Cosmo D's OffPeak universe

[Verylittlefishes]

I can't stop thinking of Off-Peak universe after playing. Surrealism and capitalism, weirdness and the infinite river of music. And also the trippy visuals. You can say this is a walking sim, but it is not. It is the statement of something big.

Dunno, I've tried to understand why is it so, I went and read the interview with this guy who is classically trained violin player turned solo gamedev. And there is something very important here in his work, something reminding of Kentucky Route Zero, of Twin Peaks or whatever good and unusual comes to mind.

But Off-Peak is not mimicking anything. It's original. And it's cool. This world now lives inside my headspace, like the memory of some definitely terrific jazz improvization.

Buy it, you artistic types. Short and cheap. Recommend with all my heart.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

 

[Quilty]

I've only played the first two games in the series; they're amazingly atmospheric and, well, there's no better word for it - immersive. I got pulled into this strange world and the lives of its denizens immediately. The music, the dialogue, the characters... All of it will stay with you.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

I've only played the first two games in the series; they're amazingly atmospheric and, well, there's no better word for it - immersive. I got pulled into this strange world and the lives of its denizens immediately. The music, the dialogue, the characters... All of it will stay with you.

I've replayed the Off-Peak after the Tales, and this is very refreshing loop closure.

And I still missed some things.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

The only game I'm waiting more than Elden Ring:

 

[Verylittlefishes]

 

[Verylittlefishes]

...RPG?

 

[Verylittlefishes]

oooooooooooooooooooo Off-Peak Vol. 2 ?!

 

[Verylittlefishes]

nice little article

Tales From Off-Peak City is a surreal adventure game where some odd people in a boat ask you to steal a saxophone. You get a job on the corner of July and Yam, making pizzas to fulfill opaque orders like, "study the form, embrace the formation". You then deliver the pizzas to the locals, giving the game a means to introduce you to July Avenue and Yam Street, the people that live there, and what's going on in this tiny little world.

I tend to find small places like this both more convincing and more more compelling that gigantic city-wide open worlds. Now, I'm aware that calling a world where houses speak, gigantic dog heads with glowing blue eyes loom over fences, and customers give you long philosophical musings about the ratio of flamingo meat and brains on their pizza, "convincing" might sound counter-intuitive. But of course, I don't mean that it is literally convincing in that sense that this is a place I believe could literally exist in the real world. What I mean is that the scale of the game allows you to relate to it in a way that has a kind of truth to it.

Small worlds like this offer us a slice of a place, just like the real slices that we spend our time in. Their totality is not beyond conception -- we have the capacity to really get to know them. They do not preclude the possibility of engaging with processes and forces beyond their bounds, showing us the impacts of those processes and forces at the ground level in a way that can often make them more readable. We are able to see what kind of community inhabits these places, what the people are like, and what relationships they have with each other and the environment you are exploring. Unlike the swathes of humanity that cross our paths in a GTA game, that those games and others tend to encourage us to view as worthless fodder for our amusement, every person matters when you are exploring a small world. You are more likely to be allowed the time and space to find out who they are, what they know, what they mean to others, what they did, what they are doing, what they want.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

OK this is the RPG I want to play:

Spoiler

 

[Verylittlefishes]

The fourth game is on the way!