Basically, in my experience, “Non-violent” as a specific descriptor for a videogame is not very useful because as used it seems to rely on upholding the other underlying assumptions of the “proper games” press and economy, focused on polished, stylishly packaged product, and then only describes videogames legible from that starting point, minus a specific type of physical violence or a “battle system.”
Moon remix rpg adventure undertale simulator#
I'm talking, of course, about the bad objects of videogames discourse that nevertheless make up the majority of people's engagement with the form free to play mobile games, adjacent to “low-quality” “shovelware” style releases, predatory monetization models, and gambling, visual novels and their association with sex or otherwise deficient relationship ethics, in addition to having “no gameplay,” the unwholesome association of being “playable with one hand,” but also the variety of popular educational or simulator games that hew too close to the banal, whether they're presenting cars, sports, math homework, everyday occupations, or caring for a pet. Claims for the wholesomeness or moral improvement non-violent games represent become questionable as soon as you consider that the precise reason many non-violent games are implicitly excluded from these discussions are their proximity to or actual unwholesomeness. To say that violence is the norm in videogames and non-violence is a novel alternative betrays a perspective originating in a very particular context of videogames.
As I've said before, the immediate framing of Untitled Goose Game as either violent or not violent to me seemed to miss the much more unique aspect of it within indie games, that it was actually funny. I think the question of violence versus non-violence plays out in videogame development discourse and games criticism as a sort of shadowboxing, and isn't necessarily a productive angle to default to on games that offer an initially novel mechanic. I'm not really interested in arriving at overly utilitarian general principles about “violent” versus “non-violent” games. But for a lot of reasons moon (and Chulip) tend to be more interesting to me than recent approaches to this discussion within games criticism, and not just for their historical interest.
There are easy comparisons to be made between moon and Chulip and more recent videogames that replace the standard battles or violence that progress many mainstream games with some sort of non-violent alternative. This act has scattered and hidden love across the land, and you, a boy who has been sucked into the JRPG's world, have to find it again. Deliberately set up as a riff on the single-minded player grinding their way through the latest JRPG, to the inhabitants of the game world The Hero appears to wordlessly plow through their towns, rummage through their stuff and kill any animal they come across. While in Chulip this heart strengthening is primarily self-improvement (the girl of your dreams only wants a boy with a very strong heart and a well-practiced kisser), in moon your quest is explicitly contrasted with how The Hero moves through the world. Both games proceed in a fairly open-ended fashion, with your strengthened heart giving you greater ability to roam further in the game's world and discover new challenges. In Chulip this takes the form of figuring out the conditions that will allow someone to consent to a kiss, in moon it can take the form of doing someone a favor, solving a quest, inspiring them, rescuing the soul of a dead animal, or even just learning something about them.
The tagline for the recently localized 1997 Love-de-Lic title moon: Remix RPG Adventure says “don't be a hero, feel the love.” Like Chulip, which several members of moon's team would go on to create a few years later, moon's primary mechanic is to strengthen the player character's heart through finding love scattered around the world. Reed Home > Writing Portfolio > Loving in a World Already Written: moon: Remix RPG Adventure Loving in a World Already Written - Emilie M.