I had to see this one with my own two eyes for some twisted and self hurting reason, and boy was everyone right about how baffling and grueling of a self absorbed mess this one is. To me, YIIK represents the apex of the indie scene's obssession with the egocentric tortured artist narrative that has been the go-to window dressing for many of the critical darlings of the last decade, mostly due to how badly it fails on the execution of said concept.

Andrew Allanson makes his case for Alex's incredible lack of charisma and likeability by implying that those were intented attributes deliberately written to present an unlikely protagonist that defies the expectations of videogame conventions and serves to tell a "meaningful and thought provoking" narrative, but I do have to question if Andrew understands that you can write unredeemable pieces of shit and still have them be compelling people to follow, not unlike the characters from the inumerous prestigious novels and movies he so eagerly name drops as influences. The voice behind Alex's obnoxious and verbose inner thoughts and social interactions permeates most of YIIK's world and people, bloating the whole experience with an onslaught of solipsistic musings that would make your teen self cringe and inner world exposition dumps that would make Kojima blush, and a group of characters lacking in so much chemistry and entertaining banter that fill the game's dead air with loud meaningless conversations that made me appreciate how much of an art what Persona does is.

Tying it all up, you have one of the most unpleasant combat systems I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing in an rpg. A third of the way through I had to turn on Story Mode and Assist Mode while fast forwarding as much as I could, and I shudder to think of the people who subjected themselves to the rest of the game without resorting to any of those settings. There are design choices made here where I struggle to believe that someone made them without deliberately trying to make this combat system a living hell to wrestle with for 20 hours. Andrew infamously stated that if people aren't able to appreciate his game, then "games aren't art, but toys for children", an idea that I find very insincere when he himself has brushed aside the strengths of the medium as mere tools in service of his literary interests and fails to recognize the gameplay value of the many games he apes from and that already disprove his perception of the audience.

I have seen comparisons made between YIIK and The Room, and while YIIK's team has immensely more talent than whatever Tommy Wiseau has, I do see where that's coming from. You aren't so much in it to experience the art presented to you, as much as you are to see the psychosis of the artist behind it, and YIIK does have its poignant and head turning moments that reach Pathologic levels of antagonism towards the player that reveal some kind of accidental genius behind its aggresively mediocre facade. Not only does the world of YIIK unironically revolve around Alex by the end of the game, he implicates you in his self importance and passes onto you his responsibilities and obligations to be a better person, and I find the audacity and nerve to do that...kinda brilliant??, more so deserving of the pretentious "Postmodern RPG" moniker than the Earthbound/Mother 3 gimped 4th wall breaks or the doubt seered into me each time the loading screen tip "videogames are not a waste of time" popped up.

And dont get me wrong, thinking that YIIK is some misunderstood masterpiece of game design or secretely a arthouse cult classic in the making. Judging by Andrew's defensive posture when talking about the game's reception and the passive aggressiveness he slides into the game's updates, much of the artistic merit that can be inferred from YIIK is most likely just a pure casualty of someone trying to aspire to his influences and falling way short of the mark, and suggesting that most of it was intentional would be implying that someone could have the talent to consciously write and design as badly as YIIK was. But Andrew made art here, not the kind of art he wanted to make, but art nonetheless, and I do find more value in this relentlessly life draining game than most indie artsy fartsy games out there. I play YIIK and I see a sincere attempt at creating something unique and different, scrambling ideas from every piece of fiction the creator cherishes and throwing it at the wall to see what sticks, not having the self awareness to realize its own mediocrity or how misplaced and misguised many of those ideas might be, and I can definitely sympathize and relate to that.

PS: The Iwata "tribute" is the most unintentionally hilarious bit in the whole game. You have the power of videogames to make anything you want, and you put the man in a fucking tombstone.

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is an experience unlike any other. It's hard to begin to put the game into words. I think a lot of critics are quick to dismiss YIIK because of it's pretentious title, ridiculously unlikable protagonist and the ongoing controversy surrounding the game over time - some of which is justified, some of which is blown out of proportion. These things are true, unfortunately. The subtitle of YIIK is ridiculously pretentious, and regardless of intent the protagonist, Alex, is deeply, deeply unlikable. But what more is there to YIIK? I think what is here conveys more than a failed pretentious JRPG-wannabe meme game. This game IS saying things, and I think considering just how much of a process this game was for the developers - who saw their own mother die during production of the game - it would be disrespectful for me to disregard their intentions and attempts at making meaning through the gameplay and the story. So, forgive me if this is a long review beforehand.

YIIK focuses on a year in the life of Alex Eggleston, the most average young adult white dude to have probably ever been conceived. We all know someone like Alex YIIK (which is what I will be calling him in this review.) Vapid, yet confrontational. Smug, yet substanceless. Every human flaw you can imagine, Alex YIIK has it in droves, and he doesn't really have much in the way of positive attributes to like him. Why do people... LIKE Alex YIIK? What are his positive traits? He's never succeeded at anything worthwhile, he's not kind or big-hearted, he's not particularly smart or attractive. As a result, Alex YIIK, our protagonist, is the walking flaw. He's an amalgamation of everything that could possibly be wrong with a human being. The creators know it, and they make it very clear after a while. He's a pretentious little brat, who thinks the world revolves around him.

You might think it's a bit weird that I've gone on to talk about this first before talking about the gameplay, or the overall plot - but it's important to understand that if Alex YIIK does not work, this game does not work. If this game cannot make Alex YIIK into a deep and substantial character with a strong role in the story then it's game over. The whole game revolves around him. A lengthy amount of what I'm saying is going to be about him.
So, how does Alex YIIK play out? How does he fit into the story? ... Good question.

The idea of the story presented by YIIK is that Alex YIIK is explicitly a bad person. All of these negative traits are not a byproduct of poor writing, they are intentional. So, the story necessitates that he grow and become a kind person who cares for his friends and appreciates the world around them. It's a simple moral. Alex YIIK starts off the story by being a bad friend, bullying Rory, and berating his mother for not doing good enough. At the end of the story, YIIK is clear - Alex YIIK is a terrible guy, and he has hurt all of his friends and family. He knows it, and he makes a vow to change. So, we have an arc. How does the story actually engage with this, and importantly, can a story like this work in the first place?

You'll quickly notice that every question you can ask of YIIK leads to another one. This is because YIIK is very poorly written. It's an undeniable feature of the game that no amount of reduced monologue options (yes, that is a real feature) can fix. YIIK is convoluted, often needlessly, requiring you to interrogate every aspect of the text with a fervor to understand basic things about it. Despite what detractors would have you believe, this has nothing to do with postmodernism. It has everything to do with incompetence. Characters recite wikipedia articles to Alex YIIK about the mechanisms of metaphysics, Alex YIIK goes on borderline nonsensical tirades to the audience about whatever the hell he feels like and the two endings presented are incredibly abstract in an uninteresting and somewhat lazy way. So, decoding Alex YIIK and the story itself is needlessly hard, because YIIK tells its story very poorly. Again, the memes are right, and funny. "Vibrating With Motion" is more than just a meme, it's an indicator as to how the game's writing fails.

However, despite this, I think Alex YIIK does KIND OF work as a protagonist. His unlikability is undeniable, but the story does have a few very compelling ideas working with him.
A) Alex YIIK's unlikability is very, very well established. The story constructs his role well, and a lot of his internal monologues provide this increasingly frustrating sense that Alex YIIK knows what he is doing is wrong, but that his arrogance won't let him stop. It is genuinely harsh and sometimes almost personal to see him be a fuck-up. They wrote the most unlikable man in the world, to great effect.
B) The idea that Alex YIIK REALLY IS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE is deeply, deeply fascinating. The world does revolve around Alex YIIK, and it's something that Alex YIIK explicitly rejects. But really, all he is rejecting is the responsibility and the acknowledgement that comes with. He was fine with acting like he was the only one who mattered until responsibility came with it. So, when he faces the facts? When he realises that his presence in the universe is what will tear everything apart, and then he sees it happen? That's incredibly emotionally damaging for Alex YIIK, and does GENUINELY humble him. I like that. It's a good subversion.
C) The game essentially ends on the twist that you, the player, are the Alex YIIK of your own dimension. That sounds... ridiculous. That's because it is. It does really add to him, though. Alex YIIK goes from an unlikable bastard, to an uncomfortable mirror. Somewhere, in another universe, you could have been Alex YIIK. Exactly like him. Earlier, I mentioned that we all know someone like Alex YIIK. That someone is us. Alex YIIK has flaws so numerous, inevitably, we will see that flaw in ourselves. This is really cool. I think it explains why Alex YIIK is so viscerally hateable. It's like looking into one of those mirrors that makes you look fatter than you really are. Everybody laughs at a hall of mirrors, but if you're afraid of being fat, seeing that in the mirror can be quite impactful and scary. Alex YIIK is that for every flaw a person can have. That's scary, and quite powerful. I like that a lot.
D) The ending of the game does hold Alex YIIK accountable for being such an asshole. I have my issues with the ending but Alex YIIK doesn't get off scot-free. Just the opposite, he gets punished extensively.

That's what I like about Alex YIIK. I think he's a very interesting character when viewed through these specific ideas. However, uh, while I think these ideas really work, there is a story going on around him that he does not work in.

Alex YIIK has friends who seem to forgive him for everything and treat him like some kind of saint. Why would he even have friends who care about him? He's done nothing to earn their respect and friendship. He has no redeeming qualities at all. Yet, even when he shows basically no reform and offers weak-willed half hearted apologies, everybody falls to their feet to pray for him. This is really stupid. The rest of the cast will consistently break character just to puff Alex up. It just runs in contrast to the game's themes. Alex YIIK has to care for his friends, be a nice guy and do for them what they do for him - he can't be totally unlikable all the time and have people fall at his feet. This happens for the whole story, to the point where it gets all of his friends killed. This is what really instigates his change, but this is only for the final few hours of the game. They sell it, but it's already too late. Alex YIIK does go through development before that point, becoming marginally nicer - but it's not enough of a constant change to lead to this kind of Persona 4 style friendship group that support each other all the time. Especially not when Alex YIIK can make one of the characters kill themselves. Which, disregarding the obvious tastelessness on display, is absolutely terrible - and is tolerated by the main cast. It just doesn't work out. Alex YIIK develops in a way that feels totally disconnected from the rest of the cast, and it seriously kills the theme of the game.

In summary on Alex YIIK himself before I talk briefly about the rest of the cast, Alex YIIK simultaneously works, and yet, he doesn't. He's a great character concept carrying poignant ideas throughout the story, even if he's written poorly - but he is in total disconnect with the world around him. This kills him as a character, and makes him feel more like he is being celebrated for being a bad person, rather than growing - which he needs to do for the story to function.

The rest of the cast are rather hit or miss. I was a really big fan of Rory and Claudio. Rory is a sweet but really depressed guy who's struggling with his mental health after the death of his sister. He doesn't know how to cope, and this has led him to the point of delusion - when he meets the cast, he almost seriously hurts them because of this delusion. This plunges him into depression when Alex YIIK screams at him, telling him nobody cares about his dead sister. A lot of the game is helping him cope, and becoming a better and more confident person who can help others. He's sweet, and I like him. Claudio, on the other hand, is a mature black man who runs a record shop and is super into weird anime. He's really chill and respectful, and he doesn't like to lose his mind over anything. He's got a business of his own, a comfortable adult life, and he's happy that way. I like that. He's a good contrast to Alex YIIK - when he isn’t breaking his character to lick his boots. The rest of the cast suck and are boring. Most of them are just exposition dumps. Michael especially is probably the most boring fictional character ever, despite being a clear expy of Yosuke from Persona 4. I found most of them grating, with Rory and Claudio being the only major exceptions.

I still haven't talked about the gameplay yet, and it's for good reason. It REALLY sucks. Everything is based on little QTE minigames, and all of them are very unfun and repetitive. These minigames are clearly inspired by Mario and Luigi, but they lack the diversity to keep them interesting. Instead, you are doing the same QTE on loop with little to no strategy. It's just painfully boring, and that is all there is to it. Add on the uninteresting dungeons that do little of note with their puzzles as well as mind-numbing grinding requirements throughout the game, and actually playing this game is terrible. The gameplay just isn't up to par.

The music, on the other hand, is somewhat solid. It's all hit or miss with this game, but I think this soundtrack does land some good ones. Alex's theme is actually pretty good, and it makes for a good leitmotif that reappears throughout the game in various new contexts. A lot of the battle music is really awesome, and diverse, due to the huge amount of composers who worked on the game. Some of the tracks are still really bad, though. The soundtrack lacks consistency and cohesion outside of Alex's motif, which is definitely a result of numerous composers who were working on different pages. The visuals are particularly striking and memorable, too. I really liked them, they really do encapsulate post-modern visual design, conveying many emotions and scenarios through minimalism and surrealism. It's a cool visual fulfillment of post-modernism inspired by post-modern paintings and artists.

So what's left to say about YIIK? Honestly? A lot. Maybe one day I will make a full-on video essay on this behemoth. It's a complex beast, and I'm glad I sat down and really gave it a chance. However, it also really, really sucks. It sucks to see a game that I personally find myself morally agreeing with in many ways just... suck so much shit. But still, I think there is something to be learnt from this. I think just like how Alex YIIK represents our worst insecurity - YIIK itself is no different. Anybody could have made a game like YIIK - ambitious, with a lot to say, that falls short for one reason or another. I feel for the developers, because I think they had a lot of ideas and everything just kind of came crashing down on them. Their heart was in this, and so was their passion. It just hasn't born out. It can happen to anybody, it really can. I don't fault them for this game. I don’t fault Alex YIIK entirely, either. Because in both cases, it really can happen to anybody. We’ve all got a bit of Alex YIIK in us - and we all have the potential in us to make something like YIIK, for better or for worse. This isn't just a "quirky Earthbound-inspired RPG,” like many people insist that it is. This is a uniquely bad game - something that could only come from passion, and love.

So, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is bad. Really bad, actually. But it is genuine. ACKK Studios was making what they wanted to make. This is an earnest trainwreck, rather than a cynical attempt at a generic, indie RPG. Maybe that brings you comfort. Maybe that makes the game even funnier. Personally, I think that makes this whole thing hurt just a bit more.

I played this for a little over an hour, saw the unnecessarily verbose writing, the long monologues, the combat mini games that instead of making it more engaging, generates the opposite effect, and the fetishization of tragic deaths in real life. I completed the first dungeon and gave up when I realized the tedious way you level up in this game.
It could have been like any other bad game that I gave up to never think about again, but for a reason I ended up obsessed with this game.
I do not know how I got into this situation, but this game and its context became a horror story for me... Not a story about a game that went wrong, but more like a story about an author that poured all his passion and the contents of his mind into a canvas, and after looking at what came out of it, you realize that it’s something repellent and pretentious and… dumb.
I watched hours of videos and podcasts about this game, and read many articles, searching for an answer, but I think at the end of the day it all comes down to who you are and what you have to say, because that's what art is all about, and even though what the Allason brothers had to say with this game was not to my liking, I still admire the fact that they did.
(And yes, I say art even though one of them said that games are not).

also the ost slaps ngl

this game is the perfect litmus test for anyone's capabilities as a reviewer.

-if you clutch pearls about the obvious inspiration points, general dudebro vibes, and the supposed instances of "plagiarism" (which consist of a single paragraph of text that is openly credited) in order to condemn the game on moral grounds, you get an F
-if all you can see from this is a product of malice, you get a D
-if you uncritically wash away all common criticism as uninformed and see the game as an okay romp with a bad combat system, you get a C
-if you take the half-hearted, detached "there were good ideas here but they didn't turn out right. their mom had cancer :(" approach you get a B
-if you can say literally anything else about this game, you get an A

Toby Fox took down his tweets talking about his involvement (one song) after it came out and everyone found out what it really was. possibly the worst protag of all time, voiced by a creep. this game tries so unbelievably hard but fails in most aspects. not much about this game works and it hurts because you can tell there was passion behind it, i can partially see why it has a (mostly) ironic cult following now because it's something you do want to see be good. it's ambitious, its heart and influences are so obviously visible but it just falls flat on its face. high school talent show pants-shitting on stage energy.

Timeline of events:

I'm a games writer, and I was feeling bad about my work. I'm also a fan of postmodernist fiction. I thought: "Surely, comparing what I like and what I do to YIIK, a notoriously awful game, I'll feel better about myself." I bought it later, when it was on sale.

Now, I've played an hour and 9 minutes of it.

I did not know.

Even four years down the line, YIIK's developers do not understand... anything that makes a game coherent, and hold somebody's attention. We can't even talk about "good" here - this is not in the same star system as a "good" game.

At the start it's a thousand pinpricks. As it continues, they ramp up and turn into drills. And make no mistake: No video essay talking about it can make you understand how bad that feels to play.

Basic feedback for most player actions is absent; actions such as setting the Panda-barrier cannot be cancelled out of; the music meanders without skill or purpose; the graphical style has small inconsistencies and errors that would've been easily fixed, but never were; NPCs are either cardboard, or just the worst babblers I've ever seen anyone write. Statements that could take 2-3 text boxes and one selection screen take 20.

I genuinely thought this game could make me feel better; instead, I feel like I smugly punched a kid. With less time, fewer resources, more rudimentary tools, *I, and YOU* could create something better than this.

I spent money, and that's fine. I also put part of my soul as tribute on it when I put it in comparison to what I do, thinking that comparison would be anything but a let-down. And that is not fine. I want my soul back, YIIK.

I've abandoned it. I don't intend on picking it up again, even if it updates. Don't buy it. It's not even funny; it's just sad, and will make you feel sad, too.

The worst (best??) kind of disappointing art: the kind that you could tell was made by real people. The kind with the sort of passion and drive that can only be provided by someone who is thoroughly convinced that they have something to say that you don't already know. Its story is convoluted nonsense, its characters are bland and uninteresting, its combat is needlessly frustrating. It never really commits to any one idea, opting to implement many (and fail at executing all of them). But what really breaks this game for me is its self-consciousness. Anytime its weaknesses become too apparent, the writers simply remark on the fact that they are weaknesses. Apparently, you can get away with almost any bad writing as long as you let the player know that you know it's bad. It's a game that hopes to directly address the player and their flaws, yet all of its droning speeches about the meaning of existence find relevance only among the developers themselves. Playing this game is like watching the developers try to extract some kind of meaning out of the mistakes that they've made, or the mistakes that they think their "generation" has made, or whatever. But it's so dumb. Just... so so dumb. Big dumb game.

Play this game if you want to watch the world's longest, most excruciating train wreck. I couldn't tell you if it was worth it, but this is easily one of the most memorable bad games I've ever played. Will certainly be thinking about this game for a long time, even if it's not for the reasons the developers might hope. I guess that makes it a success.

edit: after over a year of thinking about this game, I'm convinced that I love it now and I cannot tell whether or not that love is ironic anymore. Either way, this review is outdated. Amazing game, masterpiece game. I.V hype is real.

Propping up video game reviews and out-of-context clips as if they hold incriminating value against a product or group of people is a cancer on this medium. It has done more work to de-legitimize games as a form of art than almost anything else. Honestly, you would laugh if somebody reviewed an album they had not listened to and simply said "it sound no good". me too lol.

You can dress up review as a flowery philosophical inquiry, a comedic retelling or most pretentiously a definitive answer to the question of "how good is it". I don't appreciate any of these and I don't think what I'm about to say is reductive, these are pretty much just time wasters that bring less to the table than the thing they're riffing on. I know this man, I absolutely love wasting time. It's not a bad thing that they exist, but let's stop pretending they're anything more. I believe reviews at their most valuable are either a showcase for the opinion of a reviewer with an understood character, or an assessment of what kind of person might appreciate the product.

I was convinced I hated this and that it was a piece of shit. I actually properly played it only after catching wind of a plot interpretation I was not aware of. When I had first tried to play it years ago, I was so blinded by indifference and the expectation that it was trash, I had missed the unbelievably blatant symbolism that unlocks almost all of the narrative's depth. I'm not saying it's without faults as any game might have, and it's no doubt a niche rpg, I just want you to know that a huge number of people discuss or comment on this game as if granted divine knowledge of it's quality from a higher authority, while in reality they don't even know what's happening in it. At the very least, this game forced me to re-examine my views of the online reaction culture that I already loathed, as I'd fallen victim to it. That's a bigger personal impact on me than most games.

It's funny what website I'm writing this on.
A game about a guy who treats both his life and his relationship with media as a grand and noble ordeal, while he also misunderstands them and treats them like disposable trash. And so, the response to YIIK somehow manages to be one of the most strange and fascinating things about it. I don't like the combat in this game very much btw, I like just about everything else in it quite a bit.

I have never played a game that's so paradoxically terribly designed but also underneath all the annoying, insufferable pitfalls is incredibly fascinating as an in-depth look into the mind of a self-important "tortured" indie developer who genuinely believed everything that was done was done for the best.

The entire philosophy of the game feels like a developer struggling to settle their love-hate (arguably more hate) relationship with RPGs as a gaming genre. It takes every critically acclaimed RPG you could think of and created this bizarre patchwork of a game that's trying very desperately to say and be: "I CAN DO THIS BETTER". Ironically, with a game which title includes "A Postmodern RPG", indulging in it's own grand self-importance within its own genre, it somehow single-handedly becomes the very worst example instead. This is bad, like, REALLY fucking bad. There is not a single thing this game does that it succeeds in where countless other games it "references" have set the bar and nailed. The plot feels like it was completely improvised as it went along, the characters range from being card board cutouts to genuinely insufferable, the dialogue is overwrought, the combat is an utter disaster of turn-based design trying to implement a grab-bag of several dozen RPG mechanics without ever realizing if any of these even work together. It also has one of the absolute anti-climatic endings and final boss I've ever seen.

There's no other game quite like this, probably not worth suffering through a play-through but just watching one instead.