Have you ever wanted to play a game that felt like a Haruki Murakami novel? Me neither, but Ackk Studios have gone and made one anyway. The upcoming Y2K is an American take on the JRPG format featuring cell-shaded graphics, turn-based combat and lots of cats. The plot, iconography and overall style are all ostensibly inspired by Haruki Murakami, the lauded Japanese novelist. His work has a reputation for recurring themes, chiefly weirdness, a reverence for classic music (mostly jazz and classical), alternate dimensions and a fair amount of sex.
On the surface, this material seems to translate into Y2K fairly accurately. The feline component is there, the player character uses a vinyl as a weapon and windows lead to various other worlds. So far, so Murakami. According to the developers, the game tells the story of a student investigating a mysterious death, he “takes to a primitive 1990s message-board to find answers about the death of this stranger. His quest for answers leads to more questions as his research points him to a mysterious van the internet has dubbed the “Death Cab.” This vehicular oddity roams the game’s city and countryside.”. It sounds interesting enough and allegedly (and visibly) the Mother series also provided some inspiration. Recently Japanese developers have been taking influence from Western RPGs (read: Dark Souls) so it’ll be nice to see a reversal on the theme.
Murakami’s writing certainly lends itself to the off-kilter quirkiness you can see in the pre-alpha footage of the game. It has no release date as yet, but it will be available on PC and Playstation devices, provided it isn’t wrapped in an air chrysalis by Little People and stolen away, or the dev team aren’t murdered by an evil Colonel Sanders lookalike.
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