Happy Monday, folks, and welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread!
Last week I started the latest game I got for free as a member of the unpaid games journalism intelligentsia, Escape from Ever After. I think I’m… halfway through? At least, the features of the HUD imply I’m around or near that point. Whatever the case, Escape from Ever After is interesting because of how much it posits itself as a “Paper Mario clone.” And “clone” is the easiest word to use here. Like, Shovel Knight orbits around Zelda II most strongly, but it draws from the entire NES catalog and more to create something new. Dark Souls started at Zelda 1, loosely, but it went in a far different direction. Bloodstained is a spiritual successor because it was made by the producer of Symphony of the Night. Kaizo Mario World is an unlicensed fan game rocking the SMW engine. This is not that. This is a fully original game that deifies the legacy of something that came out twenty years ago. I don’t know if I’ve played a game in recent memory that was trying so hard to specifically capture one game.
The sheer number of things it either alludes to or appropriates from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door could fill a massive paragraph. I know from experience. There are 2D cutout characters, Star Pieces, Badges, Action Commands, First Strikes, a Pit of 100 Trials that you climb up instead of down, that mechanic where you can swim if you stand on the appropriate panel, and about a hundred other things. There are even a few it grabs from the TTYD remake. And while there are some unrelated allusions I kinda see, and a lot of very broad pop culture references due to the fairy tale setting, there is not a ton else. This is a game made by some of the few people on the planet who think about The Thousand-Year Door more than I do. So much of its existence seems to revolve around this, to the point where I started off kinda flummoxed and uncomfortable. Fortunately, the experience has gotten a lot better since, though I’m still working through my thoughts on the thing.
This is today’s prompt: clone games. Games that exist—whether because of fan devotion, market capitalization, or whatever else—to replicate, harken back to, or reimagine one specific game that already exists. Now, obviously, this term has a lot of space you can use. There are a lot of “Hades clones” that copy a ton of stuff from Hades but not everything, or a lot of “Hollow Knight clones” that kinda look like Hollow Knight but do want to do their own thing. For me, I’m focusing on something as specific as Escape from Ever After, largely because I find the whole thing… weird. Like, sometimes the nods are fun, and sometimes they’re kinda annoying, and sometimes they’re too cloy, and sometimes they’re a bit of a bummer. It’s strange for me to see any piece of art that tries so aggressively to emulate one existing piece of art. But those are my thoughts, I gotta work through ’em, and I’m interested in hearing yours. And your experiences in this arena.
And while I’ve got you, what did you play this weekend? But before that, make sure to read Lily-Bones’ newest “Game News Roundup!”