PEGBRJE: SAI and OneShot
Environmentalism is fun, but paranoia sure isn’t.
SAI is an eco-action game made by Team Mutiny, an indie group based out of England but with members from around the world. In this endeavor you play as a druid, a Celtic figure of high standing best known for their environmental protection and magics. Upon awakening, the druid acquires their bow and meets with a forest spirit taking the form of a stag, warning them of strange foreign machines invading and destroying the forest. It is up to this druid to stop them before they can do any more harm to the forest and surrounding area, especially with the Life Tree supposedly being so close by.
Touted as an eco-conscious game, SAI’s big focus is on utilizing its Celtic roots to warn of the dangers of lacking environmental protection. There are Gaelic texts, the lore of the world is primarily Celtic with World Trees, forest spirits and druids to fight against machines sucking the life from the forest. To this end, it also contains a book that outlines many of the Celtic traditions in game, going into length about the different aspects that the druid comes across to give some slight context to their origin. There have been many games that have utilized being worldly and more self-aware to bolster messages to support real world issues, but I do believe this to be the first in the bundle as of yet. Not to mention, it is quite recent as well, releasing this year during a time period where many may wish to focus on matters other than the current pandemic.
This story of environmental safety is reinforced by the gameplay itself, in which the druid must destroy the robots that descend from the sky to destroy you and all who stand in their way. The bow equipped, if shot into the red eyes of the robots, will destroy them with the power of nature seeing as the arrows shot appear to be flowers. Once the area has been rid of the robots, the druid can bring life back to that section of the forest and restore that which had been stolen from it, giving a cinematic pan and a beautiful shot of the now luscious forest. This culminates in finally reaching the final boss, which was teased earlier in the game, in which must be destroyed to save the aspect of the World Tree so that we may live to see another day.
Unfortunately, I don’t have much else to comment on SAI as it is extremely short — once I was able to get a hang of the controls and the shooting, I finished the game in under 20 minutes. However, SAI was never meant to be a lengthy title, instead a call to action to support charities around the world to save forests in peril. Those that purchased SAI were informed that many of their proceeds would be going directly to different charities to combat fires, deforestation, and more. It is now free on itch.io after the team announced they had reached their goal. So if a short experience about saving the environment with some fun shooting is something you’d like to try, give SAI a shot and see what you think.
But if SAI was made to make you aware of your surroundings, the next title will make you uncomfortable at they reach they might have.
Oneshot is a puzzle adventure made by Future Cat, a trio dev team consisting of Eliza Velasquez, Michael Shirt and Nightmargin. Players are placed into a bleak world with a little companion named Niko, a blue-haired cat-like human child who is just as lost as the player is. Awakening in a destroyed room, Niko wanders around in the hopes to escape the room, and find out how he got here and how he can get back home. Cleverly solving the first puzzle allows Niko to log into the computer in the room, only to find that it doesn’t address him: it addresses you.
Oneshot is a game of two protagonists, one baffled by how they arrived in a world unfamiliar to them and the other terrified as to what this game is doing to their computer. This is another title that I had heard about long before it joined the bundle, as I had followed it while it was still a freeware title due to the buzz about its ability to talk to your computer. It was a game of pushing the boundaries about what a game could and couldn’t do to the player’s files rather than to just the Gameworld that it inhabited, and to my knowledge was one of the earlier titles to be commercially successful in this manipulation field. However, unlike some titles that would succeed it, Oneshot utilizes this file manipulation and paranoia to build its atmosphere, gameplay and character interactions, specifically between Niko and the player as they both attempt to escape.
Oneshot doesn’t utilize this spooky manipulation and 4th wall breaking as a twist, but immediately as a mechanic. Puzzles are solved utilizing the player’s memory of previous items and events, but also by searching through their own files to discover codes and messages left by the game. The player is part of this world, rather than just controlling Niko as we solve puzzles and explore this wasteland. Niko and the player interact with each other frequently, influencing each others actions and responses as new information or lore is discovered. Niko even chastises you for attempting to make him perform rash actions, such as smashing the Lightbulb acquired at the beginning. All the while blissfully unaware of the pressure and paranoia the game is creating in the player as we are told that we are the only savior for this child, and our failure means his death. We control the fate of this world that Niko is stuck in, and whomever continually talks to us through computers and corrupted files on our computer refuses to let us forget.
I feel that Oneshot is best described by its own warning on the itch.io page:
Although OneShot is not a horror game in the traditional sense, parts of the game may induce some paranoia. Please proceed with caution.
For those of you that become easily paranoid or are uncomfortable with the thought of a game having access to your computer in ways that you couldn’t predict, I might recommend watching a playthrough instead. For those of us that are fine with either, have played Undertale or other titles utilizing the idea that the player is personally another part of the game, Oneshot is an engaging and atmospheric metafiction that you shouldn’t pass up on. The characters are simple, yet ironically brimming with life as they watch their world die around them. If you don’t mind the sudden creation of text files in places on your computer, let yourself sink into Oneshot’s world and hopefully you can save Niko from his fate.
Seriously, he’s too cute. Don’t you dare fail him.
