Bandango
10-10-2010, 05:56 PM
http://flexapic.com/g.ashx?id=5105
Last Saturday I spent the night drinking. I returned home at two a.m. to discover that the write-up I had finished earlier that day was for a game that wasn’t quite as free as I thought it was. Egg on my face.
In a haze of embarrassment I riffled through my bookmarks in search of an alternate pick. One game caught my eye. Garish colors, ugly bit scrawls, abstract gore… Space Funeral. Moments later I was staring, half drooling, at the glow of a menu screen in my darkened room. A mutilated green face stared back with red eyes. Below it three options presented themselves: blood, blood, and blood. Naturally, I selected blood. I chose the first one, to be clear. The other two turned out to be load and exit.
The game begins and the first thing I notice is a beautiful, lilting, riff. Melancholy. Intense. Give it a listen:
JJp95hFWLvw&p
Red skulls, puke-green walls, and a purple floor make up a very ugly room. In the corner, a malformed man in yellow striped pajamas lies in a casket. I press the arrow keys and see the main character, a man who looks very similar to the one in the coffin, move around on the screen - flail really - while sobbing continuously. The coffin is where you refill your mana and hp.
Space Funeral is a JRPG, described here (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=14855.0) among the comments as having all the charm of an insane asylum. This description fits. As I’m sure you can see from the screenshots, this game’s sense of aesthetics is uncommon, to say the least. Its voice too is distinct; the dialogue is equal parts non sequitur, nonsense, and creepy. Conversations with NPCs are rarely informative, always vague, and often times threatening. But what completes Space Funeral is its soundtrack, one of the best I’ve ever heard. At first I thought whoever made this game was a musical genius, or at least knew someone who was and forced them to record its music. Turns out the creators enlisted the services of some obscure (at least to me) musicians, most of whom recorded decades before I was born.
http://flexapic.com/g.ashx?id=5107
Every moment is accompanied by music that fits perfectly into this game’s bizarro setting. Ruth White (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ba4-nurH9Y), Love (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1J_0OX6KvY&feature=related), and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGb04NqMVk4), among others, amplify the strange, nightmare-like images on the screen. The blood cave sequence halfway through the game is a fine example of this. The ragged cave and everything in it is cast in shades of red, while Ruth White drones a morbid poem over electronically distorted whispers and tones. If I remember correctly there are no enemies in the blood cave. The effect is remarkable.
Space Funeral plays as crudely as it looks. The menu system is clumsy, difficulty is non-existent, and the combat mechanics are shallow. But that’s not the point. The mood that the visuals create in combination with the soundtrack is reason enough to play. Story is communicated through this mood, even before the narrative starts to make itself clear. The final boss’s exposition very nearly ruins things by explaining the story too explicitly, but in the end it works. Once all is said and done (ie you kick the shit out of the bad guy), the final scene resolves everything quite cleverly. I daresay it might have even gotten me to think.
http://flexapic.com/g.ashx?id=5109
Added bonus feature: All of Space Funeral’s obscure, old music is conveniently included in a folder titled Music… almost a whole album’s worth of assorted musicians you may never have heard of before.
Space Funeral is:
a JRPG you can finish in an hour or two.
ugly and pretty.
best enjoyed with the volume turned up high.
It’s a PC download, not too big. Get it here:
http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/space-funeral/files/space-funeral-v1-1/download/3492/4619/
Last Saturday I spent the night drinking. I returned home at two a.m. to discover that the write-up I had finished earlier that day was for a game that wasn’t quite as free as I thought it was. Egg on my face.
In a haze of embarrassment I riffled through my bookmarks in search of an alternate pick. One game caught my eye. Garish colors, ugly bit scrawls, abstract gore… Space Funeral. Moments later I was staring, half drooling, at the glow of a menu screen in my darkened room. A mutilated green face stared back with red eyes. Below it three options presented themselves: blood, blood, and blood. Naturally, I selected blood. I chose the first one, to be clear. The other two turned out to be load and exit.
The game begins and the first thing I notice is a beautiful, lilting, riff. Melancholy. Intense. Give it a listen:
JJp95hFWLvw&p
Red skulls, puke-green walls, and a purple floor make up a very ugly room. In the corner, a malformed man in yellow striped pajamas lies in a casket. I press the arrow keys and see the main character, a man who looks very similar to the one in the coffin, move around on the screen - flail really - while sobbing continuously. The coffin is where you refill your mana and hp.
Space Funeral is a JRPG, described here (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=14855.0) among the comments as having all the charm of an insane asylum. This description fits. As I’m sure you can see from the screenshots, this game’s sense of aesthetics is uncommon, to say the least. Its voice too is distinct; the dialogue is equal parts non sequitur, nonsense, and creepy. Conversations with NPCs are rarely informative, always vague, and often times threatening. But what completes Space Funeral is its soundtrack, one of the best I’ve ever heard. At first I thought whoever made this game was a musical genius, or at least knew someone who was and forced them to record its music. Turns out the creators enlisted the services of some obscure (at least to me) musicians, most of whom recorded decades before I was born.
http://flexapic.com/g.ashx?id=5107
Every moment is accompanied by music that fits perfectly into this game’s bizarro setting. Ruth White (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ba4-nurH9Y), Love (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1J_0OX6KvY&feature=related), and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGb04NqMVk4), among others, amplify the strange, nightmare-like images on the screen. The blood cave sequence halfway through the game is a fine example of this. The ragged cave and everything in it is cast in shades of red, while Ruth White drones a morbid poem over electronically distorted whispers and tones. If I remember correctly there are no enemies in the blood cave. The effect is remarkable.
Space Funeral plays as crudely as it looks. The menu system is clumsy, difficulty is non-existent, and the combat mechanics are shallow. But that’s not the point. The mood that the visuals create in combination with the soundtrack is reason enough to play. Story is communicated through this mood, even before the narrative starts to make itself clear. The final boss’s exposition very nearly ruins things by explaining the story too explicitly, but in the end it works. Once all is said and done (ie you kick the shit out of the bad guy), the final scene resolves everything quite cleverly. I daresay it might have even gotten me to think.
http://flexapic.com/g.ashx?id=5109
Added bonus feature: All of Space Funeral’s obscure, old music is conveniently included in a folder titled Music… almost a whole album’s worth of assorted musicians you may never have heard of before.
Space Funeral is:
a JRPG you can finish in an hour or two.
ugly and pretty.
best enjoyed with the volume turned up high.
It’s a PC download, not too big. Get it here:
http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/space-funeral/files/space-funeral-v1-1/download/3492/4619/