Y2K. For a time in 1999, these three characters could strike dread into the hearts of millions, possibly billions of people. Banking computers would forget their data. Air traffic control would go dark. Electric grids would fail! It was a doomsday scenario that everyone was going to live through, because the one that can never, ever be stopped is the inexorable march of time. Now Ysbryd Games is bringing all the angst of December 31st, 1999 to consoles and PCs with YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG.
It’s hard to explain the week leading up to Y2K to anyone who wasn’t there or is too young to remember it. I spent selling bottled water to people who all swore that they weren’t panic buying, or even worried in the slightest bit. And yet we sold out of everything in the store (twice) and repeatedly emptied our hundred-fifty gallon holding tank faster than we could purify more water to sell.
But no one at all was concerned about what was going to happen at midnight. They told me so.
Of course in reality, nothing really did happen. But what if there had been some serious, otherworldly weirdness associated with the turn of the new millennium? Even if the millennium actually didn’t flip until 2001, actually, you know what, forget it. This battle was already fought and lost eighteen years ago.
There’s definitely nothing bad on the other side of that elevator. Definitely.
YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG takes players back to one of the strangest years of modern times, with an art style torn straight out of the late ‘90s. Players play as recent college grad Alex Eggleston, returning home from college to start his adult life. Alex dresses the part of a grunge slacker, but he finds himself thrown into a huge adventure filled with mystery, strange friends from the internet, and other worlds that exist just out of sight.
It’s a big, strange world.
For PAX East, Ackk Studios and Ysbryd Games had put together a special demo level that won’t be part of the final game. In it, I navigated Alex and two other party members through a small and very strange adventure on an island. YIIK (Pronounced “Why-Two-Kay”) takes a party-based RPG approach to combat, with a timing hook for combat attacks. Each character has a unique attack style, and hitting the correct controller button during the right time of the attack window will do bigger damage. A similar process exists for mitigating damage from enemies, and for performing magic.
Alex’s attack sequencer is a turntable. Because of course it is.
The PAX East story played out like a prologue vignette from a very strange version of a Final Fantasy game. We travelled through the town, solved some puzzles to gain access to new areas, and ran into all sorts of interesting characters. Eventually there was even a final boss battle with a multi-headed, um, thing.
Probably fine.
The final game is due out sometime in Winter 2018 for Linux, Mac, PC, Sony PS Vita, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. If it can follow the approach of the demo and harness the weirdness of the 1999 with the fundamentally solid gameplay that the demo showcased, this is going to be a very special game.
