia#hetalia russia#ivan brangiski#aph ivan braginsky#hws ivan brangiski#aph#hetaoni#hetagame#hetalia fangame#art#digital art#illustration#fanart#anime#tw blood
171 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hetalia au where everything's the same except the micronations physical age reflect sealand's age lol.
Let's call it the micronations ages make a bit more since AU /J
Like example
Sealand is physically 12-13 (hima said he designed sealand to look like he went up a grade so sealand may be like physically 13 or something lol) yet is one of the oldest besides seborga
In this au , almost everyone's physical age has now changed.
Information about the au under cut lol.
Sealand keeps his same cannon physical , same as seborga.
So sealand is 12 to 13 physically
That's cannon. He's the age that everyone else's are based around this AU. He's like the leader. Give him some kouhais' that look younger than him than some that look way older than him lol. He deserves it.
OK the other micronations, the ones we've been with and the newer ones that have just appeared
Seborga gets the same physical age
He's the only one of the micronations that looks and is physically older than sealand nation wise. He gets to keep his physical age lol. Some older teen hanging around some elementy and middle schoolers lol
Hutt is physically the same as sealand now
So he's physically 12
I mean their year of creations is only like 3 years apart. It wouldn't make sense if we wasn't at least the same physical age as sealand. I wish he was in Canon but even the nations in Canon don't understand the physical aging system.
This means kugelmugel's physical age gets to say the same.
His growth is still stunted, due to not technically being a micronation (same with Hutt river : they bond over that)
Molossia is now physically like 10 or so.
This is where the physical ages curve from sealand's physical age abit. I find it funny if molossia is younger than someone like kugelmugel , it's cute. Like this essentric kid is like older than him in everyway
( I'm just thinking of House Of Winter (A hetalia fangame) and how things would probably be the same way in that cannon , but just imagine kids around the same age fighting makes it a bit sadder)
Molossia's personality fits his in cannon physical age but I think it would be pretty interesting on him if we was physically 10.
Aerica is now physically 10 aswell
Him and molossia are only 10 years apart in a nation standpoin so it'd make sense that they'd be around the same age physically aswell.
Ladonia is physically 10
He acts like a 10 year old in cannon so I beleive he's like 10 or so physically as well. He's younger than sealand and mostly everyone else in micronations that have an appearance in hetalia
Wy is physically 8
Look at her. She's physically 8 in my opinion. That or 9.
Now onto the new microntions.
I know the joke is that slowjamastan is younger than wy but looks older but I think it would've been really cool if he looked like an 8 year old , simular to wy.
Slowjamastan was actually the inspiration for this au. I just want wy to be happy, give her someone that makes her look like a proper senpai.
Stomaria and domain are also 8 in this au. I understand why they're so "old in appearance" (alot of people seem to "know" what they're doing when making nations/HJ) but come on , the micronations are so much more younger than actual countries. It be cool if they were just kids or something lol.
Ha , seborga's like the designated babysitter of the group now.
#aph molossia#aph stomaria#hws molossia#hws stomaria#aph slowjamastan#hetalia#hws slowjamastan#hws wy#aph wy#hws the domains#aph the domains#hws kugelmugel#aph kugelmugel#hws sealand#aph sealand#hws seborga#aph seborga#hws hutt river#aph hutt river#aph aerica empire#hws aerican empire#hws ladonia#aph ladonia#aph micronations#hws micronations#hetalia world stars#hetalia world series#hetalia world twinkle
19 notes
·
View notes
Text
gotta admit i forgot about this account for a little but.. I HAVE GOTTEN MY MOTIVATION BACK AND IM WORKING ON THE GAME AGAIN!
WOOOOOO!!!!
#hetalia#aph hetalia#hws#rpg#rpg maker#aph estonia#hws estonia#broken mirrors#hetalia fangame#hws lithuania#aph lithuania#lithuania#hws latvia#aph latvia#hetalia estonia#hetalia latvia#hetalia lithuania#aph russia#hws russia#hetalia russia#aph belarus#hetalia belarus#hws belarus#aph ukraine#hws ukraine#hetalia ukraine#aph moldova#aph bulgaria#aph romania#screts
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
I've been thinking abt redoing the mapping in the game and making the buildings more "cartoony", proportion wise compared to the old buildings, what do y'all think of this?
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
A little love post to HORROR JRPGs
Content Warning:
So I'm gonna be talking a lot about some pre-Undertale era RPG Maker Horror games, and this post is gonna contain both spoilers and the discussion of the following:
Blood and Gore
Psychological horror
Child abuse
Sexual assault
Suicide
Violence
Fictional minors being put into very messed up situations, because that's just the kinds of games these are
Other upsetting themes
Hetalia (because I can imagine that all of us have very complex feelings about this fucking franchise. It existing feels like it needs a warning)
This post is a nostalgia trip and exists purely because uh. I have literally no one else to talk to about these games, and please just click away if any of the above makes you uncomfortable in any way. Some of this stuff can't exactly be handwaved as just being products of their time.
I'll draw smthn real quick later just to make up for it I promise
I'm like days late to Halloween but I just wanted to write this after getting a bout of nostalgia lmao
I absolutely fucking love Horror JRPGs - the freeware ones, even though I haven't touched one in a LONG time. I'm talking about the pre-Undertale era freeware games by the way, and in the first place I don't think I can consider Undertale a horror game but that's a topic for another day. OneShot also doesn't count aksjak OneShot gives me existential dread and a nonzero amount of guilt sure, but never terror
But let's dial that back a bit.
To begin with. 'Vir, you're a fucking coward, you run upstairs when you see that someone on TV has a gun. You can't stand watching horror movies. How the FUCK did this happen'
Weirdly, you can thank Hetalia for that. Specifically, the freeware Hetalia fangames that used to circulate on DeviantArt - that shit led me down this rabbit hole. And I guess it made sense, most Hetalia fangames are a coin toss between a horror game and a fantasy JRPG with countries getting isekai'd. I also played the fuck out of those.
For a bit of background, I love video games, but neither me nor my family ever really had that much spending power to buy game consoles, so my selection was pretty limited. Before I turned 18, I remember that we owned a GameBoy, a GameBoy Advance, a PSP, and one of those Fun-Sized Nintendo consoles with built-in games. We never bought cartridges either. I got my first DS from my dad on my birthday when I turned 18, and that's all the consoles that my family has ever owned. Still kinda jealous of my friends who have Switches, but eh - one day.
I just played a lot of Harvest Moon growing up, that's been my object of interest in my elementary days. The most of a horror game that I've been exposed to was watching my friends play Five Nights At Freddy's back in 5th grade.
Then high school happened, and I got new friends and shit - and was introduced to both more conventional horror games and Hetalia. Which is. A really weird combination when I think about it now, but everyone who was alive and kicking around in the early 2010's would know what HetaOni is, and you can see how that slope led to me playing freeware horror games. I'll always be grateful to these games, seeing as I never had easy access to mainstream experiences growing up.
I think I played HetaOni exactly once, on my first laptop. I played most Hetalia fangames exactly once, but they all just stayed on my old hard drive. None of them really had anything interesting going on gameplay-wise, I mean it's RPGMaker and these were people who just really wanted to make Hetalia fangames, but I remember some of them just sticking with me. I'd play them while I was away on trips to my grandmother's house, then watch let's plays on YouTube when I wasn't otherwise occupied with schoolwork. Really when I say Let's Plays I only mean KyoKoon64's - and that's how I was actually introduced to horror JRPGs.
CLOÉ'S REQUIEM
There's been a couple of times where they played some of the more recognizable horror JRPGs on their channel, but the first one I REALLY saw a playthrough on was one called Cloé's Requiem. I don't know what exactly it was about this specific game that stuck with me, and at the time I didn't know that this had like. More warnings than you would usually find on a horror JRPG. Calling it now, please look up said warnings before you try ANYTHING with this game - I can't promise quality and nuance, but I can promise great moments. Those moments stuck with me to this day, SOMEHOW, even after encountering games with better story and gameplay experiences… it's about a cursed 12 year-old boy trying to free a cursed 13 year-old girl, never getting a shot at the normal life he wanted and playing the violin because he can't do much else.
I think this game changed my life. Not in like, any grand manner mind you - but I feel like it's the game that best represented this time of my life as a weird high school outsider who obsesses over games that nobody's ever heard about. I was introduced to a lot of things through this game, it's just this whole volley of firsts that I wouldn't trade for anything else. Baby's first horror game, first jumpscare I ever consented to, first taste of games containing disturbing themes of sexual assault and gore, first trips to Pixiv and NicoNicoDouga - just all the fucking firsts. I wouldn't call it a great game, but it IS important to me.
When I think about it now, it's a game about curses. Michel D'Alembert is a talented violinist at 12, and his alcoholic father milks the shit out of this talent because they're not exactly what you would call well-off. His twin brother Pierre is a pianist, is nowhere near as talented as his brother, and hides his misery over this situation under a big-little brother façade. Cloé Ardennes is a pianist too, she's wealthy, talented, and still plays with her stuffed animals. She is cursed with an insane father who rapes her, and a mother who hates her. Charlotte is a young maid with nothing and tries her best, only to be killed because she happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Unsurprisingly things fall apart for everybody very quickly.
Pierre's frustrations with his spoiled, lazy brother boiled over, and he curses Michel out in a heated moment. This drives Michel to murder their Charlotte by accident, and she becomes his curse - he runs out of the house, kills cats, and finds himself in the dilapidated mansion that Cloé inhabits. Cloé by this point is already dead, and so is her dad, her parents, and the maids. Cloé's father may be her curse but she is the curse of this mansion, and it transforms into something hostile until Michel comes along and saves her from the shadow of her father. Michel plays her a requiem, and resolves to go home to confront his crimes - and back to Pierre, who regrets everything he's done. Watching the sun rise with a disappearing Cloé in the True Ending will likely be the last peaceful moment he will ever have in his life.
That's like. Not everything that happens in this game, but this post is already so goddamn long and I still have a lot of other stuff I want to talk about. But the gist of it to me nowadays is that these children are cursed with loveless lives and the whims of the adults that have power over them. In the end, their lives are all ruined. Cloé and Charlotte are dead, and we have no idea what becomes of Michel and Pierre when word gets out that Michel killed a maid and assaulted several others in the house in a fit of emotional instability. In every other ending, Michel is killed and Cloé remains an evil spirit, so really this is the best that anyone ever gets out of this experience.
I remember watching a playthrough of Con Amore on YouTube, but I understood none of it because it was in Japanese, and the game itself was untranslated at the time. It follows the cats Noir and Blanc and basically serves as an addendum to the base game - honestly it made me feel sorry for Charlotte, who was nowhere near as psychotic as Michel thought she was. There's also light novels, but international shipping is expensive and I don't know Japanese so. I'll just never figure out what happens to everyone after the game ends I guess
One of these days, I'll buy the remake on Steam - which exists, and I can't say I recommend it if everything I just listed bothers you in any way. But I can't shake the attachment I feel towards this game no matter how many years it's been, nor how uncomfortable its themes are, so you know - maybe one day. I'll go back to it.
IB
So - following that, I got pretty curious about the other games in this genre of freeware horror. Ib is the one that everyone knows the best, both Markiplier and Pewdiepie played it so you KNOW it gets press, but even in Japan this game was a hell of a hit. To me, it's a simple game that I can finish in an hour, but man what an hour it can be.
If you were to play this game right now after seeing how much press it gets (which I think you should, it's on the Switch now! Go get it!), you MIGHT be a little disappointed. It's nowhere near as gory or disturbing as Cloe's Requiem for one and you know - a bunch of blood and guts and ghosts on the walls does not a good horror game make, but make your choices accordingly. Nah - instead this game's staying power lies in its atmosphere. Like how many games can you say take place inside of an art gallery where most of the pieces try to fucking murder you? I mean there's probably a lot, but something about Ib's almost ambient sense of dread and exploration just kind of sticks in people's brains. Everything's a little scarier when the shapes are so close to being discernable but aren't, and I guess that's the appeal and horror behind Guertena's gallery.
Ib herself is a mute protagonist, pretty typical, but she's also NINE, and the game will let you know that no matter how unfazed she gets or how precocious she can be, she is a child all the same - and children break very easily. I personally love how the game barely has to say anything about how shaken she actually is about her situation, because it will show you how - she has nightmares that you can't escape, she sees herself getting hanged, Garry will need to shake her out of her shock when she sees a picture of her parents in the gallery that should not exist. She loses all of her will to live when she loses Garry to insanity. And speaking of Garry…
There's one standout room in this game and it's the Doll Room. 10/10 would NOT recommend it to anyone who suffers from anxiety because WOW I did not think the RPG Maker 2000 engine could ever have been capable of that. Nobody blames Garry if this room fucks him up. I mean come on the dude has to literally rip open the stomachs of dolls to find a paint ball. Those sound effects make it sound like the dolls are made of skin and flesh and all the while the giant fucking doll is creeping out of the goddamn painting while some of the most anxiety-inducing background noise is playing -
Yeah no I don't know why I ever said you'd be disappointed by this game. Or maybe you still would, this is a low-res game made in 2012. But my god does it TRY to scare you in the best ways it can.
One of the best moments in this game I think is the one where Mary and Ib are alone together, and the conversation gets increasingly unhinged with Mary asking Ib questions non-stop with no background noise other than their steps. At this point, they're separated from Garry, and they're trying to find a way back to each other. Garry meanwhile is slowly piecing together the truth about Mary and how dangerous it is for Ib to remain alone with her, all the while still trying to figure out how to get back to both of them.
The section after that is in the Sketchbook which honestly? The vibes of this place are impeccable. Somehow it's fitting that one of the tensest areas in a game about a fine arts gallery is the place made entirely out of childlike scribbles.
Overall, I'd say the experience is well worth an hour or two - I'd recommend it happily over Cloé's Requiem, if only so you can have a taste of what Horror JRPGs were like before Omori came along. Yes I know that Omori isn't Japanese but it's very much in the same vein as these games.
OTHER GAMES
Those were the safe two that planted my feet firmly into the Horror JRPG fandom, but there's a lot of other titles out there, so let's go - lightning round!
Ao Oni is the ubiquitous one, like chances are you've at least HEARD of it in passing at some point in your life. Like this shit made it to the big screen in Japan, that's how much of a deal it was. I've never played the original myself, but it's partly because its formula of stuck in a mansion with a horror that chases you around is present in pretty much every Horror JRPG after its release in 2007. If you want some classic fun with the big blue demon though then you can't go wrong with the freeware version.
Mad Father and The Witch's House are part of what I like to call the Big 3 of JRPGs starring preteen girls experiencing the Horrorsâ„¢, mostly because back in the mid-2010's I couldn't go three posts without seeing them all together. Mad Father is the only other one of said Big 3 that I've touched, because I was too coward to touch The Witch's House and Ellen's whole deal remains a mystery to me to this day. I think Mad Father got a remake a couple of years ago, so you can check that out if you want, but keep in mind that these two games in particular might not stoke the same kind of magical staying power that Ib somehow retained years after its release, and I know those two rely on jumpscares a lot more than Ib does.
I'll eat my fedora right here by the way, because one of my cardinal sins of being a Horror JRPG fan is that I've never played Yume Nikki. As far as these freeware games go, this is probably one of the more avant-garde ones - it's artsy, atmospheric, and a game best experienced by getting lost in the strange environments it provides. Out of every game on this post, this is the one I'd describe as the most Earthbound-esque, with its horror lying mostly in the surrealist ambience of just… wandering around in Madotsuki's mind. The end is just as quiet as the beginning, but is no less chilling to watch happen. Then you fuck around a little bit on Youtube and you find out what's actually going on, and uh - yeah that checks out, cosmic horror sounds par for the course at this point.
Yume Nikki and OFF are two of the games I think of when I hear about Horror JRPGs being talked about alongside Undertale - and nope, I haven't played OFF either. That's my other Horror JRPG sin. I was a picky teenager, but I've grown now and wow I need to find a time to play these games in peace. OFF actually isn't even Japanese, it was developed by Mortis Ghost and released in French back in 2008, making both pretty old and already pretty weird in the library. The reason I bring up OFF is because it's one of the older examples I know of that also incorporate Earthbound's precision 4th-wall breaks, and that it's a game about judgment and interrogates the player (more you than the Batter you play as, serving more as a vehicle that the game uses to ask questions through) about the choices they make in the game. OneShot is probably the one game in this genre of indie RPG that I know so far that employs this metaphysical idea of the player existing in the game in any kind of charitable fashion (aside from again, Earthbound and to some extent Mother 3), so between it, OFF, and Undertale they're what I'd refer to as the Interface Screw-RPG Trio.
Some other titles that I like are between the same devs, even some that I haven't really played to completion. Cloé's Requiem for example was made by Buriki Clock, and they've made other titles like Fantasy Maiden's Off Hideout and Trauma Traum - the latter I can't play because it doesn't have an English translation rip. Miwashiba is another dev which I think people who have a taste for light lolita goth-pastel colors would like, because my god the character designs in both Alice Mare and LiEat are peak. Don't even get me started on the fashion of 1BitHeart because everything in that game has such an impeccable aesthetic. I think I saw something at one point about 1BitHeart that like. Might count as a shared joke between Xenoblade fans, but I'd be hard-pressed to give context because again… packed schedule, who dis?
Just to talk about Alice Mare a little more, I've actually played this one - it sports a heavily storybook-inspired cast with some unique tastes on the tales. Most of my actual experiences with Alice Mare were from the English Light Novel, which I do still have! I really recommend it to people who have a couple of hours to spare on some light, relatively bloodless horror. Most of these games have Light Novels, come to think of it - hell Ib even has whole audio dramas, one of which was fanmade in English, and from what I remember of it the voice acting for Mary was PEAK.
One last dev I want to talk about is Segawa. I've saved them for last because their brand of horror is reserved mainly for one game, but their other games Farethere City and Tower of Hanoi are no slouches either. I don't know much about Tower of Hanoi (or if it even has an English translation right now), but Farethere City is a pretty cute experience as far as pseudo-horror games go from what I've heard, which is probably good for us because their other standout game is anything but cute.
END ROLL
Ah, End Roll. The last of the Horror JRPGs I've played before school kicked me even harder in the shins and I had barely any time for it. Out of all the games I mentioned on this list, this is the one with the most staying power in my brain - and also the one that influenced me the most.
So, I don't talk a lot about my original works. Nobody asks, so I don't overshare. But some of the prevalent overarching themes of my personal mythos are those of guilt, self-love, and the burdens of love. All of these themes were lifted directly from End Roll - which is to say, End Roll actually only deals in guilt, my brain just ran buckwild with trying to wrap itself around the logistics behind InfoRuss. One of my main protagonists, Rosso, is a dead-ringer expy of Russell - the same goes for Blanco with the Informant. One of the only ways I can describe Rosso and Blanco's relationship is 'selfcest as a metaphor for the painful coexistence of self-love and self-loathing', and how this relationship reached this point was largely thanks to the Informant and his role in Russell's dream.
I don't really know why I've come to associate the idea of self-love with guilt, because that's like. Not what the game is trying to do. The game's express purpose is to tell you the story of a boy who comes to love his victims and self-destructs under the crushing guilt that he carries from killing them. By some weird hand, I've fixated on the Informant and his determination in seeing that mission of the game through - AND his secret boss fight. Actually, I should. Go ahead and describe the build-up to his secret boss fight
You can only access it if you've purchased the optional villa, and if I recall correctly you can only fight him on the last day of the dream. The locked shed next to the villa is revealed to be a library of some kind called the Graveyard of Books and like - sure enough, there's books of every kind just torn apart and scattered about everywhere. The reason for all of this is because of the Informant's jealousy. He is created specifically so he can provide Russell with the necessary information to complete the Happy Dream Experiment, and in this regard he thinks Russell doesn't need anyone other source of information than him. So he does away with the useless other books, except for the strategy guides because that's the only kind of book Russell likes - and thus, the only kind of book that the Informant likes. Notes are scattered in the hallway leading up into his boss room, with the last one sticking out in my mind to this day:
'He thinks he's the most important thing to you.'
Which. I don't know why that line is so important to me. Whether it be because it awakened something weird in me, or because I myself was dealing with my self-loathing in a VERY complicated manner at the time, that line has gone on to dictate the way that I write about my characters even to this day.
It's such a visceral depiction of self-inflicted brutality. Russell Seager is a 14 year-old serial killer who grew up loveless and abused, and has no shortage of things that make every waking moment of his life fucked up. He killed people - some who just happened to be wherever he was at the time, some willingly by his hand - could not feel guilt about any of it, and when he lost Yumi to his drunken father while his nymphomaniac mother watched he snapped and killed both his tormentors. He then turned himself in to the police, a teen on death row. Happy Dream is him discovering guilt through dream versions of the people he killed. Happy Dream is what allows him to manifest the newfound emotions he felt through interacting with the kinds of people that his victims COULD have been. The world he creates morphs into the self-inflicted hell that is his guilt.
Russell has no happy ending, his guilt won't allow him that. Everything around him becomes a reminder of the lives he's destroyed, and how much of a living hell his own life was. Through feeling happiness and love from these fabricated visages of the people he killed, he learned guilt. It's such a weird exercise in sympathy, knowing that you're playing as this remorseless kid going through rehabilitation through extreme means. It either doesn't work, and he's deemed a failure - or it does, and he commits suicide either by confessing his crimes to one of his victims and stabbing himself to death with a syringe, or he stays in the deteriorating dream, never to wake up again.
At some point it honestly just turns into misery porn, if you look at it from a certain angle - this game is set on having Russell die no matter what. I couldn't tell you what EXACTLY it is about this experience was so impactful that it would go on to influence the way I want to spend my life - that is, I want to make games exploring these kinds of themes. Guilt. Sins. If loveless lives can be redeemed and made better. By the time the last day in the game rolls around, it's just a matter of giving Russell closure over his miserable life and choosing for him what his last freedom is going to be.
I think one of the reasons I like thinking about the Informant with regards to Russell is the scene that happens if you choose to go through with the first True Ending. Russell never really much liked the Informant, and the feeling is mutual. Russell is cold to him, and the Informant takes every opportunity he can to rub all of Russell's sins in his face - and that's his job, he represents the fundamental, uncomfortable truths of Happy Dream. If Russell chooses not to leave the dream, he is resigned to its destruction and waits for the inevitable along with the other denizens of Nameless Town. But if Russell chooses to get out of the dream, the Informant returns to Russell in tears, happy that he can finally be back to being a part of him - to this game, it's the ultimate acceptance. Russell then goes on to confess his crimes and the reality of the dream to one of the citizens, and he wakes up when they kill him in tearful retribution by his request.
He grabs the syringe next to his bed, and stabs himself to death, unable to handle the guilt. That's how the game always ends for me. The Informant succeeded, Happy Dream succeeded - and Russell chose to die as person who could finally feel remorse.
It's a regretful story with themes that really shouldn't be replicated in any fashion in real life, but somehow I found it fascinating in the way it explores the facets of the self. It makes me want to ask more questions and explore that angle of self-reflection to the furthest extremes that I can conceivably reach, and I guess that's one of the many reasons why I respect it so much.
SO… WHAT NOW.
Nah, that's kind of it. Like, OF COURSE this isn't all I have to say about the games that I mentioned, but wow this post is so long and I was just pining for the days of a couple of years ago. These games were present for the most transformative years of my life, and uh - whether or not that was actually a good thing remains to be seen, but I'll always be grateful for their presence in the void that I call my gaming experiences.
Horror JRPGs will always have a special place in my heart for how they tell their stories. Nowadays, I've developed more of a taste for fantastical RPGs that prefer to hide their horror in the margins of the narrative, fridging the terror for when the player wants to step back a bit and think about the implications of certain events in the greater world. Undertale, OneShot, and the Octopath Traveler games all tick that box for me - and all of those games are ones I hold dear. Like I'll probably ramble about OneShot some other day, because that's the other game that really changed my life in a way I felt like I can never come back from - but there's just a lot of special things to be said about these neat little self-contained, 6-hour freeware games. For now I'll close this long-ass post out. Happy late Halloween I guess - the M&Ms in our fridge have never tasted better.
#rpg maker horror#rpg maker#horror rpg#ib rpg#cloe's requiem#end roll rpg#ao oni#mad father#the witch's house#OFF rpg#yume nikki#alice mare#farethere city#cw horror#seriously please read the content warnings
39 notes
·
View notes