CW: mentions of suicide, spoilers later on

I want to go on record for the most part and say that I love YIIK for what its concept is and what it sets out to do. I can really see the amount of love they poured into this project, however flawed it may be, and I will defend its existence in whatever way I can. That said I wish I could score it higher but I have the same gripes with everyone else about the gameplay and dialogue.

The gameplay is slow-paced and downright unreadable in some situations, such as that one pixel minigame where you have to parry that weird yellow smiley ball guy and there's no telegraphing barring the split second window the game gives you. And, as a bonus, if you miss at any point the remaining characters also get hit. The system offers no breathing room with the action-based combat so learning new skills comes with a toss-up rather than being a new and engaging way to play the game. If you completely miss the action, you won't hit at all. There's also this weird elemental system that feels sort of shoved in? I find it weird to have an elemental system in a game where none of the characters use elemental magic. All that combined with the fact that the fastest of battles take at least 20 seconds wears down on my excitement pretty fast. There's also random encounters when you travel in the overview map which is really not for me. I was getting kind of annoyed trying to find the right town to go to and find a crosswalk and having those aforementioned battles really felt like padding. I feel like the random encounters should have been put into the dedicated monster dungeons they had. Dungeons were also not very much fun for me as any puzzles kinda felt slow to operate or were kind of clunky. I seriously can't believe that they have two types of barriers that require different abilities to be removed. Surely you can do better than that.

There was also some functionality issues with one part of the first dungeon. There's this one part where you're supposed to aim and throw a cat in a direction to flip a lever, but it's meant to be played with a controller which means that you're meant to have an analogue stick for it, which means that I had to use my ARROW KEYS FOR ANALOGUE. Only by sheer miracle was I able to get those levers.

That aside, YIIK really delivers well on the overall vibes. The graphics, music and atmosphere are top-notch especially when it leans into the unsettling surrealism part, such as Wind Town at night or the Warehouse. I also loved the world seemingly breaking apart and changing art direction as Y2K approaches, ripping apart the universe. I could also stare at the title screen all day, it's so soothing~

The story, however, I could sadly not say the same. Unfortunately, it's presented in the worst way possible with it explained with long monologues presenting all these in-universe concepts as matter-of-fact within the main plot, rather than letting the player experience them unfiltered and learning more about them through reading and side quests. The Soul Space and leaving one's own universe through emotional distress is an intriguing and nuanced concept that gets talked about as if it's supposed to be normal and we're as dumb as Alex for not knowing about it before. Don't get me wrong, these concepts can work! They just need breathing room to be digested. I think Homestuck does a great job with that in its beginning pages, with it letting the reader slowly understand the rules of the universe and rewarding them with humor and awesome battle sequences. YIIK's presentation made my brain hurt.

It's also hard to see how this ties in with the game's supposed message about self-improvement and becoming a better person, at least within the main route. That message in of itself is scattered and has no narrative structure save for a few actions. One being Alex's neglectfulness of his studies placing his mom in a state of financial worry that doesn't amount to anything considering it gets resolved WITHOUT Alex manning up and getting himself a job. The other is causing Rory's suicide. Instead of taking responsibility and changing his actions to try and improve himself later on, he just talks to himself about how much of a shitty person he is and continues to keep the focus on himself. And the universe affirms him for it. Even in the alternate ending RORY'S GHOST FORGIVES HIM, WHAT???

It's funny that the song's one track by Toby Fox made me care about this game more than anything. Don't get me wrong, all of the music sounds great but Toby's is phenomenal. It might even be my favorite of his. It's a simple chiptune battle track, but it's hauntingly somber like a lonely voice crying out for a sense of purpose. This is paired with the album cover they chose for the official OST release, while just being a random screenshot from the upcoming YIIK I.V, still managed to tell a story. Alex ashamedly looking at a wide-eyed Sammy for some sort of guidance or comfort but seeing that she's just as scared as he is. I even came up with a line from the song's melody. It's cheesy, I know, but good music is a very powerful tool for conveying messages and not just emotions and tone.

"You thought you were ready to embrace change, but you didn't expect the change to change you."

If I'm being honest with myself, I would've wanted to take this story in a completely different direction about Alex being thrust into adult life and him avoiding his responsibilities and new-found feelings through bizarre adventures that only serve as a mere distraction. His own feelings of inferiority masked by a huge ego and attitude being slowly brought down as he realizes how pointless his adventuring is and how much joy he gets out of being with his friends. Sammy and the Essentia could stay as misleading and antagonistic distractions, but the culmination could be Alex finally realizing that none of this is actually worth the battle. I don't know, I think this game has hindered my rationalizing skills a bit.

I cannot stress enough though, how excited I am for YIIK I.V and how it addresses all of its current flaws. The new battle system looks great and snappy, if a bit disorienting. I also like that they're tapping into the surrealism, and flexing their scripting muscles with new cutscenes. It looks like they're planning on keeping the monologues in but they're making them more interesting by presenting Alex an MC at an open mic night recounting his tales, which is a fair enough compromise if the devs are that keen about keeping that vision for him. I personally don't think I.V will solve all of its problems, but it will definitely make things more interesting and I respect the hell out of the devs for standing by their game.

YIIK is one of the worst games I’ve ever played but… that’s also why I love it so much?

This feels different to other games that I’d call the “worst”, that I’d usually describe as something like a huge disappointment in a favourite franchise or just an obvious cashgrab. It’s easy to see all of the passion that went into YIIK, the amount of care and different ideas that the creators had, and how they wanted to make something that would stick with people. And I guess for me, they did succeed with that last point. Just not in the way they wanted!
In the past year, YIIK has honestly become the game I’ve talked about the most, telling multiple people about it and how insanely flawed the story and execution can get, and each time it never gets old seeing how they react to it. I seriously love telling people how much of a trainwreck it becomes, to the point where I’ve gained a… huge ironic appreciation towards it? I don’t know what to call it, but I guess “guilty pleasure” might work too?

When I first finished YIIK, I hated it. But as time has gone on, it’s got to the point where I’m unable to hate it now. It’s what I’d call my favourite worst game ever, one that I think everyone should play at least once just because I don’t think having someone explain it to you or watching a video about it can fully show just how ridiculous this game can get

Holy fucking shit. I want to bang the protagonist from YIIK so goddamn bad. I can't stand it anymore. Every time I go to look at him I get a massive erection. I've seen literally every rule 34 post there is of him online. My dreams are nothing but constant fucking sex with Alex Eggleston. I'm sick of waking up every morning with six nuts in my boxers and knowing that those are nuts that should've been busted inside of Alex tight hipster ass. I want him to have my mutant gen z babies.

Fuck, my fucking mom caught me YIIKING OFF to porn of him. She hasn't said a word to me in 10 hours and I'm worried she's gonna take away my PC. I might not ever get to see Alex again.

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is a game I’ve felt a personal grudge against ever since it came out. Even back in 2016, I saw previews of what it was and felt excited. It’s style and approach to making a “Mother-inspired RPG” always really interested me. When I played it, however, I quickly realized all it had was taken in every wrong way possible. Everything I was interested in was mangled with, hamfisted, downright unfun. I hated YIIK, and only hated it more when I watched the public reception to it. How could a game I was so excited for, something that felt like I would get a lot out of, be so bad?

The game is still bad. Nothing I say means I think it was any better than I thought it was then. In a way, I almost thought it was worse. The combat feels painfully slow and thoughtless on top of being almost totally unnecessary, the dialogue tends toward being horribly boring, the story goes in places that feel like they contradict what it initially tries to do, the puzzles and dungeons are either horribly uninteresting or frustrating, and there’s a veritable host of annoying bugs I encountered on this playthrough. I gave it one star before I did this playthrough and I still stand by it. But, more personally, I feel like I’ve been able to open myself up to be more receptive to it, and more so the people behind it.

Until now, I had treated YIIK with a vile amount of hatred. I hated the game through and through, and I would speak bad at the creator’s expense. This is par for the course with a lot of people who talk about YIIK, and even if I didn’t intend to, I would tend to catch myself regurgitating that mindset when I spoke on it too. I wholly believed that the creators must have hated the kinds of people who played games like it. That they went in with the intention to make a frustrating, awful game. Over time, my memories of what I played were influenced by the people who trashed it, making an example of it as “the worst of indie games” and then people who never even played it and didn’t want to give it the time of day. But, as I played it, I looked more into the story behind the development of YIIK. I listened to interviews with the brothers who made this game. What I found was that although the game was incompetent, it was made with a true passion and honesty. It was a game tirelessly developed over the better part of a decade, even through the worst in their life. When they got mad at people decrying their game in interviews, I can understand where it comes from. My God, if I worked so hard and put so much of myself behind something just for it to be berated and treated like a laughing stock, I’d be infuriated. What an asshole I was to dismiss everything they worked towards.

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is a terrible game. What it does is terrible, and what it says is bad on the outset and delivered even worse. What’s the worst part is how much it feels like it’s full of itself. But it is doing something, and it is saying something. It’s something that feels like it was made by a real person instead of just being churned from a factory, even if this kind of person is no one I’d ever want to meet in my life.

Even if it failed miserably, it really tried to make something that felt different and unique to it, and it came from a very honest place. For as bad as it is, I believe a game like YIIK is worth a thousand safe, market-tested, corporate games that are sure to please. I hope these developers learn and grow from their experience with YIIK and their previous work to make something better. I do believe now that they could.

The only game I would truly describe as "Lovecraftianly bad". Not only does it find new and exciting avenues to being bad every 10 minutes or so: after playing Yiik you are permanently scarred with it, a small section of Yoourk brain is tainted with the sickness. As Yoouk thiink about it more and more, the void where your sentiience Yuused to be grows. The more you ponder, the less iit makes sense. Untiilk your sense of self is eroded away and you are left shaking, vibrating with motion.

I named my real life cat after one of the characters in it. So know this 2.5 is not because the game is miid. But because it exiists in a simultaneous 0.5 and 5.0.