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THE SIMIANS (CHAPTER ONE)
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By Moraison & Loobie McBoob
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"Comedy Games" are almost always terrible. Not because they lack substance or DEEP IMPORTANT MEANING, but because they're almost always parodies of RPG cliches. Making fun of RPG clichés is on the same level as making fun of Jack Chick or the size of the X-Box controller - anyone who's seen them knows they're stupid already, so many people have done it for so long that it lacks novelty factor, and it's lazy. Wow, there sure is a lot of slime in RPGs, I never noticed before! How insightful! Final Fallacy gets a reprieve because that bothered developing funny characters and situations on their own terms instead of "LOOK CRYSTALS LOL", but, for every Final Fallacy, there are a dozen Easy Quest Trilogies. The Simians, on the other hand, is an original premise with original characters, mercifully few RPG in-jokes, and is actually funny. If you are a newbie who's thinking about making a zany parody of Final Fantasy after reading 8-Bit Theatre, play The Simians, because it is better than your game.
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PRESENTATION
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Graphics
First up, this an RTP-free zone except for the occasional NPC, which is pretty good for an RM2k3 game - though there are only two playable characters, they both have their own original fully animated battle sprite that isn't simply a recolour or headswap. The chipsets are the stuff we're used to seeing, but there's usually a lot happening on the maps, so they never feel bland.
Both characters have a ton of poses, too. They drink, fall over and get the shit beaten out of them many times in fully animated glory. And you get to see am alcoholic zombie thrust his crotch at a hotel receptionist, which I think we can all agree is one of the greatest things in an RPG ever.
Music & Sound Effects
There's a fair bit of RTP here, mixed with generic RPG battle / village music from a bunch of games I can't remember. There's also some pop stuff that stands out and gives it a really different sound than we're used to. Neil Young's "Old Man" is used as a kind of theme, but I've got no idea what relevance (if any) it has.
The sounds are all default, but they've been changed around slightly (being damaged in battle sounds much more painful now), and there's some nice crunching noises when the mage is beaten up.
Originality
The resources are mostly original stuff, and they're all used in interesting ways.
Extra stuff
Even though some areas are hit & miss, this is original and inventive enough to be worth playing anyway.
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STORYLINE & CHARACTERS
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Storyline
A shadow mage, called Shadow Mage, resurrects his formerly-dead comrade one night, except things don't go entirely according to plan and he comes back as a drunken zombie called DZ. They go on a quest to recover DZ's memory, which, of course, involves going from town to town talking to sages. This is, obviously, just a clothesline on which to hang a series of ridiculous situations in which Shadow Mage desperately tries, and fails, to keep Drunken Zombie from doing something stupid. It's very slight, but it's quite funny.
It seems to just be a clothesline to hang jokes on, but there's an event toward the end of the demo which spins everything in an entirely different direction. It's a totally unpredictable twist, but it doesn't just come out of nowhere, and I won't ruin it by talking about it any further. It does, however, leave open a lot of possibilities as to where the story could go... but, since this is a demo, it doesn't actually go there. In fact, it could just double-back and go nowhere, for all I know, but what was there is pretty good.
Characters
Shadow Mage and DZ have an odd-couple relationship, but you didn't need to be told that. They're painted with broad strokes and we find out nothing about them except that DZ is, in fact, a drunken zombie, but they're infinitely more palatable than Ash The Hard-Bitten Mercenary With A Hidden Past Who Only Talks In Ellipses. They each had unique attacks that fitted in with their characters, so, obviously the mage casts spells, but the zombie dances really badly and vomits all over people.
Cut Scenes
They're mostly dialogue-oriented, but there's a lot of animated character poses, especially DZ's frequent binge-drinking and the results thereof.
Originality
It's not something we've seen before, but it is quite familiar territory right up until the end of the demo, which is something I haven't seen anywhere outside of Count Duckula.
Script
There aren't any spelling or grammar problems as far as I can remember. Whether you find the dialogue funny - and a lot of whether you like the game is going to rest on this - is up to your personal taste. This isn't full-on surreal comedy for the sake of it, and every conversation isn't "Setup!" "Joke!". Rather, this is a regular adventure game in which one of the characters is an alcoholic zombie. He isn't trying to be funny, he's just obnoxious and self-centred by nature. And Shadow Mage isn't being sarcastic for the sake of providing funny lines, he's being sarcastic because he's surrounded by stupidity and needs to take it out on someone. When the game *does* venture into forced humour, like Cloud showing up as a lithping aloof celebrity, it just turns into every other attempted comedy RPG, and, while it's still amusing, it's not on the same level as the other humour.
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GAMEPLAY
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Event Programming
It's not really complicated, but there are nice little things that add an extra (very small) dimension. Outside of levelling up, you can get stat bonuses based on the number of things you've fought rather than how much experience they were worth, which evens things out at the start of the game. You can enter the lottery, which, just like real life, you have almost no chance of winning, but makes you a millionaire. There's a casino (OF THE MOLE PEOPLE) which has working roulette, blackjack and slot machines. There's a bank that allows you to build interest up, but the demo ends before it has a chance to do that, so I'm not sure how it works. There's item grabs and little minigames everywhere, too. Like I said, they aren't a programming masterpiece, but they're bug free and make things more diverse.
I still have some problems, though. There's a swap-chain like in Zelda, where this person wants soap but first they need a flower blah blah blah, except you can't actually see what item you've got at the moment. It works fine, but you're going to have to do it entirely from memory (thankfully, it's all in the same town). There are other key items you acquire that have the same problem; the "Have Crest" switch is turned on, but I don't actually have the crest in my inventory.
Fun Factor
It's funny, but, even if the humour doesn't work for you, the gameplay is fast, easy to come to grips with, and doesn't get monotonous. There *are* a few times when the solution to a problem isn't immediately obvious, like having to talk to the bartender while standing in front of the bar rather than the side, which do become quite frustrating, but most RPGs have those anyway.
Combat
Not the greatest, but it's not sucky. Just hammer your opponent with your most powerful attack until they die, like in every RPG ever made. It *does* get harder as the game progresses, but you can just go back and level up. DZ can learn to steal, but it comes late in the demo so I didn't get a chance to really exploit it. Shadow Mage can restore his MP for free by using a battle command, so that makes things less tedious. There's not much else to say.
Dungeons
There are multiple paths you can take, and the dungeons exist as three-dimension areas rather than a collection of corridors and pefectly square rooms. You can get skills that let you perform physical actions like jumping and... you can only learn jumping in the demo (it suffers the same fate as the items I mentioned above, in that you have the ability to jump but it's not on your skills menu), which open up new areas. There are touch encounters, which is a big plus, since the combat isn't exactly life-affirming.
Puzzles & Minigames
Item grabs, swap chain, jumping, bank, timed mazes etc. It's all good.
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OVERALL
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This is an above-average RPG made even better by its sense of humour and bizarre characters. However, it's hard to say much about it because, even though this isn't a short demo, you still only get a hint of what's possible.
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