March 23rd
Today's challenge is: Indie Game.
We're doing an indie game today, awesome! This theme is one of the more promising ones as these games don't necessarily get all the coverage they deserve, and there's also a huge variety of titles to choose from. That being said, however, I knew what I was gonna talk about today from the very beginning of this challenge. My pick for “Indie Game” is
Rabi-Ribi, my favorite Metroidvania (it overthrew Strider 2014 to take the title, which is no small feat).
Back in 2016, a collector friend of mine (same guy that let me in on the Magical Chase thing, actually) told a little discussion group we're both a part of that a company called LimitedRunGames was releasing physical PS4 copies of “Shantae: Risky's Revenge” and “Shantae and the Pirate's Curse”. Upon learning of this, I immediately flocked over to their website and lined up to order a copy of each of these titles. I thought their business model was cool, so I checked out their confirmed upcoming titles, and found out they specialized in distributing physical copies of relatively niche games, usually independent ones. I was rather unfamiliar with most of the titles, though one of them caught my attention pretty quickly. It was listed as a platformer and bullet hell hybrid, which was a surprising combo. That was how I first heard of Rabi-Ribi. I decided to stick around and regularly check out the company until that game was up for sale, which ultimately ended up costing me SEVERAL thousand dollars along the way, as I ended up buying a LOT on there in the years I spent waiting for Rabi-Ribi, and I guess that I'm still doing that to this day.
I already said Rabi-Ribi was a “platformer bullet hell metroidvania”, but what else is it? Well, a lot of things, so let's take it from the top. You play as a pet rabbit named Erina who was turned into a bunny girl, who must travel the land in order to subjugate and rally other pantless girls to your cause with the help of her trusty squeaky hammer, a time stopping amulet, bombs and various weapon, and, of course, the naggy yet adorable fairy named Ribbon. If you haven't figured it out from this description, it is indeed a moe dream consisting of only the cutest anime girls.
But don't let any of this fool you. This game is INSANELY brutal, and by far one of the most difficult games I've ever had the chance to play. Even on the normal setting, you'll be wondering how the hell it's even possible, and I'm not even talking about the fact that “normal” is only the third difficulty level in a set of 8. Thankfully, the game is very fair towards the player and doesn't rely on cheapshots to increase the difficulty, but you have to be REALLY good for sometimes very long periods of time without missing a beat. I lent a PS4 copy of the game to my great friend xXOpkillerXx/Oppiie, who is one of the best gamers I've ever had the chance to meet, and he's almost thrown the towel on the fourth difficulty, something I could not have imagined him do ever.
Design wise, the graphics are bright and colorful, and styled in a very retro fashion. The landscape varies a ton in very refreshing ways, and makes sure to always keep you visually stimulated. The game being a danmaku (technical term for bullet hell) boss rush as well, that stimulation is increased a hundredfold by the beautiful and dazzling boss attack patterns. The music is absolutely incredible here as well, and I regularly play the soundtrack disc that came with the game (it's actually been sitting in my CD-i for the past year at least!), and recently, a symphonic album of the game's OST was released to celebrate the game's fifth anniversary. I bought it despite of how it added up to almost a hundred dollars with shipping and everything, though I haven't received it yet. I must also add that I'm usually iffy about metroidvanias because of the backtracking which is a major pain in my ass, but this one makes sure that you never need to do that if you don't want to, as there are warp points all over the damn place.
Overall, Rabi-Ribi is an amazing, adorable and unique game that, if the ruthless difficulty doesn't discourage you, will have you coming back a lot. I consider it to be an all time great game. Special shoutouts to Volupture (aka xMUSICxMASTERx (sorry lol)) who has a spectacular enough set of balls (or boobs I guess?) to try and beat this game on her first playthrough on stream. You get my admiration for that, and I hope you do manage to finish the damn thing.
If you, too, are a bunny lover, the game is available on PS4, PS Vita, Switch and PC. And as a last note, I know this might not qualify as an indie game depending on your definition of the term, but I don't give a shit as it is definitely worth talking about for any excuse you can get.
