Kemco are an interesting company and development house. With a history stretching as far back as the early '80s, their status among enthusiasts generally does not reflect that vintage in equal measure. Known mostly for ports and licensed games when both are seen as less prestigious compared to original works, they are difficult to conjure up an elevator pitch for or something identifiable to latch onto. After several generation shifts in the industry that always come with their own casualties, Kemco are still around, seemingly weathering the storm the only way they know how: quietly and persistently, widespread acclaim and renown be damned. The last decade and more especially have seen the company pump out a dizzying number of derivative, low-risk RPGs--a niche they've more than managed to fill. Every so often, though, something different manages to materialize from this assembly line-like context.
Yōdanji is a 2017 mobile roguelike later ported to PC and Switch. Kemco themselves market it as a "coffee-break" roguelike, which is a succinct encapsulation of both the wider genre's immediate appeal and the ways Yōdanji plays with that formula to bring it even closer to the fore. What we've got here is a repeating micro-structure that involves delving into a 10-floor dungeon always with a set goal in sight: collect three scrolls along the way, use them for a ritual to summon the yōkai described in the folktale therein, and survive an encounter with Lord Enma to escape with a new ally in tow. Each yōkai enlisted in this way becomes a playable character in their own right; there are over twenty in all and each is a veritable unique character class in their own right, possessing completely unique skills and play strategies required to survive in their adventures. It's an incredibly compelling carrot-and-stick set-up that not only draws on the inherent one-more-go allure of roguelikes but puts it in a hyperfocus, thanks to the compact dungeon that comprises a successful "run" and the promise of a completely new toolset to play with upon that success.
The specifics of play also set the game apart from its peers, especially if we're talking about the Mystery Dungeon lineage and tradition of console roguelikes. Inventory space in games such as them is always a consideration, but something that's not always a pressing issue as pockets tend to be deep on a base level and ways to fold inventory space in on itself with storage items and such also exist. Yōdanji gives you a five-slot inventory--you cannot work around it through stacking items or having storage compartments. As the game's central loop revolves around locating and transporting three items to the end of each dungeon, you are given extremely limited space to work with, making inventory management and mutually exclusive choices not only beneficial but paramount to survival. It's not a static consideration either, where one item will always hold priority over another; different yōkai can be dependent on particular status-altering omamori amulets according to the needs of their playstyle, or require a different sort of restorative to make the most of their arsenal. And everyone gets hungry. Next to lucking out and coming across an actual filling meal somewhere in the labyrinth, the hostile yōkai standing in the way of the one guided by the player can be devoured for modest sustenance after death. Even in that interaction there are wrinkles, as a nekomata might desire to raise the dead as necromantic thralls instead of supping on them. Or maybe they'll simply store away the corpse, to be deployed at a time of their own choosing.
A signature mixture of convenience, thrilling danger and hard choices also come into play in how leveling is treated in Yōdanji. Defeating enemies grants no experience--instead the only way to increase a yōkai's level is to find an errant hitodama located somewhere on a given floor and defeat it, and there is always one and exactly one. They are often stationary, but sometimes enemies absorb them in turn and require to be defeated in order to free the prize. The effect this has is that despite the very objective-driven premise and ostensibly quick leveling, exploration is still a central aspect all the way through, but the rewards for it are doled out in transparent, concrete increments. Each gained level allows the allotment of one skill point towards each yōkai's four personal skills, each having four tiers of power to them in addition. As it is, each "complete" adventure will never see a yōkai investing fully in their potential arsenal as that's impossible by design, and necessitates only picking and focusing on what you truly need as with managing items. The background math, the moment-to-moment play, the statistics involved--none of these are complex in Yōdanji, but the simplicity of the systems belies just how engaging and carefully weighed each decision is to undertake and implement.
Like the game's sense of economy in its mechanical construction, that same sense of making the most of things thematically and aesthetically lives in the rest of the production. Yōkai are always an interesting subject to approach in media considering the wealth of material, tradition and personal interpretation to draw from, but they are often seen from the outside only. Yōdanji contains the flimsiest of framing devices the first time you start the game up--something about mobile devices, virtual worlds and mythology colliding--but in effect and practice this game casts its yōkai residents in the central, player-inhabited roles as well as the entire rest of the opposition along the way. It is about their spooky misadventures holistically to its core, from the evocative oral traditions attached to each figure you can read about, to the way they act in the game world itself, both as player-controlled entities and not. Kodama dwell in little clearings of wood and give rise to vegetation in their wake which in turn sustains them; karakasa masquerade as simple umbrellas before suddenly and wildly swooping on others; kamaitachi move like the wind and slash at the hamstrings of their victims to incapacitate them. This is a game that treats its material both with fondness and respect and the self-awareness to see that you can be both authentic and humorous in a sideways manner as the source tale often can be and are. Even the tutorial and interface text manages to be wry and conversational, like settling in for a session with a personable storyteller.
After dozens of sessions and attempts with the game, I've managed to unlock a grand total of one additional yōkai--the inimitable karasu tengu, nimble swordmasters that act like a "melee class" such as the starting kamaitachi but in completely different ways. There is a core of repetition and stymied voyages here, whether through one's own miscalculations or a bad bit of luck, but also those miraculous escapes and near-disasters in just reading a situation correctly or simply lucking out the other way. With innumerable yōkai dead and lost, what I feel for Yōdanji is not frustration or enervation, but curiosity and excitement at what it can still offer me. Yōdanji is a hard game, but it is not a hard game to like.
Yōdanji! I think it's good. It costs maybe like a fiver, and it might be on sale right now, because it often is. I recommend it for all spook 'em up enthusiasts.
