What's the most underrated game you've ever played? Most people have an easy time answering this question, but for me, this question always felt impossible. So many games receive a great deal of passion and love from their developers, yet they rarely see even a fraction of that in return after their release. This can be said for many things, but for this genre especially, it can be tough to find a following. There are so many games that I feel deserve a much bigger spotlight, that picking just one feels like doing the rest of them some form of injustice. With all that being said, I think I have finally found an answer to that question. HorrorVale is an RPG Maker game released in 2024, created by Batworks, a “studio” that in reality has the bulk of its work comprised of 2 people. Dustin Andrews and Matthew Rock originally came up with the idea for this game in 2016 and immediately began their journey. Inspired by previous “RPGMaker” hallmarks like Undertale and Lisa: the Painful RPG, they were inspired not by what these games were, but on a more personal level, by what they achieved. Despite their incredibly simplistic style and mechanics, they were able to outshine many of their contemporaries using an engine that is accessible to those with no programming knowledge and minimal artistic skill. Pushed by their achievements and love for all things horror, they went hard at work for 8 years to create what would be known to few people as HorrorVale. But what exactly is HorrorVale? HorrorVale is many things: an action-packed adventure set across an ever-expanding underworld, an incredibly charming and comedic story with surprisingly emotional writing, a love-letter to all things horror, but on a basic level, it's a story about a skeleton witch in training named Alice trying to find her zombie dog. Alice is who you’ll be playing as for most of your time in the underworld of HorrorVale. One night, Alice wakes up and, upon leaving her puzzle-locked front door, has her loveable undead dog companion named Scruffy run into town, leaving her behind. This sequence introduces the goal of the entire game, which is to try to find your dog. Like most goals, this one doesn’t come without any conflicts, and these conflicts will have you traverse this seemingly endless but ultimately small part of this game's underworld, all just to get your dog back. On your quest, you’ll come across all types of horror-inspired denizens living within the underworld of HorrorVale, often with design elements paying homage to all facets of horror. With roots tying back to Vocal Horror, Literary Horror, Visual Horror, and even …Internet Horror? It seems like the entire genre has been stuffed into one giant love letter that has possessed the form of a game. With storybeats that’ll make you love the colorful cast of characters, subplots that help flesh out the world, and twists that will make you wonder if the game is ever gonna end, it’s apparent to anyone that the developers truly loved the underworld they were making with seemingly infinite ideas on where to take the game next. Speaking of game… It’s time to finally talk about the gameplay. With a genre and engine that many have a hard time trying to innovate in, I think HorrorVale does a great job of combining previous innovations in the field to create an experience that, while not necessarily new, makes the game super fun. The game has a Pokémon-esque system that has unique elements and typings that feel fresh to play around with. Alongside that, during one's journey, you’ll find quests to recruit and strengthen 31 different party members, all with varying elements and abilities that make each one unique and strong in their own niche. From a Plague doctor skeleton who poisons their team to full DP, a Pumpkin mob boss who’ll get paid in candy to rattle their opponents, to a Mummy cheerleader who’ll curse the enemies while blessing the rest of the team, there is so many different ways to play the game that nearing the end of my time, I found myself looking at the party selection screen for 30 minutes just thinking about the different teams I can make. Confused? Well If you’ve made it so far, you’ve probably picked up on my strange language that may have caused some confusion when describing aspects of the game. Waking up at night? Poisoning your team? DP? This type of flipping on its head when it comes to the basic elements of RPGs, and well, our understanding of the world, is what I think makes HorrorVale stand out, which is in its phenomenal worldbuilding. Instead of sleeping during the night, everyone in the underworld sleeps during the day. Instead of poisoning the enemy, you medicate them and vice versa. Even basic elements of an RPG have been changed according to this underworld's foundation, such as Health Points being replaced with Death Points and Focus Points being replaced with Fear Points. This type of “Halloweenification” into every aspect of this game, even within its own menus, gives the game a unique identity and helps elevate the game’s simplistic artstyle to something that contends with the greats within the genre. I have so much more I want to say about this game, to its really clever meta framing, its surprisingly deep lore, and the amount of effort put into everything about this game, from full screen artworks, to cutscenes, all of which work to make this underworld of death ironically feel so alive! If I did all that, I'd be here all day.... And the last thing I want to do is bore you to death. So, to end it, I want to answer the question that started it. What's the most underrated game you've ever played? To me, that game is HorrorVale.
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