By Quintin Smith on October 14th, 2010 at 1:13 pm.
If you’re like me, you grew up with a SNES-ful of JRPGs. Your tiny hands gripping the controller, your face a slack mask of subservience, your mind transported to worlds so charming and so dramatic that you didn’t care if you had to fight for your life every twelve steps.
Space Funeral isn’t charming, but it’s definitely dramatic. How dramatic? The three options in the main menu are “Blood”, “Blood” and “Blood”. Made in RPG Maker 2003, Space Funeral is the story of a boy named Philip and a horse with four legs and no head called Leg Horse travelling to the City of Forms to learn about how all things are formed. It is Final Fantasy directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, with disturbed art and awesome music. It’s also pretty short, and even the battles are easy and backwards enough to be a good time. Get it here, or if you’re not convinced that you should get it, the video below should convince you.
It’s worth checking out the developer’s other games, too. This guy is one fun guy.
Wow, the music is excellent. I’m not really that tempted to play another JRPG, interesting though it looks, but I’ll probably download it just for the soundtrack.
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This more or less only uses the jRPG format as a vessel for weirdness. Plus a bit of satire.
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Plus the graphics are really really bad. Mouse-drawn in MS Paint bad.
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bonus points for using a Rallizes Dénudés tune
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What is it with 8bit artists and the fixation of making disgusting imagery? The thing that primarily springs to mind is yume nikki, but this one is also rather disgusting to watch.
I mean, it’s not scary, it’s just the kind of thing that I really don’t like to see! It’s ugly nasty.
I guess what I’d really like to know is why people go out of their way to make things look nasty when they could’ve put an equal amount of effort making them look pretty
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Space Funeral does almost get scary at one point, actually.
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The answer is BLOOD
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You mean like Boogerman?
http://www.mobygames.com/game/boogerman-a-pick-and-flick-adventure
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Some people like the aesthetic.
It reminds me of some comments on ACE teams forums back when they were developing Zenoclash – A few individuals signed up purely to express their outrage that people were making such a ‘grotesque’ game. To each his own, no? Themes of a weird/grotesque nature have always been present in human culture. It reflects a certain facet of life, and is just a relevant and interesting as the ‘pretty’ .
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I’ll boldly state, that 8 bit is by definition ugly and nasty. ^^
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Definitely a game made by the style and soundtrack. It really is a lot of fun, and it avoids overstaying its welcome.
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Avoids overstaying its welcome? I thought it was a JRPG?
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Ah, yes, but it isn’t your regular JRPG. I admit I was sceptical when I saw that it was made in RPG maker.
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Space Funeral was totally worth the two hours or so that it takes to play through. It’s a brilliant little bit of glitchcore parody with some funny gags (personally, I found it plenty charming) and an amazing soundtrack.
Great ending, too.
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reminds me of the second half of the first level of monster party.
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Oh yeah – while that LP takes ages in combat, I’d say that most fights can be safely skipped. You gain so much XP and levels that you’re practically invulnerable before long. Not only did I not grind, but I skipped most of the combat, and STILL beat the final boss in about three attacks.
So don’t think that just because you have XP or levels that you need to get them as high as possible. You just don’t.
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I need to know what this first song is… I love it.
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I dont know the exact song but it’s almost definitely by les Rallizes Dénudés. A japanese phychadelic band.
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It’s listed as White Waking in the directory, I think.
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I would love to play this, I really would, but Avast tags it as being a worm carrier; Win32.AutoRun.adza (v), to be specific. There’s every chance it’s a false positive, but I’m not taking that chance.
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It is a false positive. Avast is fairly notorious for freaking out over stuff.
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I’m downloading this just because the music is awesome.
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Final Fantasy as done by Alejandro Jodorowsky? Sold!
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I like this post forbring me to what looks like an interesting director that I have never heard of, which is always great. And i do like my surrealism since thats what I’m trying to go for in my uni projects.
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this is one of the best games done with rpgmaker.
drunken paladin isn’t bad either, though it’s not the same universe at all.
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This looks like the kind of game that shouldn’t be good, yet somehow is. Worth a try! Should I try this first or Sombreros?
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Wow, fantastic! This is a game which seems specifically targeted precisely at me from the soundtrack to the aesthetic to the gameplay – in fact I think I already own bits and pieces of the soundtrack. The guy was sharing in my childhood nightmares, it seems… This is the best oddball small-game I’ve played in ages, the kind of game that stays with you, if you’re “of a certain cast of mind”. By this I mean weirdo.
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I played a bunch of this and was loving it. Thanks for pointing it out. My only complaint is there seems to be a save game feature, but no load save?! Am I missing something or should I have played through the game in one sitting :(
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This game managed to make me feel a little physically ill after playing it for a while.
So, success?
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This game might have some of the most appropriate music I have ever heard in a game.
Also, if you’re looking for another good RPG maker game, try out Exit Fate. Just watch out, extreme hardcore difficulty.
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The second blood is the load feature.
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ah, thank you much!
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