![]() ![]() ![]() A lot.Īlso, you should resist the urge to button mash. So if you play this game, be prepared to swing and miss. If you hold the attack mode button, you’re locked in to your position for the duration. (In fact, often the pivoting is automatic, as a “lock on” feature.) In Rule of Rose, you can’t pivot. But in all of those games-even going back all the way to the original Alone in the Dark in 1992-you can at the very least pivot in place, to adjust your aim. Much like in Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill, you have to hold down a dedicated button to enter into an “attack mode,” which reduces your movement. But Rule of Rose is just exceptionally bad. Survival horror games have a reputation for janky combat, and sometimes they’ve worn that reputation as a badge of honor: supposedly, combat is scarier when you’re fighting with clumsy controls. That said, Rule of Rose does have some problems. I’d probably still put it in my top, say, 100 games, and I feel like I owe it to the world to raise the game’s critical profile in whatever small way I could. And even though a lot of time has passed, and a lot of games have come out since, including a truly astounding array of indie games tackling a tremendous number of subjects and widening the emotional palette of the medium considerably, I still have a soft spot for Rule of Rose. It was unlike pretty much anything else that was coming out at the time. Rule of Rose is among the more obscure horror games I’ve talked about, but it’s actually among my favorite games from the sixth console generation. If you’re a subscriber who’s been eagerly awaiting another video on a horror game for the past seventeen months: welcome back! I hope this doesn’t disappoint. If you’ve stumbled onto this video outside of that series, don’t worry-it’s entirely stand-alone. Technically, this is the twelfth episode in a long-dormant series I was doing on horror games. Today I’m going to be talking about the 2006 survival horror game Rule of Rose, developed by Punchline as a PlayStation 2 exclusive. ![]() But hey, I also write about experimental film, so I know the feeling. Unfortunately copies of the game have become real collector’s items over the years, and it’s sad to praise a piece of media that so few will have access to. I really relished the opportunity to talk about Rule of Rose, one of my favorite odd little games that I’ve never written about in any fashion before. This script of course comes with a trigger warning for violence, bullying, and implied physical and sexual abuse, all involving minors.Whoops! I made sure to give myself enough time to finish this video by Halloween … but then I neglected to post the announcement here! Happy belated Halloween, everyone. If you ever wanted to know the story of this strange, rare, fucked up horror game, there’s no better time than the spooky season of October 2020. While somewhat dated by the fact that it’s one of my early scripts, I’m still quite proud of it. I took all sorts of copious notes from every in-game document, laid out all the characters and settings, made a literal corkboard to figure out how to structure the damn thing, and finally came up with a 118 page monstrosity that, when I shared with producers, have told me it “induced panic attacks” but also “wish could be made because no flippin’ way it could in this town”. That few would ever experience Rule of Rose’s strange narrative felt like a shame to me, so I wondered if it was possible to adapt it. Published by Sony in Japan and by Atlus in the west, Rule of Rose was developed by Japanese developers Punchline, who had also developed Chulip but were also made up of the remnants of studio Love-de-lic, who crafted cult classics such as Chibi-Robo, Little King’s Story, and the renowned cult classic MOON, which recently received its first western localization in over two decades on the Nintendo Switch. To this day, the game is out of print (at least in the West) and the only copies are available on online retailers such as ebay for up to $90 USD.Ī shame because it’s a fascinatingly bonkers story filled with queer and trans text and subtext, tackling difficult subject matter in a thorny, risky, lurid, yet human manner. It received controversy from Jack Thompson (remember him?) because it explored violence, abuse, and sexual content involving children. For context, this is based on a late generation Playstation 2 survival horror game from 2006. The fifth feature script I ever finished (January of 2015), and basically an experiment for me to figure out adaptation, then a new concept I was toying with. ![]()
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