’A nice game for cute children.’
OFF is a surrealist indie RPG developed in RPGMaker 2003 by Belgian dev Mortis Ghost (Martin Georis) and his team, Unproductive Fun Time. The soundtrack is done by Alias Conrad Coldwood. OFF was released on June 5th, 2008, 14 years ago, in French language only. In 2011, it was translated into English with official sanction from Unproductive Fun Time, and took the (at the time) rapidly growing RPGMaker scene (and also Tumblr, though those two definitely overlapped) by storm.
You are assigned to a being called “The Batter”. The Batter has an important mission. Be sure that it’s accomplished.
’Purification in progress…’
OFF is a puzzle RPG with a battle system. Don’t get me wrong, you battle a lot (and the battle theme slaps). The battle system is an Active Time Battle system like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, and honestly is something best put on auto-battle, in my opinion, for your own sanity and reaction time. Though, try it for yourself first and see if you differ. The main brainpower goes into doing the puzzles, which range from typical indie RPG puzzles to weird brain-teaser notebook shit, which I’m pretty down with personally.
With a charming hand-drawn artstyle with smokey shading crafted meticulously by Mortis Ghost, alongside a sometimes-grand, mostly-eerie soundtrack by Coldwood, OFF presents a truly bizarre world of cordoned-off numbered zones filled with strange people, surreal logic, and impure spirits. A lot of impure spirits. A lot of impure spirits. The Batter’s important mission: purify the world. I’d say more plot-hook-wise, but the Dadaist setting crafted by Mortis Ghost & co. is one best experienced for yourself, and the game wastes no time easing you into its unreality.
Remnants of OFF’s legacy can be seen in critically acclaimed works such as Undertale and OneShot. As to be light on the spoilers, if you’ve played both of those games, you should know the connecting link between them. OFF was the first RPG to really do it. Even though some parts of OFF may feel inferior and underwhelming comparative to these works in hindsight, OFF set the bar for a new level of what would eventually become the standard for RPGs attempting to use said device. Even if the device’s more shallow usage doesn’t wow you or comes off as cliché, there is still much value to be had within the world of OFF, as OFF rarely lingers in moments.
’Hence nothing remains except for our regrets.’
OFF is a free downloadable game for Windows and Pre-Catalina Mac, but due to the nature of RPGMaker 2003, the platform limit can be entirely circumvented as I lay out in a couple paragraphs. You can download OFF and its translation variations here.
I personally recommend 3.0 for the English translation, it’s more accurate to the source, and LISTEN TO THE GAME’S PLEAS TO INSTALL THE FONTS THEY’RE NOT JOKING IT DOES BREAK THE TEXT OTHERWISE.
You can also play OFF in your browser or just cross-platform by loading it through the open-source EasyRPG interpreter for RPGMaker 2000/2003 games. This should work on any OS, as long as you have access to a keyboard.
According to howlongtobeat, OFF ranges from 5-6 hours of content on average. Plus, with many save points, it’s easy to pick up and put down at most moments. Plus, it’s free! I'd definitely recommend it, OFF offers an experience that at times is entirely off-the-wall and out of left field, and it's quite refreshing. Have fun!
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I'M SO SORRY GAMERS WE HAD A FAMILY GATHERING POSTING SLIPPED MY MIND
Continuing my complaints about a semi-obscure D&D setting from last thread. Planescape establishes 3 things extremely quickly
1: There is a group of people who explcitly believe that the laws of nature, magic, and everything else is made up. The laws of physics are only the way they are because people think they are that way
2: These people are explicitly right about that part of their philosophy.
3: These people run the legislative arm of government
And they do nothing with it. Why the hell aren't these people voting on whether Newton's laws should apply!? Why aren't there parliamentary debates about the sky being blue! You could have someone argue that magic shouldn't work because it's nonsnse, AND HE COULD MAKE IT SO. Come on man, it's right there
You could have people arguing for gold to be more dense as a monetary policy. You could have a faction argue that the existing system of afterlives based on alignment is oppressive and forces people to build their ideas about what constitutes right and wrong based on the beliefs of a single fallible being (D&D deities), and motion to abolish the afterlife.
that's a THING, they created that as a possibility in their setting and they did nothing with it. I'm pretty sure there isn't even a single adventure that actually has the signers do anything. You can't give me a setting where you can disprove a guys existence in a debate and he CEASES TO BE because he no longer believes in his own existence and then not do anything with it. And don't tell me it's because it isn't relevant to the dungeon crawling experience. If you can't make an adventure out of "A politician is trying to abolish heaven/hell" then you don't deserve to DM.
Sounds like something you could use for a campaign, but that which could mess up the setting for more normal play if they made any decision canon.
I mean they blew up the setting already. They rewrote most of the setting in Die Vecna Die and Faction War and stripped the setting for parts. Planescape funtionally doens't exist, but everything but the esoteric stuff is just elements of other settings now. The last planescape book was published for AD&D, but Tieflings are now a core race.
But yes, you're right that any actual such changes should be on an individual campaign basis. I should probably write an adventure or something instead of complaining
Point 2 relies on positivist belief, right? So it wouldn’t allow people to just vote away Newton’s laws. You’d need to run a mass indoctrination campaign to make it so.
Thats true. People would need to believe that the law changed reality for into actually do so, or they would need to no longer believe in the original system.
Although the signers explicitly alsp have the ability to enforce their desire upon reality in a minor way (With a minor chance of accidentally forgetting to exist) inplying a strong enough will on its own can enforce reality bending.
If a pov goes unchallenged in a work or expression of a work then it means that it's being tacitly approved of.
This is obviously a true statement and doesn't need to be debated in parliament.
I'm either too dumb or not british enough to understand this. I'm sleepy though, so I guess my point is that a bunch of technophilic meritocracy-loving dweebs wouldn't see any problems with that system as-designed and so couldn't imagine conflicts that could arise within it. If they had actually succeeded in creating a utopia, this would be a bad setting design.