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OFF Review - Unforgettable Surrealism

Something’s…off. You arrive in a mysterious world in control of a mysterious “Batter” character. Suddenly, you’re approached by a semi-terrifying cat-like character named “The Judge” and tasked with purifying the world you’ve been thrown into. Oh…okay, you say, unaware of the repercussions of your actions in this virtual world. How often do we go along with whatever a videogame places in front of us? This is the basis for “OFF”, a remastering of the original 2008 classic that inspired many RPG concepts after it, including the incredibly popular “Undertale” game. After playing through it, I can see why the uniquely unsettling nature of this game could be the seed that produced such thought-provoking concepts Undertale tackled later on. I wasn’t sure how I felt about OFF until about 2/3rds of the way through the story, when it all started to tie together more tangibly. After that, it became very clear how this little game became so influential.

And So Begins our Existence

OFF critical menu GIFIn OFF, you are controlling the main character “Batter”, a literal baseball bat wielding fighter who eventually teams up with these circular teammates to purify (defeat) these horrific phantasmic specters that are occupying the worlds within “OFF.” The gameplay functions as a typical RPG in that you act in a turn-based fashion to use attacks and special actions to reduce the enemy’s hit points to zero while maintaining your own as you run into them in the 2D-based world. In that regard, OFF is a bit basic in its design. Though the types of enemies are unique, with types like “burnt” and “smoke” part of the menagerie, how you defeat them is all determined by sheer force of damage or through special attacks that specifically do more damage to certain types. The action gameplay boils down to managing your HP and CP to make sure not everyone dies and not everyone is unable to use special attacks. Luckily, you can use these attacks outside of battle to refill HP, and the fourth wall breaking merchant Zacharie pops up throughout the story to provide extra equipable items or consumables that make the hardest battles more manageable. Zacharie serves as a moment of realignment with the real world, and a checkpoint of sorts for the story. 

What makes OFF memorable, even after almost two decades of its existence, is the unsettling nature of its characters and interactions. Indeed, everyone you interact with and the situations you proceed through are always a bit…off. Whether it’s the confusing existence of these “zones” you’re purifying (and why you’re doing so) or the visual bizarreness of the “enemies” you run into, OFF is nonstop off-the-wall conundrum creationism. I was always surprised, even after so many years of being surprised by seemingly simple RPGs, where OFF went in its story. It’s even sometimes hard to grasp, which is fine, since it’s not an unbearably long experience at 6-7 hours. The dialogue and conversations you have with the various beings inside these zones, and your own character's determined, no-nonsense approach to his mission, are so well executed in their mission to set the vibe of the game into rarely explored territory. Even as you start to have to solve puzzles, which is the real main gameplay element of the experience, you have to think way, WAY outside the box.

OFF specter

Tough to Crack

Admittedly, I had to resort to some old playthrough solutions to continue on during my time completing OFF. Sometimes it was because I was doing things out of order, and other times it was because I would just miss the dots the game placed in front of me to connect. With infinite time available to me, I hope I would’ve figured out the next step on my own, but I’m not so sure. These objectives weren’t always obvious, even with the small tooltip the game provided for direction. The challenging, yet rewarding, nature of the progression of the story made pursuing it to its end all the more impactful when the final credits played. If you really did complete all of the brain twisting complications placed in front of you, the unavoidable consequences of your actions come crashing down even harder. However, if I did have to identify one of the more annoying parts of OFF, it was in the difficulty of deducing some of its most challenging solutions.

OFF big

Undeniably Wicked

Throughout OFF you come into contact with a bevy of memorable characters, all of which stick in my mind like glue now. They’re almost like kindergarten drawings done by a possessed demon, really. They’re weird, off-putting, and sometimes portrayed as innocently terrifying. Along with the color-washed zones, you have a smattering of styles and qualities all combining together to feel fully hand-crafted and almost…juvenile? But in a very stylistic way. Nothing comes off as cookie-cutter and it all fits in place in an avant garde design all its own. I was especially intrigued by the world's various interworkings, including the hand-crafted old timey illustrations that showed how the zones various laborers worked to keep their obscure lives in order. I really loved the final act, as it brought the defined style full circle to provide a fulfilling conclusion to the setpieces laid out throughout the story. Truly, the visual direction and fourth wall breaking narrative was a defining moment in time for many players (and future game designers.)

Off surrounded

All Inside Your Head

When it comes to audio design, I went into the game knowing it was renowned for its uniqueness and appropriate musical decisions. I think I’m a bit jaded by the absolutely incredible musical delicacies we’ve been able to partake of the past few years, and so the soundtrack was something I had to warm up to. That’s not to say that the eccentric chiptune-y music choices, sparse sound effects, lo-fi vibes, and overall wildly inventive and understated soundtrack left me disappointed. It was like an art piece for my ears. I would feel uneasy with some, enthralled by others, but always desperate for more as the game became increasingly bizarre. One thing is for sure, and that’s that the soundtrack fits the environment and feel of the game perfectly. Additionally, the legendary game designer and composer Toby Fox (of Undertale/DELTARUNE fame) helped compose a few tracks for the remake, and they're excellent.

OFF giant

In Conclusion

OFF wasn’t a game that I knew about before tackling it with the re-release, so I can’t speak to the changes they made from the original. However, as a game on its own, it is best played with a certain mindset. This includes a willingness to be frustrated by potentially hard logic puzzles, a desire to be presented with hard questions, and a want to play through a beloved piece of recent gaming history. I had no idea what to expect with OFF, but what I came away with was an appreciation for the ambitiously creative, yet simple world and story design, and a strange pull to see the surreal story through to the end, for better or worse. OFF is truly one of a kind.



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