As I made my way over to the Ysbryd Games booth, all of the TV screens shut down and all of their computers stopped working. I was there to see Y2K and it was happening all over again! Ok, aside from that awful joke, my appointment was Ysbryd Games was to really see Y2K: A Real Modern RPG and the minute you start playing it, you get thrown into the modern vibes of the 1990’s.
Grunge and flannel as far as the eye can see and if that isn’t the 1990’s, I don’t know what is? It just needed some Pearl Jam as battle music and it would have been perfect! You get the full feel for the game in Juno Bay, NJ( as a fellow New Jersian, not real, sorry) as Alex is tasked, or it was thrown into his lap, of solving a mystery of the town. Talking to everyone in the town is key as you will collect vital information and in the instance of the demo, you needed to collect the secret password to get into the club and the only was to do that was to hear what every person in town had to say. It could get a little tedious but it’s an RPG and you need to do things like this in role-playing games.
You also get to fight and not in the typical way you’re used to but it is turn based. The difference is the weapons and special attacks. Alex, your character gets to attack with records and how 90’s is that? His basic attack was spinning a record and hitting the yellow space as many times as you could. There was also a red space and that allowed for a re-spin and more attacks. Your special attack launched an 8-bit record throwing game like Space Invaders where you were trying to hit as many enemies as you could to set up a combo and more hits meant more damage. Your teammate on the other hand fought with a sword and his attacks and timing were a little tougher to line up since you were unsheathing his sword and lining it up to match the green/red spaces. His special attack was a control stick game where you needed to match the motion and more right matches meant more damage.
There was a boss battle at the end of the demo and it was pretty tough! You needed to use all of your attacks and special attacks as well as your items. Items could range from health restoring cheeseburgers and special attack restoring items to equipment like a bike helmet or a cowboy hat. Different items and equipment do different things so you’ll have to experiment to find the perfect balance. Since the game does take place in the odd time of the 90’s there was quite a bit of “what” moments. There was a mermaid that just happened to be in the ocean that had her babies stolen and had laughing/crying breasts. The mermaid does play a part in the story but you’ll have to play the full game to find out what. The boss that I mentioned as the end of the demo had extra heads when you only ran into a couple of strange people on the beach during the demo and that was the mermaid and your companion’s female friend, who stole one of the mermaid’s babies and thus brought this whole thing.
There were also giant candles strewn about the beach and you need to obtain a flamethrower to melt them to proceed but you know, nothing out of the ordinary here. It feels like the scheme of battle could take a little getting used to but after you’ve played it for a while, you’ll become a pro. Defending looks to be the toughest part because the margin for error is so slim but if you miss the small red mark you’re trying to hit, you only take a little bit of damage. There will probably be a brief tutorial in the main game but there wasn’t one here. All and all, Y2K just says 1990’s to me and it should speak to RPG fans!