YIIK: A Postmodern RPG (pronounced like Y2K), has finally received a hard release date after about four years in development. The surreal indie RPG will be arriving on the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Steam on January 17.
The blurb on the website describes the game as “a turn based Japanese Style RPG set in the 1990s, about eight strangers, a mysterious woman who vanishes in an elevator, and the supernatural.” On April 4, 1999, a woman named Sammy Pak went missing, and a video of her last moments were posted online. Alex Eggleston, a recent college graduate, sees the video and becomes obsessed with discovering the truth behind her disappearance. Armed with some old LP records and his childhood best friend, a stuffed toy giant panda, Alex is ready for anything. The website adds:
This is a story about what happens when you look for someone who can’t be found… and the strange things you invite into your life when you go to forbidden places.
Those who’ve followed the game’s development might remember an interesting fact about the game’s story. The game’s plot (most notably Sammy’s disappearance) is inspired by an incident in 2013 where a Canadian student named Elisa Lam was found dead in a hotel’s water tank and the video discovered of her in an elevator.
The 25-30 hour JRPG features a mix of platforming sections, minigames, and puzzles. There’s also a combat system that features a mix of turn-based combat and short minigames that determine how effective your moves are, similarly to the Paper Mario games. Alex will be fighting alongside characters such as Rory Mancer, a loner from the Internet who abhors violence and uses her skills to heal and protect the party, Vella Wilde, a former prodigy of classical music who fights with a Keytar and amp, and Claudio Unkrich, a record store owner and die hard otaku who hasn’t gotten over the mysterious kidnapping of his younger brother.
YIIK: A Postmodern RPG releases January 17 for the PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Steam. There’s also a demo from 2016 called YIIK: Episode Prime – The MixTape Phantom and the Haunting of the Southern Cave. It uses the full YIIK engine and acts as a good benchmark for how the main game will run on your computer.