Iji

I believe I mentioned this game here once before, in another thread, but that was a long time ago and not many people noticed, and this game deserves the look.

Iji is a freeware platformer game in the vein of Flashback or Blackthorne, but with some RPG elements, in that you level up and can build a number of skills.

How the game goes is, the titular heroine wakes up from a coma to discover that the facility she was visiting was taken over by aliens, and not only that, but she’s been pumped full of alien nanotechnology so that she could fight them. Were this a typical game, she would charge screaming into combat, guns blazing, in the tightest clothes she could find. But this is not a typical game, and Iji is not a typical heroine.

Rather, she is an average girl thrust into fantastic circumstances. And like any average person in a situation like this one, Iji is terrified. But she does the best she can. How she does it is up to you.

Add to this some great writing and a very unique visual aesthetic and you have yourself a game worth a try. With several difficulty levels and many ways to play the game, I highly recommend Iji.

GG: What are the results of choices in this game? Suppose the player just wants to escape- is it possible? And if it is, are there consequences (eg. innocents you could’ve saved are killed?)

Basically the only real difference is whether you kill more than X enemies or not, which changes some text before and after you fight the later bosses. The game is interesting for a while, but not really worth chasing the secrets and extra endings. Platforming is a bit wooden and there’s a hell of a lot of it and in many areas you basically have to choose between being able to explore and being able to win against the level’s boss. It also gets a little preachy in places, since the whole premise of the endings is whether or not you lose your humanity fighting off the aliens.

Ultimately, the game takes place inside a war zone, and you can guess how things tend to go in one of those. (IE, not very well for anyone involved.) And as far as innocents go, it’s modestly difficult to find any, given the circumstances. However, there are a few characters whose fate you may have a hand in.