Initial Daydream
Initial Daydream is a turn-based RPG made in Pulp featuring 1v1 battles and is similar in style to 1980’s NES RPGs like Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior. Your job as “THE CHOOSED ONE” is to deliver gifts between the rulers of four different kingdoms for the Royal Gift Exchange. The kingdoms are Ghoulliard (where ghouls live, featuring an extended Life’s Too Short cameo), Atlantis (fish world), Viskei (a land of distillers), and Goo (where the slimes live). If you can’t tell from the protagonist’s and kingdom’s names, the game has a pleasant, whimsical sense of humor.
The whole game is just a few hours long, which is a welcome change of pace from the grind-heavy RPGs mentioned above, and a big part of that is because of the quality of life adjustments possible: you can set both the amount of gold you get after battles (“bollards” in the game), as well as the encounter rate. While the combat is fast-paced and nice enough, it doesn’t do anything you haven’t seen before (although it does do plenty of things you maybe haven’t seen in a Playdate game before). Each battle is just one-on-one, and there isn’t any armor or weapons to equip. There aren’t even experience points or levels. Instead, you use the money gained from battles to increase attack strength, HP, and the strength of healing potions (called “pozhns” here) by one point with each purchase at a shop. And the purchases get more expensive with each one you buy, but are cheaper again in the next town. It’s a really smart way to handle the limitations of both the Playdate and Pulp. There’s also a new combat ability to learn in each town!
I played this on an airplane, and it was the perfect thing to make the time go by quickly. There’s a lot to be said about the new kinds of experiences that can only be had on the Playdate, but there’s something just so cozy about a traditional game in the style of what you played growing up, but adjusted with modern conveniences. Look at the new vs. old Pokémon or Animal Crossing games. The smoothness of the modern iterations puts the old games to shame. Did you know you weren’t able to stack fruit in the original Animal Crossing? Each one took up its own space in your already-limited inventory! Meanwhile, Initial Daydream has classic JRPG gameplay but lets you set it to get 4x the money after every battle just because you shouldn’t be forced to grind for hours and hours unless you want to - and it can be adjusted in-game at any time! In an industry where it can often feel like your time is being wasted, never did I feel that here. The world is interesting, the characters are great, the gameplay is tight, and there’s more to your quest than first meets the eye. It’s kind of everything I want in a game.
(Buy on Itch.io.)