When it comes to RPG Maker games, for the longest time it seemed there were two that everyone always seemed to know: Yume Nikki being the first and the second being the most requested game in Nitro Rad history, even more than Tak and the Power of Juju, believe it or not. Releasing as early as 2008 was an experimental and surrealist Indie game made by a little-known, French-speaking indie dev from Belgium known online as Mortis Ghost. We're talking about none other than OFF, one of the most well known, highly-praised and legendary RPG Maker games out there. Built in RPG Maker 2003, the same version that Yume Nikki was built in. While it originally was released in 2008, it wasn't translated into English until around 2011. That's when its popularity really started to bleed into the then growing RPG Maker community. I first played this one back in high school, probably 2011 or 2012, but this is my first time actually finishing it. The popularity behind this one is insane! It's the only RPG Maker game I've consistently seen cosplays of every convention I go to. What is it about this game that everyone seems to love so much? The fandom is strong with this one, so it's high time I try to get to the bottom of that! It comes off as an oddity before you even
launch the game, being the only game I've ever played that
desperately pleads for you to install a handful
of fonts before booting it up. Caution: it is possible that certain scenes in this game are shocking to an unwarned public? Or maybe not ?
-laughing- It's not the first RPG Maker game I've played with a warning to this caliber, but it's kind of cute that it comes off as uncertain and indecisive. As the game begins we're prompted to type in our name and our gender. Similar to EarthBound, this game wants to know exactly who we are before we start playing. I think y'all know by now, I'm just gonna
type in 'Frinky', which probably destroys a little bit of the artistic intention, but hell, I did that with Undertale so whatever. We're then introduced to our player character, The Batter. We're given a briefing of sorts explaining that we're being assigned to this character so we can guide him in achieving some sort of goal. What is this goal? We're not told exactly what it is only that it's important and we must help him achieve it. The game plants us in a sort of limbo titled Zone 0 where we meet with another character The Judge a cat-like being clearly based on Blinks- er- no- the- the- w- the Cheshire Cat! freakin- freakin Blinks! uh, Clearly based on the Cheshire Cat. Immediately we have the judge asking about the player character, even calling the batter a puppet in favor of showing interest in the one really in control: us the player. Oh, okay! Uh, my name is James. I'm a filmmaker. I make YouTube videos! Uh, I really like Blinks and Pikmin and suh- Spaghetti? Oh, they can't hear me... Oops! After a little introduction, we're soon in control.
As expected from RPG Maker games,
gameplay is very simple. You've got four-directional grid-based movement, and those very simple and basic RPG menus. Walking speed's pretty fast in this game! You'd usually expect a speed like this from holding shift to run or something like that. I guess it kind of cuts out a middleman of sorts when it comes to moving faster, so that's pretty nice! Puzzles are one of the main focuses of OFF, which struck me as interesting. Puzzle based RPG maker games are usually the kind that don't have any battles like Ib, The Crooked Man or Mad Father. While Off is in fact an actual RPG utilizing a battle system, there is still a strong emphasis on puzzle solving. It's not the finding Item A to go with Door B kind of puzzles as often as it's the brainteaser kind, having to scribble down notes in the environment and operate a series of switches or blocks accordingly, I felt my inner Professor Layton coming out, and
that's a good thing. The Games other focuses are on exploration and fighting enemies. The Batter's sworn duty is to eradicate the specters, purifying the world in doing so, because of which you'll find yourself battling all sorts of ghosts and spirits. The battle system is very basic. Interestingly enough, It does use the ATB Gauge that Chrono Trigger made famous, similar to Space Funeral, which also used it. You've got a standard attack and a handful of competence attacks. These are special moves and attacks. Each one will use up CP, a sort of equivalent to MP. While the battles are simple, it's definitely the presentation that makes
the game so engaging. I love the designs of the ghost enemies!
Some of them are cute, some of them are
freaky as all get-out! They have a very distinct hand-drawn art style to them; I'd say it's comparable to Suits, but this is obviously what inspired Suits in the first place, so I can't really make that comparison. The character portraits sport art direction
that is crudely hypnotizing. Every thin stroke of pencil and smokey shading had my eyes glued to these small bits of artwork. Though, I always thought the batter's portrait looked kind of silly, like he's leaning back in discomfort like he's trying to let out a fart or something. It's a cropped version of his full art work which makes a lot more sense when you see the full thing, but I still think Mortis could have chose a better headshot for him. I really dig how the characters themselves are black and white, yet the world they exist in is very vivid and colorful, almost as if they don't belong there, as if the world around them was manifested by some sort of aimless creator who didn't quite understand what exactly he was doing. The world of OFF is definitely the best part of the game The characters are strange, yet lovable each one greeting you with a desperate wheeze, gasping for the air they'll need to communicate. There's a lot of very strange lore to this game that you'll uncover as you make your way through each zone. Uh, for example on the farm you're explained that minerals are mined from cows in this world. They take the precious metals and pack them away while discarding anything useless onto the ground. This process is even how the ground got made, out of these discarded materials. It's a world hosting an earth, that's quite literally disposable. Down in the smoke mines, you'll learn that miners will dig for buried smoke packing much of it in the bottles while letting the rest float into the air creating a breathable atmosphere, it's such a wonderfully strange world, everything is an oddity but it doesn't come off as forcefully weird either. It's not trying super hard to be some sort of over-the-top acid trip It's really a brilliant collaboration of strange ideas that create this bizarre environment. The music in OFF leans towards the very ambient style filling you with a very relaxing kind of dread. It's really calming and it makes it really easy to take in this game's world. The battle theme on the other hand is very quite the opposite it's sporadic, rowdy, using upbeat instruments. It's probably the most famous piece of music from this game titled Pepper Steak it's Really good As you advance through the game you'll make your way through Several zones of Zone Zero the home of the Judge is more so a tutorial stage hosting basic puzzles preparing you for the journey Zones 1 2 and 3 are the real meat of the game each one exposes you to a different portion of this world's economy. Zone 1 shows you the agricultural side of it. Farmers and miners, etc. Zone 2 is all about the residential aspect of the world, y'know where people live what they do for fun. There's a library and a park. Zone 3 is all corporate, this is where you see where these people work you know buildings, offices, warehouses, etc. The Batter's goal in each Zone is to rid the place of specters, each one ending with a boss fight against the guardian of said zone, even though they run the joint The Batter claims that they're specters in need of purification. Getting rid of these tyrants seems to be the only way to purify the world and it does seem like a world in need of purification. Everywhere you go the inhabitants seem scared for their lives, indecisive about everything and anything. Nobody seems happy. They're either doing their daily routines out of fear or obsessively obeying their superiors. Zone 3 is one of my favorites. Everyone's obsessively addicted to the Cafeteria's dessert, some even come off as very juvenile trying to cope with the severe punishment of having their dessert taken away from them for being bad. As you move forward, you start to realize the twisted nature of the sugar in these desserts. I can easily see it being what inspired the food chapter in Suits. The further you get the more delusional the inhabitants get as if the person who made this world had no idea what they were doing. I mean throw three assholes in charge and create the most unhealthy environment for your people Nah Addicted to obedience. It's not a nice way to live. Makes no wonder why The Batter has come to purify this world. Oh, and before I forget, I should probably mention a character of importance: Zacharie. You've probably seen tons of fan art of this guy floating around the internet. He's a shopkeeper, you'll see him every now and then giving you an opportunity to purchase new weapons and armor. During Zone 3 he begins to wear a mask fashioned after The Judge, becoming even more important of a character assuming the role of guidance that The Judge normally would do instead of just being there for shopping and moral support, he'll actually aid you on your quest. He's a pretty cool character. I can totally see why people love him so much. Now while the game story art work and characters are all fantastic, the battle system on the other hand I think is one of the game's weaker features. I don't know. I just felt they were a lot more tedious than in other RPG Maker games. The lack of any real difficulty makes every battle a breeze, not much strategy is really required just, using the obvious attacks. You can pretty much go all-out every battle because you're just going to get all your CP back very soon from a save block anyway. Even the boss battles I didn't find challenging or engaging. I just felt like they took a long-ass time to complete I suppose it's more of a minor thing. Maybe it's just me, I dunno. I found myself impatiently smashing that spacebar time and time again. That said, the game was definitely still worth playing through, though because things get very very interesting during the final area. After completing zones 0 through 3 you'll unlock a final area called The Room No, not this room. No, not that room. This room, this room right here. Ok, we're kind of getting into spoiler territory here, so if that's okay with you continue on watching but if not skip here. I got a lot to say about this so you're going to be skipping most the video if you skip this but if you're ok with Spoilers, let's just uh... ok? Yeah? ok son The Room! You suddenly find yourself in this repeating series of rooms, all the while filling the shoes of some sort of child. Everyone you speak to doesn't see The Batter, but a young kid. These people include the three guardians you killed in the previous chapters. it's a sort of flashback explaining the creation of the world where it all came from. Essentially the queen of the world gave birth to a young boy, who made friends with the three guardians and decided to create a world with them. That world being the one we just played through. The young boy always resented his father for leaving him all alone. He seeks friendships in total strangers to fill the emptiness left by his abandoning father and thus he created a bizarre world, and thus he did not really do a good job of it but he gave life to a people his very own surreal albeit poorly structured kingdom. So you know essentially getting straight to it it's The Batter's job to kill the Queen and kill this poor child, purifying the world. What that really means is to end the world it turns out that the player character is this child's father. That's me That's you that's us. The ones playing the game we're the kids father?
Perhaps by booting up that .exe file, we created this child who went on to create this world. That is though, just my interpretation. The Judge scolds you for killing wife and child. Maybe that's poor translation, maybe that doesn't necessarily mean my wife and child, but I like to imagine the player character is what represents the father trying to destroy this crooked world their child has made and wife has advocated. In the last and final scene, The Judge approaches The Batter, trying to get him to stop what he's doing. The Judge even offers the player to join them in attempt to forcefully stop The Batter from succeeding and eradicating the world. Siding with The Batter pits you against The Judge in one final boss fight, a very easy fight and after winning, you throw the final switch, quite literally turning the world off. Hence the name: OFF This is the ending that Mortis Ghost has said he considers canonical of the two as it's more befitting of the title: OFF Even if it isn't a happier of the two endings. Now if you decide to fight alongside The Judge, you get to see what The Batter looks like from their perspective, a monster. Giant soulless eyes, a gaping mouth rowed with hundreds of teeth. Is this who we've been playing as all along, or is this just The Judges interpretation of the batter? It's interesting to think about these specters were so convinced our evil gracefully flowed up and down, while the batter erratically jitters side to side. The game is full of subtleties like that, that create all sorts of conflicting thoughts. Are we good or are we bad? Who can really say the actions of the batter are very morally ambiguous. I mean, on one hand this world was dire from the beginning. Corrupt, in dismay starting over sounds reasonable. But on the other hand, we're murdering a woman and her child! And even if the world is all sorts of broken its home of The Judge, Zacharie and other characters that deserve the best! And that is OFF. I can easily see why this game's so dang popular it was actually one of the earliest games in the whole indie scene to do the whole fourth wall and meta kind of thing. Long before Undertale and OneShot did, though I would say that Undertale and OneShot Did do it a lot better. But it's not about how well you do something when you're the first to do it well, OFF has pioneered Many tropes and ideas that would go on to inspire so many other any developers and for that This is a very important game. The inspiration this game has breathed into other people is a very important thing. There's some other tidbits as well including a hidden boss fight a bonus ending. You know all that jazz I'm not going to bother getting super far into it. I really just wanted to glaze over this game's narrative and really break down what makes this game So fantastic. OFF is a very important piece of Indie gaming history. I guess whether people know that or not. I mean, I'm sure Mortis Ghost never would have guessed he would have made something so popular and inspiring and influential the day he decided to download RPG Maker. And I could probably say that for anybody else out there. I mean like: Kikiyama, Toby Fox, Austin Jorgenson, Wall Knight Margin(?) I'm sure none of these people ever would have guessed. They would have made something so important the day they decided to get started, and that's all it really takes. You just got to get started you got to put something out there. Because you never know when something's going to take off.
