One of the mini-arcs I've had going on during the Indie Game of the Week's tenure is getting over my general aversion towards scrappy RPG Maker projects, especially those of a freeware nature and/or visually rough presentation. It's not so much that I'm putting on airs with regards to the high standards a game needs to pass before I deign to bless it with my insightful drivel, but rather that there's an apprehension in parsing such an immense library of projects created by no end of imaginative and dedicated developers who maybe don't have the scripting or other technical talents required to bring their ideas to life via other avenues. In that respect, entry-level software like RPG Maker or Ren'Py are indispensable in creating a tier even lower, budget-wise, than the many comparatively slicker Indie games dropping on Steam and other marketplaces on a regular basis. It sometimes feels like the video game industry is one of those vertical cities where those at the top enjoy the most wealth and visibility. There's substance to be found deeper down, but it takes more effort to find.

Off, or OFF, is one of those RPG Maker projects that found itself a global cult offering despite debuting as a French language game. Like fellow EarthBound-alikes, it uses the familiarity of turn-based RPGs to tell a subversive and mostly symbolic tale about an entity born to purify the world. The world, in this case, being an unusual dimension of four "zones" floating in an endless void, each possessed of a certain philosophy behind its creation and maintenance and presently plagued by aggressive phantoms. The Batter, as this determined individual is simply called, seeks to destroy all these phantoms but also the corrupt guardians of each zone: their would-be deities, each of whom responsible for the nature of their pocket of this universe. The Batter is joined by "Add-ons," voiceless rings that fight alongside him and possess specific skills (called "competences"), as well as a feline being calling itself The Judge that pops up occasionally to dispense advice and exposition. It would be pointless to explain the story, because it's both incredibly straightforward and hopelessly abstruse. The Batter exists to purify all. You, the player, are there to help him achieve that.

Perhaps owing to its age - the game was first released in 2008, making it one of the oldest I've covered on this feature - the game is disappointingly basic in a mechanical sense. Combat is definitely not the game's strong suit, and most encounters can be defeated by simply spamming the standard attack. It presents some odd ideas, like having the fundamental elements of the world be metal, sugar, smoke, plastic, and meat, except you rarely need to rely on elemental weaknesses to complete any battles against enemies that possess them. Equipment tends to have names like "Aura of Sincerity" or "Fibula Epidermis" but still work as the usual incremental bonuses and require flushing out all the money you've earned to fully upgrade your party's gear. Bosses, meanwhile, offer a bit more of a challenge but most can be brought down with your strongest competences and remembering to heal when needed as well as remove any particularly burdensome status effects like poison and madness (which works like confuse). There's little in the way of a "puzzle boss," or any encounter that requires an alternative to throwing your strongest attacks at it until it gives up, though there's at least one superboss and some tougher regular enemies for those willing to take on the risk for the rewards such battles offer.

Instead, I'd suggest that the game has two core strengths that lie elsewhere: the first are the game's puzzles, which tend to revolve around finding passwords and discerning correct routes through obfuscating barriers (a certain sound-based maze made famous by the likes of Ocarina of Time is one such obstacle). Another puzzle solution is found by consulting the game's readme file, and I'm not entirely certain if that part of the document wasn't blank until I triggered something in-game (in any case, it won't make any sense until you're at the relevant part of the game). To some degree the game feels more like an adventure game than an RPG, at least in terms of where most of its ingenuity and imagination can be found, with the RPG battles serving to break up the wandering around. The second strength is the game's atmosphere, temperament, and writing: Off is deliciously strange and revels in its unnerving approach to storytelling and worldbuilding. Exposition cutscenes are regularly delivered over what appear to be diagrams of industrial machinery and cattle slaughter drawn in the 19th century and your loquacious cat friend the Judge is never without a sharply delivered bon mot. Enemy designs range from the silly to the perturbing, never really giving away what the phantoms are and why they persist across these zones. The most striking use of atmosphere, and one of many aspects that would later inspire Toby Fox's Undertale (along with a heap of other 16-bit RPGs), is how you can return to a zone that you've "purified": instead of the usual NPCs and the zone's looping music you are instead met with almost complete silence beyond some hushed whispers in a land now devoid of color and substance, with only terrifying demonic creatures for company. These beasts are often considerably stronger than you can handle if you're at the point where you've just cleared that zone, though can serve as good sources for XP and money in the late-game if you're saving up for better equipment. It's an exceptionally eerie development, not least of all for what it suggests about the nature of the Batter's journey and of the Batter himself.

I can't say I had a great time with Off overall as its rudimentary combat, frequent random encounters, and over-reliance on maze-like dungeon design served to detract from rather than enhance its more aesthetically-inclined assets - the sole exception being the jaunty standard battle music, which I never grew tired of hearing - but it did feel like a game I probably should've played closer to its release to appreciate in full and one that still carries some cachet today with Indie RPG enthusiasts, helping to set the stage for equally subversive games like Undertale or Anodyne to follow. The wild swings it took with the game's structure in the final act are outlandish and brilliant even after a decade and a half of imitators to lessen its novel sheen and I particularly liked its ostentatious script (and the excellent localization of same) and subtle exploration of themes such as rampant consumerism, the soulless and cyclical drudgery of heavy labor that only serve to benefit the ruling elite, and the pain and resentment caused by neglect. I'm not sure how much "reading between the lines" Off actually has - much of it seems to be eccentricity for eccentricity's sake - but it was worth seeing that story through to its end, in spite of the horde of random encounters it took to get there.

Rating: 3 out of 5.