GHOSTS are very sentimental - Let's Play Space Funeral!

Hello! How are you today?

Welcome to Let's Play Space Funeral, a game in which our weeping hero Phillip will take on criminals, animals, ghosts and dismembered limbs all in order to find The City of Forms (a legendary place from which all things in the world are derived).

Space Funeral is an RPG Maker 2003 game created by one human that features MS Paint style custom graphics, and a fantastic soundtrack consisting of obscure Japanese pop/rock and retro electronica.
It has a pretty simple turn-based combat system, but there a few nice touches such as on-screen enemies, and an awesome special move called MYSTERY -- but more on that later. This'll be my first ever (ever!) LP, so I hope everyone enjoys it!

Oh, and it's also pretty short. If you want to play along, you can download it free from here. This first post will act as a sort of prologue, just to get things going, with larger updates coming (hopefully) once a week.

LET US PLAY!

Part One: Prologue


Music: Les Rallizes Dénudés - White Waking



The game starts with absolutley no exposition or scene-setting -- we're simply dropped into this really rather odd looking room. We find ourselves controlling a small, deformed, pajama-wearing boy who seems to be in a perpetual state of sadness. I wonder why he cries so?

Let's take a look around the room.



Well! It seems our large, green-faced father thinks we should be leaving -- and mother agrees! Let's just see about that...



Will do, Ma, but what's this about Dad telling us to leave?



Uh....


I should probably just note how awesome Phillip's walking animation is, with each step you take seeing him open and close his gaping mouth, and every so often wave his arms above his head.



Ooh, Rubles! As you can probably guess, Rubles are Space Funeral's currency, and can be used to buy new weapons and various oddly named items from the store.



In the upper corner of the room we find what looks like our hero Phillip lying dead in a coffin. Do we want to take a rest...?



Huh. I guess that is how I'd feel if I had slept on my own corpse.


Well, it looks like there's nothing left for us here. Our cold-hearted parents have expressed their desire for us to leave, so let's do just that and take our first few steps outside the house!




The view that greets is is pretty grotesque, actually. Houses made from giant cracked skulls, large bones protruding from the ground and a series of nightmarish inhabitants wandering about. Who's that bird-looking guy?



A wizard, huh?!

To Be Continued!
Phillip will return in THE BLOOD CAVERN!

Wow, between this and Lennus the forum is really getting its full quota of ugly tilesets this month.

Anyone wanna place bets on which game will have a more baffling plot?

I think you'll find the plot of Space Funeral to be positivley divine.

Maybe.

*blink* *blink*

I guess a few questions spring immediately to mind.

• How did you discover this game in the first place?
• What about the game made you want to subject share it with us?
• Why would someone do such a thing to the RPG genre?
• Who made this thing?
• Have they been reported to the appropriate mental health authorities?
• Where can I get a pair of pajamas like that?

I will answer your bullet-points with bullet-points!

• I discovered the game early last year by listening to (I think) the at1up Podcast. I'm not 100% sure on this, though.
• Contrary to what it may seem, I do actually like and enjoy this game. It has a completley twisted and ridiculous sense of humor, and a cast of totally terrifying oddly charming characters. While the gameplay may not be terribly interesting or engaging, it's world certainly is.
• I'm not exactly sure who made it, but their username on Game Jolt (the site SF is hosted on) is 'thecatamites'. They have a few other games on their profile, but none of them grabbed my interest.
• Not yet!
• I believe the only place a pair of those pajamas can be found is inside your own mind.

So some guy was inspired by his Philosophy 101 class and rushed off to RPGMaker?

This LP needs more music. The soundtrack really is outstanding - maybe the best non-original score I've heard outside of, what, Rez?

Space Funeral is an ugly, horrifically designed game, but, somehow, it just works for me. There's definitely a sense of anarchic creativity to it all, and half the fun is seeing what bizarre, profoundly stupid thing you'll encounter next (Dracula!). Clearly, the designer was having a bit of dumb fun (and showing off his album collection), but the results surpass pretty much anything else made in RPG Maker besides Yume-Nikki. It's a kuso-ge, really, but it's one by design, rather than by ineptitude.

I admire you for highlighting the game with this LP, but I'd encourage everyone to try it for themselves. Especially if they're fans of stuff like Earthbound and Yume-Nikki, or are intrigued by the likes of Segagaga and all the other quirky Japanese denizens of Hardcore Gaming 101.

Ok, the first post has been updated with music, and all posts from now on will have links to the music. Any other suggestions for the next update?

Get Kishi to make you a .gif of Phillips walk cycle?

The graphics are composed of the worst drawings imaginable, but they come together surprisingly well when you see the thing in motion.

Too bad about that font, though.

Yeah, what's the deal with that font? It ha sa bunc h ofr and om spa ce s.

I should note that the few minutes it took to capture these completely sold me on the game.

*sets "White Waking" on repeat*

I think it's trying to mock the font stylings of fan translations that cram letters together onto single tiles so that they can fit more text? And if so, it delights me.

The sprites do have a certain low-fi charm, especially in motion. That said, just like in Lennus the overall readability would be greatly improved by cranking down the contrast for all the floor tiles. Actually, the blue grassy stuff is fine, it's just all the bright pink shit, really...

This is... kind of horrifying!

I'm intrigued.

I downloaded this game and gave it a shot, only now I'm lost after defeating the king criminal.

The same thing happened to me, and then I remembered why I had to run off and kill the crime king in the first place and I was all "duh".

I'm not even that far, i got to the wizard and let him suck all my blood and then died. And better yet, i had no save state, so i'll give it a rest for tonight. This soundtrack really makes it for me as well as the morbid nature of the game. Real interested to see where it goes.

Ok, the next installment should be up tomorrow or Tuesday!