Sometimes, fiction leaves an impact in a roundabout sort of way. Instead of directly breaking into the mainstream, some works remain niche while influencing a new generation of creators, who then go on to make something that reaches household name status. A perfect example of this is Off, an RPGMaker game from 2008 developed by Martin Georis (“Mortis Ghost”) and Alias Conrad Coldwood of Unproductive Fun Time. It stoked a small but dedicated following after receiving an English fan translation in 2011. One of those fans was Undertale and Deltarune creator Toby Fox, who cited the game as a major inspiration for his work.
But now, Off has a shot at getting its own time in the spotlight; Fangamer is releasing a remaster on modern systems that includes the game’s first official English translation, alongside other additions and secrets. It’s a good thing, too, because despite the many games that borrow some of its ideas, this RPG still stands alone, a beacon of weirdness set in a post-industrial hallucination of plastic oceans and meat fountains where a hyper-religious man dressed as a baseball player beats up ghosts with a metal bat.
Events begin with little explanation, as we assume control of The Batter, the previously mentioned baseball man, whose silly appearance contrasts with his pious words. “I have a sacred mission to fulfill. I must purify the world,” he says to The Judge, a talking cat whose grin is more than a little reminiscent of a certain feline from Alice in Wonderland. The first bombshell comes within the opening minutes, as The Judge points out that you, the player, and The Batter are two distinct entities. You are controlling the protagonist’s actions like a soul puppeteering a body. From here, you travel through a series of Zones, each plagued by spirits and a despotic ruler that The Batter promises to cleanse.
If you squint your eyes, it all has the appearance of a standard turn-based RPG: when in battle, you choose abilities from a menu while a timer in the corner shows when you or your allies can strike next. There are type advantages to exploit, special abilities that consume the equivalent of mana (called competency points), party members to command, items to use, weapons and armor to equip, and experience points to earn; the usual stuff.
However, as the game’s title suggests, everything is a bit, well, off. You fight on the right side of the screen and not the left. Instead of recruiting a loveable band of misfits who help you stop the big bad and save the world, your allies are “Add-Ons,” entirely non-personified floating circles called Alpha, Omega, and Epsilon—it’s no mistake that they’re sometimes positioned behind The Batter like halos, with names that evoke the Holy Trinity. Instead of befriending and helping those you come across, The Batter moves between zones with a zealous mission of purification. While the term “Anti-RPG” is one of those vague descriptors that isn’t always useful, Off very much taps into a similar dissonance between genre expectations and its own reality, as done in games like Undertale or Moon: Remix RPG.
More than just offering subversion for subversion’s sake, this strangeness helps establish a memorably off-kilter world that’s both specific and amorphous. For instance, the first area, Zone 1, is a bizarre amalgamation of mines, smokestacks, and nonsensical meat processing plants that somehow extract metals from cattle, as workers with bags under their eyes never stop talking about productivity. It’s like a children’s fable mixed with Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, clearly critiquing exploitative work conditions and robber barons, but within a dreamy, surrealist context. Case in point, instead of the game’s elements and attack types being based on naturally occurring phenomena like fire, water, or wind, the fundamental building blocks of Off’s setting are “smoke,” “metal,” “meat,” and “plastic.”
Beyond depressing work sites and bureaucracies with office buildings that span thousands of floors, there’s also a somewhat off-putting religiosity to this place, from The Batter’s “holy” quest to how the guardians of each zone are styled like demi-gods. This specific imagery offers plenty of avenues for discussion, like how a certain character mirrors the anti-Christ, and that’s just one aspect of many. It all combines to create a unique nightmare world, something that extends to its interactive portions as well, especially the puzzles.
