The surreal role-playing game Off, in which players take control of an entity in a black-and-white baseball uniform who is sent on a mission to “purify the world,” had the steepest of uphill battles when it was released in 2008.
Off was freeware, meaning it was not available for distribution on popular digital stores like Steam. Neither its designer nor composer were known figures in the video game industry. And it was in French.
But nearly two decades later, after word of mouth among developers and fans, Off’s footprints can be found in many R.P.G.s — Omori, Everhood, Lisa the Painful and the 2015 hit Undertale — that feature surreal stories and metacommentary. This week, a remastered version of Off was released for the PC and the Switch.
“It was never supposed to be a big game,” said Off’s designer, Mortis Ghost, who primarily works as a comic book artist in Belgium. He added: “I was like, if I’ve got 50 players, I’m really happy about it. That was my expectations at the time, so everything since is crazy.”
The interest in Off was propelled by developers familiar with its game engine, RPG Maker, and fans of similarly ethereal R.P.G.s like Yume Nikki and the Mother series.
Over time, a community formed. Fans created English translations, including a popular one shared in 2011 on the forums of a gathering hub for fans of Mother, known as Earthbound outside Japan. (The remastered version is based on that translation.) Without the language barrier, Off’s popularity rose.
Adrienne Bazir, the creator of In Stars and Time, an R.P.G. in which a group of adventurers is trapped in a time loop, came across Off on Tumblr around 2013. People were creating fan art of the Batter, attempting to decipher the protagonist’s facial features beyond its pixelated portraits, and filling in the gaps of the dreamy narrative with their own interpretations.
Off was one of the first indie games Bazir remembers playing. Its black-and-white monochromatic style of characters (the remaster is in color) and the use of battle tracks to evoke contrasting feelings left a significant impression.
It was also a showcase of the possibilities of RPG Maker. Whenever a battle within Off ends, a message says “purification complete.” Bazir took a cue from this, adding flavor text to certain interactions within In Stars and Time that serve its narrative in the process.
One loop might end with the phrase, “You slipped on a banana peel.” When the character attempts the same action in the future, the game could respond, “You would rather not die today, so you leave the banana peel alone.”
“It kind of warps the R.P.G. in a little bit,” Bazir said, adding, “It really puts you inside the game in a way that I can’t really describe.”
Off toys with metacommentary from the very beginning. During the Batter’s introduction to a central character, the game asks the player to input a name for the protagonist. Then, the character explicitly asks for the player’s name, acknowledging their presence.
OneShot, a 2016 puzzle adventure game, also turns the player into a deuteragonist, with dialogue options and certain actions that occur beyond the protagonist’s awareness. The game allows the player to decide whether to reveal or hide key information from the character, and it often responds to the player’s actions by breaking the fourth wall with such surprises as changing the computer desktop background to solve a puzzle.
Nightmargin, the pseudonymous co-writer of OneShot, said that although Off was not a direct influence, its use of bizarre architecture and otherworldly atmosphere had been informative.
Another developer influenced by Off is Toby Fox, the main creator behind Undertale. Players can spare the game’s monsters rather than killing them, contesting the morality of their actions throughout the adventure.
Fox, who declined to comment, has collaborated with Ghost and other composers to work on the soundtrack for Off’s remaster and was also present in meetings, sharing feedback about new features.
Looking back, Ghost said he thought that Undertale was better than Off, with a story that resonates more with the person he is today. It draws similar ideas but presents them with a positive message toward the end.
“Off is a game I made when I was 21, and I was quite a pessimist guy,” Ghost said. “There’s a lot of humor in Off, but this is quite a nihilistic and negative game.”
When the publisher Fangamer approached Ghost with the idea of the remaster, he asked for the game’s freeware version to remain untouched. Aware of its long reach in the R.P.G. community, it was not his intention to change its legacy.
“I think the game is now more owned by the community than by myself,” Ghost said. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to make a new Off with my actual point of view, even if it’s better than the one I had when I did the game.
“I believe in the fact that we become a better person with time,” he continued, “but I think it would be disrespectful for the fandom to make something new.”
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