the story of this game is like no other one. in 2016 the company responsible for some of the most strange and heartfelt interpretations of videogames i’ve seen decided to make a game using some of the most evil, exploitative monetization tactics ever devised. it feels surreal at times. it’s like watching papyrus and sans trying to sell me nft’s or something. granted, the game was rereleased in 2019 as an actual videogame that you buy once with money (this is the version i will be effectively reviewing.) despite a few hitches i think that it made the transition into real-game-hood quite elegantly all things considered and i praise the efforts of any studio willing to convert live service games into something that can be meaningfully experienced past the game’s lifespan. it’s still weird as fuck though.
i’ll tell you right now, the game is good. if you like the writing in moon and chulip, this game has it in spades! it is a game about a game developer that is written by game developers, and if 90% of studios try some shit like that it looks pathetic. onion is an easy exception though. they nail it. the gameplay might not be for everyone, but as someone who loves small form puzzles and long-term roguelite progression, this game is crazy good. if there’s one thing i genuinely appreciate about the game’s exploitative roots it’s how extremely grindy it is. it will b grating for most people, but i love running something small over and over trying to get the drop i need. some of the bigger dungeons end up requiring a little too much focus for my taste, but for the most part it’s so fun to turn my brain off and blast yamada through a room full of slimes and skeletons over and over until i get a sword with 5 more attack than my last sword.
so, as someone who briefly looked at this game at launch and only relatively recently learned it got rereleased as an actual game a question plagued me: how the fuck does all the pay to win garbage work? if you haven’t seen the game in either state, the main “pay to win” element of the original game is the rice ball. an infinitely reusable revive item. well as infinite as your wallet anyway (<- if any article written about the game from the time of its release uses this line, they stole it from me in the future right now. nobody else thought of this it’s my original thought.) it should also be said that using them makes you ineligible for leaderboards if you’re some kind of loser who cares about that. as well as your 99 cent continues theres also basically cheat armor and weapons you could buy. my knowledge of the game’s microtransactions ends there because i deleted the app pretty soon after seeing that shit and haven’t investigated much since. the current game replaces real money purchases with “clovers”. rare drops from the game’s metal slime equivalents (as well as a few other sources.) and honestly, clovers are pretty damn easy to farm for! there isn’t much stopping you from farming 999 1-ups and slamming your head into every dungeon until you win. one might stop and wonder why they didn’t just do away with at least the revives entirely. maybe the armor sets could just be drops from levels or something too. well… from my understanding of the late game content (which i haven’t cracked yet in my playthrough, my context is mostly walkthroughs i’ve skimmed for bits of info) the game content kind of needs cheat revives! which is such a massive endictment of what this game was as a live-service, but makes rice balls new place in this game’s economy an actual mechanic instead of shameless exploitation. do they deserve a point for that? i don’t know.
ultimately i feel weird about this game. this game used to be Bad. even if i like the writing and the studio that made it, i do not think making games like the one they made is ethical. i like it as it is now a lot, but would i have like it if it was just a normal game from the start? or is the part of the hyper-grindy gameplay loop that has me so hooked intrinsic to it’s fucked up microtransaction pinching origins? i don’t think i’ve decided that for myself yet, but i think it’s something worth considering if more live service games get rereleased like this in the future. i don’t see it becoming a big trend or anything since ultimately letting a live service fizzle out is a lot cheaper than turning it into an actual game. that megaman gacha thing nobody played is getting the same treatment though. how should we feel about games like this knowing they wouldn’t exist without taking advantage of people? if nothing else, onion games made one hell of a moral dilemma with this one. 5 stars.
i’ll tell you right now, the game is good. if you like the writing in moon and chulip, this game has it in spades! it is a game about a game developer that is written by game developers, and if 90% of studios try some shit like that it looks pathetic. onion is an easy exception though. they nail it. the gameplay might not be for everyone, but as someone who loves small form puzzles and long-term roguelite progression, this game is crazy good. if there’s one thing i genuinely appreciate about the game’s exploitative roots it’s how extremely grindy it is. it will b grating for most people, but i love running something small over and over trying to get the drop i need. some of the bigger dungeons end up requiring a little too much focus for my taste, but for the most part it’s so fun to turn my brain off and blast yamada through a room full of slimes and skeletons over and over until i get a sword with 5 more attack than my last sword.
so, as someone who briefly looked at this game at launch and only relatively recently learned it got rereleased as an actual game a question plagued me: how the fuck does all the pay to win garbage work? if you haven’t seen the game in either state, the main “pay to win” element of the original game is the rice ball. an infinitely reusable revive item. well as infinite as your wallet anyway (<- if any article written about the game from the time of its release uses this line, they stole it from me in the future right now. nobody else thought of this it’s my original thought.) it should also be said that using them makes you ineligible for leaderboards if you’re some kind of loser who cares about that. as well as your 99 cent continues theres also basically cheat armor and weapons you could buy. my knowledge of the game’s microtransactions ends there because i deleted the app pretty soon after seeing that shit and haven’t investigated much since. the current game replaces real money purchases with “clovers”. rare drops from the game’s metal slime equivalents (as well as a few other sources.) and honestly, clovers are pretty damn easy to farm for! there isn’t much stopping you from farming 999 1-ups and slamming your head into every dungeon until you win. one might stop and wonder why they didn’t just do away with at least the revives entirely. maybe the armor sets could just be drops from levels or something too. well… from my understanding of the late game content (which i haven’t cracked yet in my playthrough, my context is mostly walkthroughs i’ve skimmed for bits of info) the game content kind of needs cheat revives! which is such a massive endictment of what this game was as a live-service, but makes rice balls new place in this game’s economy an actual mechanic instead of shameless exploitation. do they deserve a point for that? i don’t know.
ultimately i feel weird about this game. this game used to be Bad. even if i like the writing and the studio that made it, i do not think making games like the one they made is ethical. i like it as it is now a lot, but would i have like it if it was just a normal game from the start? or is the part of the hyper-grindy gameplay loop that has me so hooked intrinsic to it’s fucked up microtransaction pinching origins? i don’t think i’ve decided that for myself yet, but i think it’s something worth considering if more live service games get rereleased like this in the future. i don’t see it becoming a big trend or anything since ultimately letting a live service fizzle out is a lot cheaper than turning it into an actual game. that megaman gacha thing nobody played is getting the same treatment though. how should we feel about games like this knowing they wouldn’t exist without taking advantage of people? if nothing else, onion games made one hell of a moral dilemma with this one. 5 stars.