This Week In Retro: 2020 [2020] (Patreon)

2020: My Attempt to Put a Bow on a Year No One Wanted

by Diamond Feit

So...2020.

Christmas has come and gone. New Year's Eve is so close, I've got milk in the fridge that will survive the changeover. This year, this interminable year, is about to end.

For most of us, this year will be remembered in one word: Pandemic. This was the year we all learned how fragile our lives and society as a whole can be, as one simple virus managed to send every nation on earth scrambling for resources. Some coped better than others, but whether you lived in a country that did the right thing or the wrong thing, the number of lives lost and dreams shattered will never be fully counted.

For my final column of the year, I wanted to take a look back at my own personal 2020, mostly through the lens of video games—this is Retronauts, after all—in the hopes of finding another story to tell. I do this not to dismiss the global tragedy that has occurred, but to remind myself (and you, if you'll allow me) that even in a year no one wanted to experience, there are always moments worth remembering.

My year began in a strange place; as a resident of Japan, I was very aware of the stories of a viral outbreak in Wuhan in December 2019. But having experienced my share of "new flu" panics over the years, I assumed little was different about this one. Instead, I was more focused on my own health, as multiple examinations and lingering symptoms were making me nervous about my own well-being. I went for an annual check-up and got the usual warnings about my weight, plus an alert that the doctors saw blood where blood should not be. It was as I feared: I needed to consult with a specialist and search for answers.

Looking back, it does not surprise me to see my gaming time dominated by comforting choices, the most recent of which being Kind Words on PC. The game is as high-concept as they come, for the title tells you everything you need to know. Kind Words is a game about writing letters to strangers—actual strangers, not fictional ones—who write anonymous letters about their feelings which the game shares with all users. Players can then respond to any letter they see with a message of their own, or write their own letters to be shared worldwide. No one knows who anyone is and there is no system to "make friends" or "follow" others; each letter is an island in a sea of missives, and every response is final.

Kind Words is a game I refuse to put down. It is not necessarily "entertaining," as there are nights where I log on and see heartbreaking pleas for help that leave me feeling overwhelmed. But when I can, I respond. I tell people they matter. I tell people they are not alone. And when I'm struggling, I can pour my thoughts into a letter of my own and someone— often three or four someones—will respond to me and tell me how I matter and am not alone. It's cyclical, and if I were cynical I would dismiss it as the same people complimenting each other forever. But guess what? I need compliments. I need feedback. I need to know these words I type every night are reaching another human being. And all year long, I have turned to Kind Words again and again for that simple confirmation.

As winter gave way to spring, the virus I saw on the news was no longer an overseas story but a domestic disturbance. The Prime Minister ordered—excuse me, "requested"—all schools to close, so my kids spent the next two months hanging around the house. The bookings we were waiting on at my edutainment day job stopped coming in February, and the school news meant we would be closed for the foreseeable future. I was not out of a job, but my hours were slashed and my salary was greatly reduced.

Thankfully, I live in a society with affordable insurance, as my health scare culminated in minor surgery which left me disoriented but ultimately in decent shape; nothing the doctor saw or removed was life-threatening. After a few days of mandated rest, I was free to resume my normal activities... but of course, by that point the Japanese government had shut down the borders and was "strongly requesting" all residents to avoid going out.  My annual cherry blossom viewing was reduced to me standing on my veranda, drinking beer, alone.

Lacking any reason to leave the house, I turned to the Nintendo Switch to pass my newfound free time, in particular the enticing Murder by Numbers. I'd done my share of Picross puzzles before, but this was different: Murder By Numbers contains an entire story full of colorful characters that just happens to revolve around a robot detective who solves Picross puzzles to advance the plot. That plot, for the record, goes places I did not expect, so I credit the developers for delivering a legitimately compelling narrative atop what could have been a phoned-in paste-job. Playing on the Switch meant my family, who were also stuck at home everyday, could still enjoy *shudder* Japanese television in our living room, while I was free to focus my attention on puzzle-drama instead of on celebrities staring at food.

While it’s true every year as a matter of natural fact, my spring directly informed my summer. Japan lifted its self-imposed "state of emergency," so my children returned to school and I returned to work. Still, we all spent a lot less time out of the house than we normally would. No parties meant no socializing, and no more drinking or dining to excess. Instead, I would take long walks to get myself out of the house for an hour, and all that activity meant I was soon in need of a belt.

With my office mostly empty to avoid crowding, I spent a lot of my lunchtimes exploring portable games on a surprise platform: The PlayStation Vita. In the handheld war of 2011, I bought both a 3DS and Vita at launch but quickly abandoned the latter as it felt non-intuitive and lacked quality games... not to mention Streetpass, the 3DS' killer app. But here in 2020, I found myself exploring the platform anew and checking in on the library of indie titles I already owned as a PlayStation Plus subscriber.

As a second surprise, I became engrossed in a genre I had barely touched before: The visual novel. I had played through Doki Doki Literature Club some years ago and loved its fourth-wall shattering sendup of the genre's tropes, but I had never really explored the genre proper, so this summer I dove in and discovered I'm a fan. In particular, Alone With You and Hatoful Boyfriend stood out to me as extraordinary, albeit for very different reasons.

Alone With You is a science-fiction yarn about a lone astronaut stuck on a disintegrating outer space colony tasked with investigating what went wrong. While they find nothing but corpses, the colony's AI is able to piece together holographic representations of the late colonists for the player to converse with. It's closer to a point-and-click adventure as far as interactivity goes—your character can freely explore 2D environments and investigate rubble—but the long chats with digital ghosts and the choices you must make feel closer to a visual novel experience.

Hatoful Boyfriend is a more traditional visual novel in that it is entirely menu-based and the ultimate goal is to replay it again and again to pair the (never seen) player character with all the eligible bachelors in the game. However, the twist is that everyone but the player character in Hatoful Boyfriend is a bird. Not a cartoon bird, either—a literal bird. The writing in the game is amusing, of course, but like Murder By Numbers I was again surprised by the directions the narrative was willing to take. If you’ve assumed Hatoful Boyfriend was nothing more than a parody of the genre, I recommend you give it a second chance. It's a compelling story that simply happens to contain a parody.

As the summer ended and the pandemic seemed to loosen its grip on Japan, I spent more time at the office than before but continued to exercise whenever I could. My walks were now multiple kilometers each, and I realized that by skipping two train stations during my commute I could dramatically increase my daily activity and save on train fare without much impact on my travel time. I even joined a gym, which paid off immediately; pants I bought in June were already loose by September. Would a year stifled by a global pandemic turn out to be my healthiest ever?

I stowed the Vita in favor of juggling two standout Switch releases, both "retro" in their own way, but only one being literal. I've been fortunate enough to get to know Yoshiro Kimura over the years thanks to repeated visits to Japanese indie festivals like BitSummit, so I had heard a lot about his 1997 "anti-RPG" Moon released for the Sony PlayStation. The game was ported to Switch last year, but like the original version, it was entirely in Japanese. So when the game was finally localized this year (by none other than Tim Rogers!), I was hyped.

Yet at the same time, I had spent all summer eager to try Paradise Killer, an indie title that dropped an eye-catching hour-long demo back in April. The hook for Paradise Killer was "open-world murder mystery," as the game centers on a detective who must explore a tropical island looking for clues and interrogating suspects to solve a massacre. What made the game irresistible was its aesthetics. The soundtrack is all chill synthesizers, the island is a fully-modeled 3D space, and the cast is all flat-as-a-board 2D characters. Yet each one of them is more memorable than the last.

Moon asks players to dive into the world of a classic ’90s RPG, but not as a hero—that guy is present in the story, but he only seems interested in treasure and violence. Instead, the player is a heap of clothes who shuffles around, talks to the residents who cope with being non-player characters as best they can, and tries to save the souls of the monsters that the hero has killed on his quest. Moon is ultimately a quest of finding love—quite literally, as love is the reward the player gets from helping people or reuniting dead monsters with their bodies. Its direct influence on Undertale is a matter of record, which in turn inspired Kimura to finally localize it two decades later.

Paradise Killer, on the other hand, is set on a fantasy island populated by a "Syndicate" of immortal humans who have created a private world in order to worship and resurrect their bloodthirsty gods. While these characters all have their charms, they have few redeeming qualities as their luxury and long-lives are only possible thanks to the suffering of regular "citizens," all of whom live on the island by force and who are routinely slaughtered as an offering to the Syndicate's slumbering overseers waiting to conquer Earth.

It is completely unfair to compare the two games, but given a finite amount of free time I became forced to do just that, as I could only afford to devote so many minutes of my lunch hour to each game. Both Moon and Paradise Killer reward exploration of their respective make-believe worlds, but Moon operates on a strict internal timer that requires the player watch the clock in order to meet people or catch monster souls at just the right moment. The player also has a limited amount of life per day and can only restore that life (and save the game) by resting in one of two in-game beds.

Paradise Killer is set in a world where time literally has no meaning—these people are all immortal—and the player is free to explore every rooftop or back-alley as they like. None of the suspects ever move or sleep, the player cannot be injured or get stuck, and solving the crime only occurs when the player chooses to enter the courthouse and start the trial. There is no singular "truth" to be found in the game, as each player can find and present the same evidence towards different conclusions. It is possible to skip the investigation entirely, start the trial immediately, and wrap up the entire case in a matter of minutes.

Paradise Killer took over my life and Moon necessarily slipped onto the back burner, but I plan to revisit it because it has a lot of charm, and I very much want to find out how that story ends… as soon as I read an FAQ and figure out where to go next? Moon is not the most intuitive experience, but it is a game made in 1997, so that's the most normal thing about it.

As the temperature dropped and the dreaded U.S. election was resolved surprisingly quickly, the virus began to spread faster around Japan. Suddenly, I felt nervous about even having a birthday party, so I settled for dinner with three friends, and my Thanksgiving ideas were scrapped. However, I went back to working full-time again, a Catch-22 situation that I cannot quite resolve: There are more cases of coronavirus in Japan now than there ever were in the spring, but we're all just supposed to accept it and commute to work/school like before? It doesn’t add up.

Health-wise, I can say that I'm in the best shape of my life, though those symptoms that have nagged me all year have yet to completely dissipate. My doctor isn't worried; I wish I could say the same. Turns out losing a dramatic amount of weight and completely changing my appearance has not been the panacea for my mental health I thought it would be, and getting through this past month has been one of the hardest struggles in my life.

With a lot on my mind, I turned to a most unexpected outlet: My brand new (to me) Xbox One X. If you're confused, so was I! The Xbox One X was the "PS4 Pro" of its day, now replaced by the Xbox Series X. I don't have one of those (or a PS5), but the release of the new Xboxes meant a pal in Tokyo was willing to unload his previous XBone for very little money. Getting a new-ish Xbox meant my closet full of 360 games was suddenly relevant again, and I started experimenting right away.

The hands-down winner of these experiments has been Earth Defense Forces 3, a Japanese Xbox 360 exclusive first released in 2006 (later localized as Earth Defense Force 2017). I remember picking up my copy used over 10 years ago out of sheer curiosity, though I never played it for more than a few minutes. In 2020, however, it has proven to be a cathartic experience.

If you've never indulged in EDF, allow me to tantalize you: You shoot giant bugs.

...did you need more? Well, there is no more. EDF3 is a gloriously stupid game where I get to run around a generic model of a Japanese city and shoot wave after wave of ants, spiders, and the alien spaceships that have brought them to Earth. The aliens are clearly identified as "foreigners" in the original Japanese dub, so I am well aware of the irony here—but I don’t care. With my mental health in shambles, my job anxiety ludicrously high, and no end in sight to any of my particular woes, coming home and unloading a rocket launcher at an oversized anthill has been one of my fondest memories of the year.

That brings us to today, the here and now. 2021 is so close I can almost taste it. What will become of me? 2019-me would literally not recognize 2020-me, will history repeat itself? I couldn't possibly lose another 50 pounds without hacking off a limb, but I have a long way to go in exploring my gender presentation to the world. My entire wardrobe remains that of a fat middle-aged man, and that just isn't me anymore.

If there's one thing about 2020 I don't want to change in 2021, it’s this column. When Jeremy invited me to contribute to Retronauts back in 2018, I was elated, but my output was spotty at best. Having a weekly goal all year long has been a boon to my psyche, and seeing people connect with my words is rewarding, to say the least. When I decided over the summer to begin recording myself and turned my column into a mini-podcast, the overwhelmingly positive response was, well, overwhelming. I couldn't believe people were enjoying what I had to say, and it’s made me all the more excited to sit down and write.

So I hope you'll allow me to take you through another year of anniversaries in 2021 as we shed our 2020 skins and hopefully leave the worst parts of ourselves behind. In my case, the transformation has been physical, although the hardest work for me has been mental. As much as I'd like to see some muscles in 2021, my biggest wish is to feel as fit in my head as I look in the mirror at the gym.

And as far as video games are concerned, my takeaway from 2020 is that this year was another resounding reminder that the AAA space is the least interesting aspect of games, yet the one that draws the most ink. I spent an entire year hearing non-stop coverage about high-end consoles I can’t buy in any store, along with daily updates regarding every aspect of a multi-million-dollar game that I won't name (but here's a hint: When it came out it was so poorly received it was pulled from the PlayStation Store; it is also racist and transphobic). Yet if I hadn't been watching friends' livestreams, I would never have learned about Cloudpunk, a futuristic simulation of a megacity that players explore as a delivery driver in a flying car.

Cloudpunk is extremely my thing: The city is made of voxels instead of attempting to be "realistic," there are more buildings and people than I could ever count, and the game's story unfolds at the player's own pace. Whenever I felt like ignoring my deliveries, I could soar over or under traffic and look for new neighborhoods to discover.

I played through Cloudpunk on Switch which turned out to be a poor port; the PC version has more functionality, including a first-person driving mode that lets you feel like you're actually in the cockpit of a flying car. The game also has its share of bugs and often crashed on me when I was transferring between city zones. There's an inventory system and an economy that doesn't make much sense; some player-decisions felt meaningless; and a few late-game timed missions felt absolutely anathema to the chill vibe that had welcomed me to the game in the first place.

But none of these complaints matter, because Cloudpunk gets more right than wrong. The characters are fully-voiced and compelling (even if they talk a bit too much), and the world of Nivalis feels massive and oppressive. The whole time I played it, I felt like I was someplace else. What more could I ask of a video game in a year where the real world felt like a nightmare?

If I had to pick a Game of the Year… it is Paradise Killer. But Cloudpunk is standing right beside it with skinned knees from stumbling after reaching higher than its grasp, and I want more video games willing to risk imperfection in the pursuit of standing out. It is the most me-in-2020 video game I played all year: Looks good, screws up a lot, but wants to be better. Amen.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan and is an active Twitter user.