Long-time followers of this little column of mine (phrasing) might know that I've trying to break into the Indie RPG scene a little more. RPGs remain my overall favorite genre, though I recognize that they're also massive timesinks - I am still chipping away at Underrail, a game started in late July (and reviewed as IGotW #229) - so I'm trying to be judicious. With that in mind, what I've come to admire most from this frugal tier of RPG development is the amount of streamlining that goes on: Zeboyd is famous for it, designing its enemy encounters and character progression in such a fashion that every battle feels challenging and fresh. Likewise, this week's game, the evocatively-titled Weird and Unfortunate Things are Happening, is a little closer to another RPG I covered last year - Ara Fell (IGotW #177) - in that both are RPG Maker projects with distinctive art directions, both spent half a decade in development undergoing many tweaks and improvements with the feedback of volunteer beta testers, and both are perhaps far better than they might first seem in part because they respect the player's time.

Weird and Unfortunate Things are Happening follows the same inspiration as many other Indie RPGs, building from the surreal visuals and low-key humor of Shigesato Itoi (who gets a shout-out early on in WaUTaH) and his Mother/EarthBound series. Alicia Copeland, a baseball athlete and psychic, dotes on her favorite niece Dottie after the latter starts developing psychic powers of her own; Alicia is determined that Dottie won't have to suffer like she did, growing up without anyone to help her make sense of the unusual things she sometimes sees beyond the veil of reality. Dottie's entire town of Daybreak suddenly vanishes one day, with all but trained psychics like Alicia memory-holed into believing it never existed. Turns out it slipped into a region known as Vedim Space: the malleable gaps between reality that shape themselves to suit their inhabitants. Beyond that is the Expanse, where creatures known as Evocations dwell: powerful metaphysical beings able to confer great psionic powers to any human who makes a pact with them. Daybreak is now at the mercy of these Evocations and their eldritch servants, with most of its population enslaved or worse, and Alicia is only able to survive after forming a pact with an Evocation herself: one that promises her that it belongs to a nicer group that are on the up-and-up. It's some dense mythology, cribbing from Lovecraft and Goethe's Faust with EarthBound Easter eggs tossed around throughout, but it also means that all four of your eventual party members have some distinct builds and roles to play in battle in addition to their own "partners," each of whom often has advice to impart.

While I am enjoying the story and exploration - the town is in shambles with impassable chasms everywhere, but can be carefully navigated for valuables - the combat is the clear highlight. WaUTaH draws from both EarthBound and Shin Megami Tensei alike, the former in the battle screen's presentation and use of psionic abilities in tandem with mundane items used as weapons, and the latter in how elemental coverage and managing buff/debuffs play significant roles in the player's success. The game has around ten different enemy elemental types that are represented with symbols - it becomes less important that you remember what the symbols mean, just that your attacks include them in their "weak against" list and not in their "strong against" list - and characters have select types their skills tend to prioritize. Skills rely on a PSI stat, essentially mana, and many of the stronger ones also have cooldowns. However, it's not too difficult to recover PSI (and HP, for that matter) with the right assortment of recovery skills, and curatives are plentiful for much of the game. It's also why the game recommends you prioritize active skills over passives when you start tinkering around with the character skill trees: battles become easier when you have more options. One character development decision I found a little odd and was against for a while was having all the cast share the same pool of skill points (called Obols, acquired after battles and also found floating all over the place). This means you have to decide who gets the next skill; that is, who currently isn't pulling their weight and could use a new ability to rise them to parity. I've come to see the wisdom of this approach, after weening myself off my usual habit of giving the protagonist all the breaks: it's integral that every party member is equally vital to the team, A) because the game's moderate-to-high challenge level on normal difficulty demands it, and B) because any given team-member will be relied upon to fight the enemy types they're most effective against, not dissimilar to Final Fantasy X.

WaUTaH isn't above random encounters, but integrates a system where - in certain areas - an enemy encounter gauge is slowly building as you explore. This system gives you fair warning to prepare for an imminent fight, healing up if your health was low after the previous encounter. After so many battles in any given area, the encounter gauge changes colors from red to yellow: this indicates that local enemies are now more wary of the party after their many victories, and will fight them far less frequently. The game's not really built for grinding - dungeon encounters, in contrast, are one-and-done but for special enemies - and you'll rarely find a battle that you can just mash your way through with regular attacks, at least not without incurring more damage than you need to. I've found that balance to be decent so far; and one I'm sure the developer spent a long time getting right. Battles also move fast: after selecting everyone's moves for that round, enemies and player characters exchange attacks at rapid speed, giving you just enough time to register damage and debuffs while preparing for the next round. It's a rare and precious thing for a RPG to have battles that are fast and tactical, but WaUTaH fits the bill.

On the whole, I've been enjoying the game even if it occasionally fills a bit too antiquated compared to some other throwbacks I've played recently (like the aforementioned). Juggling mana reserves, having to recoup HP after battles, and especially the random encounters are all elements that the RPG genre have been slowly phasing out for the better, but I suppose there are still those out there that feel that the nostalgia of these 16-bit homages would be incomplete without them. For what it's worth, WaUTaH handles these setbacks like a pro, mitigating their annoyance in the various ways outlined above. The backgrounds and monster designs are a little crude but imaginative, including the typically weird and meta EarthBound goons with names like "Likes Everybody" (a lightbulb who just heals everyone, enemies and allies alike). The music, which looks to be cribbed from various royalty-free sources and Indie musicians, has been overall pretty decent too, its eclectic nature befitting the game's off-kilter style. Its best quality is the price: the game is absolutely free and available from Itch.io. Freeware doesn't usually get covered here - this feature was originally conceived to help clear my Steam backlog - but this game was getting such rave reviews it seemed prudent to slot it in somewhere in the schedule for a playthrough. I now consider that decision a smart one.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Playthrough Edit: Weird and Unfortunate Things are Happening turned out to quite substantial in size, with an end-game that just kept on going and going (without necessarily dragging things out). I won't say exactly how much content there is, but I did start seeing the end of everyone's skill trees by the last boss - I figured I'd fall way short given where I left off before writing the review. It remained an imaginative and very tightly-developed game, the latter more with regards to the combat and the efficiency in which you start taking down mobs due to having much better coverage between the extra team members and more "active" skills to call upon. I'm thoroughly impressed by the scope and size of what I initially figured would be a five-hour-long EarthBound homage: it's definitely closer to a full Zeboyd RPG, which is nuts for a freebie. Wouldn't be surprised if the follow-up was released commercially; the developer deserves some scrip for this level of craft and effort.