YIIK: A Post Modern RPG / Ackk Studios / Andrew Allanson - "I wanted to make a game with a protagonist who was very unlikeable" - From Someone who is equally unlikeable. Currently developing Version I.V (1.5)

[mrs thickness]

The funniest part to me is this



he didn't even watch a quarter of running shine's video befor

ooooggghhhhh this guy makes me actually mati
>trooncase title formatting
>"ironic" consoomer soylord who didn't like JRPGs until...yiik
>...because of the epic lore and the ARG metagame
>"by the way, check out my sponsor!"
>half the video is a plot synopsis
>recycles points from the reviews he bashes while presenting them as revelatory
>this took 9 months to make
>"i'm not actually alex yiik"
yeah you are nigga and your video is redundant gay retarded and sucks ass. hysterical to dress down and misrepresent those other videos when they'll endear more people to yiik than this banal faggot self-sucking shit ever will. the only thing this accomplished was to further temper my expectations of IV because now i know the yiik boys are keeping people like this company, and probably learning the wrong lessons from the past few years. good job!

 

[FatMebius]

yIIk is a very endearing game. Misplaced or not, there's a lot of love and passion on display. Plus, in an age where every dev is nickel and diming their customers, an update as big as I.V is pretty neat. I would not ever say they're the best developers ever, but good god are they fascinating. Legitmately looking forward to it next week.

 

[LucasSomething]

This video appeared in my subs today

Local Archive
View attachment 6693622
I felt that this video was oddly positive and trying really hard to say that the other reviews are "bad faith" and then i saw that andrew gave this fucker early access to the update, what a shock, i'm sure its just a massive coincidence that this came out when it did.


The funniest part to me is this

View attachment 6693629

he didn't even watch a quarter of running shine's video before labeling it as "misrepresentative" "excessively crass". what a huge faggot

This essay is really pretentious and biased out of the bat. "The joke is that Alex is a main character with main character syndrome. It's briliant".

"I have purposefully made him hateable as a joke!"

>And turns out Alex never met sammy, he saw a forum post and made a story about being there. We know he didnt meet sammy. We know it wasn't aliens who took her away.

WHAT.

What do you mean """we"""?? This guy simply takes "Alex is unreliable narrator sometimes" and leaps into "Actually, literally everything we see is a lie to the player". Maybe try to argue this at all? Cause it sounds too important to not adress.

>What if Alex is embelishing and never met Rory. Is rory even real?

What if the entire game isn't real? What if the player wasted dozens of hours for nothing? What if Andrew purposefully made a bad videogame as a joke?

>Alex wants you to trust him and think everything will make sense eventually. Of course he's a deplorable main character cause it gives you reason to doubt him.

Buddy wtf are you on lol. If Alex is literally manipulating the narrative to the degree you're saying then Alex has no logical reason to make himself look bad or fuck up. Unreliable narrators don't usually "fuck up" to intentionally make themselves doubtful.

>But once we get inside his mind we get a glimpse of his past and realize he's not a willful monsters, he's a victim of broken home and poor parenting, with his father leaving home

Wigger that's LITERALLY A STRAWMAN inside Alex's mind with Alex vocie directly telling the player what to think, what makes you think THAT is reliable?? The game even outright calls it unreliable



There are other strawmen too, it's very clear they represent alex resentment towards his father and other characters. Again, what makes Alex unreliable and the strawman in his head reliable?

edit: I really hope this isn't foreshadowing to new I.V content that unironically makes Alex an abuse victim please god no

>dont watch bad faith criticism

There is this common trait of yiik defenders like hellkrai and this guy calling Running Shine video "bad faith nitpicking" and it puzzles me cause RS video is easily the most positive criticism of all yiik essays i saw.

Like, he actually gives the devs the benefit of doubt when they lashed out at the podcast for "probably having a bad day". He defends the Iwata grave by respecting the intentions and calling it a little clumsy. He doesn't shit on the devs for basing the first mystery on a real person. He gives props to Claudio's good voice acting and lists the few good songs he liked. He says something doesn't work and how he would fix it by just making it simple.

Hell, he says the shop UI is bad then spends 15 minutes explaining how he would improve it. Then these mfers call it "bad faith". The other essays out there are much harder on the game and insulting on the devs.

This guy thinks the original release was good and that makes me scared for 1.5 because Andrew is clearly only getting feedback from the most biased yiik defenders and not from actual critics.

 

[30+GameOvers]

he didn't even watch a quarter of running shine's video before labeling it as "misrepresentative" "excessively crass". what a huge faggot

>Unironic Alex enjoyer
>Couldn't even last a quarter of RS's video due to soy overdose

Maybe all the jokes about Alex being a sex offender and a racist sperg hit him too hard personally, if he looks up to Alex and all

 

[LavaBat]

@LucasSomething I'm afraid you are right about your assumptions. Any piece of criticism the Allansons received over the years have been filtered through their fans like Hellkrai. Not only that, but some of their suggestions have been implemented within YIIK itself as early as the 1.25 beta tests, if not earlier than that.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230906062753/https://nitter.net/AsleeponStream/status/1698786152457642229

As for the comments about RunningShine, I have seen the devs and fans push this narrative that the Youtubers who were critical of YIIK are main the reason why people hated the game and RunningShine is one of the people they love to hate.

They seem to think that RunningShine was being unfair by comparing a triple A game like Paper Mario to an indie game like YIIK. They also think that changing the UI is egotistical and pretentious because he is messing with the Allansons' intended vision for YIIK. Acting as if redesigning the UI to be easier to navigate was somehow gonna change YIIK into a completely different game. They also believe that RunningShine only made the video to cash-in on the "hate bandwagon" at the Allansons' expense.

To disprove these lies and add further proof that Planet Clue is a clueless moron, there was a stream where Running Shine and Tehsnakerer were talking about what got them to make videos on YIIK.

RunningShine said that when he made his video on YIIK, he never made it with the intent of shitting on the game and attacking the devs. There was stuff in YIIK that he enjoyed and just wanted to give his opinion on the game. Hell, when someone in chat mocked YIIK by comparing it to Cool Cat Save the Kids, one of guys called them out for belittling the effort that was put into YIIK. If anything these guys were defending YIIK rather than shitting on it, but the YIIK fans will ignore this stream in order to push their stupid narrative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MrOXGFh5rI&t=4285s

Though I do think RunningShine and the others should reconsider being so forgiving to the devs once they find out Andrew dedicated an entire section of YIIK's update to shitting on them and anyone who hated the game.

 

[LucasSomething]

@LucasSomething I'm afraid you are right about your assumptions. Any piece of criticism the Allansons received over the years have been filtered through their fans like Hellkrai. Not only that, but some of their suggestions have been implemented within YIIK itself as early as the 1.25 beta tests, if not earlier than that.

I didnt write but even Planetclue says near the end he thought the I.V intro was too slow and long, with too many dream sequences and it might make the player uninvested to the point of quiting, then he shows Andrew reply that "It will be more rewarding later on", and he trusts the devs so it will be great.

That's a criticism i and others mentioned here from the demo (in this thread) and the only valid thing planet said, but the dev just ignored it anyway lol. What was the point of the demo if the devs will ignore the feedback?

In that stream you link, Running Shine even theorizes that, as a family project, the devs probably never got real feedback from other professionals, only absolute support, meaning they never got why they failed the most fundamental things.

Andrew doesn't even realize that bashing the haters AGAIN not only sets him up to failure, it automatically vindicates them. If I.V is bad then there critics were double right. If I.V is good then the critics´pushed the devs into making it good.

 

[Hee]

Well, today’s the day! No clue how this will pan out, but I suppose we’ll know in the next day or so. I personally enjoyed the new battle system, and will hope that story and non-combat gameplay is better as well. My biggest gripe with yiik before this point was that the presentation of information was very poor (especially Onism, which contains a LOT of important lore and dialogue, most of which you may not even see unless you’re quite the 100%er). Presentation will make or break this update of the game.

Also, I hopped into an old save just to mess around, and HOOO boy. The original combat is way worse than I remember. If there’s only one thing I appreciate in I.V., it will be that the combat system isn’t something I’ll groan at every encounter.

 

[Cedric_Eff]

Most of his talking points are just the same shit from Hellkrai's unhinged videos which he shills at the end, so I have to ask; is any of this analysis of the game his own original thoughts?

Like is the narrative that the story of YIIK takes place in Alex's head something he concluded solely from playing the game? Because to me it seems like he played the game, was impressed by the weird visuals and then looked up some lore videos. Which is what most YIIK fans do when they do the whole "dig deeper to find out the true story" shit.

I'm starting to think he didn't even watch the videos he's putting on blast at the beginning but instead watched Hellkrai's autistic ranting streams.

Do you expect a guy with an Animal Crossing pfp to actually make an valid defense of YIIK?

 

[LucasSomething]

I'm extremely busy this week with finals so i can't pirate and play the update until the weekend urgh...

I'll try to play it blind but i'll keep wathc on the thread to keep my expectations in check cause i don't trust the yiik defenders. Godspeed to the kiwis playing this on release.

 

[Mobster Monitor]

I have played to the sewers so far. The presentation I feel adds a lot to make the game enjoyable unironically...? I am not sure since the long winded dialogue is all still there it's just shown better with Alex Yiik holding a microphone whenever he monologues. The battles are quicker, at least in the early stages, and more engaging I think (Defending is actually very useful which I'm happy to see). The game is so fascinatingly bad to me and I haven't really stopped thinking about it since I saw a friend play the intro on original release with the long winded boring cutscenes, and everything I saw baffled me like no other piece of media really has before. I'm worried this is gonna skew any objective opinions I would have on this new version.

It's all about how it wraps up and nails the ending I think. Here is a hint for the tutorial; use Gauze bandages in the tutorial fight and do everything to play it safe and survive once you get the boss to bleed since you get a card for beating it. This card massively increases how much money you earn from fights.

 

[LavaBat]

I didnt write but even Planetclue says near the end he thought the I.V intro was too slow and long, with too many dream sequences and it might make the player uninvested to the point of quiting, then he shows Andrew reply that "It will be more rewarding later on", and he trusts the devs so it will be great.

Not surprising he said that, though I personally would not trust anything of importance near Brian and Andrew given how much they fucked up Two Brothers and YIIK.

That's a criticism i and others mentioned here from the demo (in this thread) and the only valid thing planet said, but the dev just ignored it anyway lol. What was the point of the demo if the devs will ignore the feedback?

Recently I've seen a fair amount of gamedevs on Twitter and Bluesky share this mentality where they view themselves as artists and that they don't need critics to validate their work and trying to catering to an audience is considered bad because it would negatively impact their "art". However, all it really does is show how insecure these gamedevs are and how fragile their egos must be to act as if negative opinions are gonna kill them. The Allansons are no different as they've developed this victim complex where they perceived themselves as being misunderstood artists getting attacked by the evil youtubers and streamers who only want to hate on their art for money and clout.

Here's a few screenshots of Andrew going on these types of rants, there is a lot more than this, but I'm only posting a few for the sake of brevity and my sanity.

Spoiler: Screenshots

Andrew's discord profile

Also I mentioned earlier in the thread that a portion of the update is aimed at youtubers and streamers. It relates to the screenshot I've shown here but they also spoil a part of YIIK's plot so spoilers if you give a shit about this terrible game.

In the game there is a subplot where the main antagonist, William, becomes a streamer to brainwash kids and at one point mocks one of the character's movies. That character's name is being Kisage X, the same name Andrew is currently using on discord. If it wasn't obvious already, nothing in YIIK is subtle. Keep that in mind as you play the game. The reason why Alex is so unlikable and annoying is the same reason why William is a streamer.

In that stream you link, Running Shine even theorizes that, as a family project, the devs probably never got real feedback from other professionals, only absolute support, meaning they never got why they failed the most fundamental things.

It isn't just that it was a family project, though it certainly doesn't help, its more that Brian and Andrew are too incompetent to manage large projects. Going as far back as Two Brothers, the Allansons had always blamed everyone and everything around them for their own terrible management skills and short-sighted decisions.

Here's a deleted post from an abandoned blog where Brian wrote about Two Brothers and what happened behind the scenes.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180408090406/http://chromophoregame.com/development-blog/chromophore-revitalization-project-dev-log-1

Proof this blog belonged to Ackk Studios:

https://web.archive.org/web/20241130225847/https://steamcommunity.com/games/259760/announcements/detail/934868247806021776

Andrew doesn't even realize that bashing the haters AGAIN not only sets him up to failure, it automatically vindicates them. If I.V is bad then there critics were double right. If I.V is good then the critics´pushed the devs into making it good.

As I said earlier, Brian and Andrew don't care about criticism or feedback, they only care about getting their asses kissed and egos' stroked by their fanbase and their fans will eat up anything the Allansons shit out. Its less catering to critics and more pandering to their existing fans, again they incorprated Hellkrai's suggestion about the reduced monologues being a fake out to "own the haters".

 

[X Prime]

Okay, so is it good?

Is this the Cyberpunk 2077 of Western JRPGs?

You can't keep me in suspense, Kiwis.

Full Disclosure: I actually went through the entirety of the original because I am a glutton for pain. I did not think it was that bad.

EDIT: I now recall that I have previously stated that I would inject this purestrain autism directly into my veins, at least metaphorically. Well I wouldn't want to Techpriest myself now would I?

EDIT 2: I am now YIIKing out.

EDIT 3: Well, uh, the combat's certainly better.

 

[FatMebius]

Kisage X? More like Kusoge X, am I right?

Just got to Wind Town. They tinkered with Alex's audio on the bus ride. He sounds almost like a different actor there. It's more jarring because the monologues sound normal.

Otherwise, the game's presentation is actually kinda cool. There's no fixing stuff like the long winded dialogue, but the new cutscenes and visual style go a long way. Combat not being a total slog is nice too.

Not feeling the new Mind Dungeon. It feels like a discount Juice Galaxy now.

I'd say it feels less like a proper revamp and more like something you can only appreciate if you played the original. Something like the Rebuild of Evangelion films, maybe.

 

[SiggerNlayer]

General reminder that the guy who made this game had some weird perverted obsession with Elisa Lam and her disappearance which is why the self insert cracker main character is yellow fevered up and trying to solve an Asian girl disappearance mystery.

 

[FatMebius]

General reminder that the guy who made this game had some weird perverted obsession with Elisa Lam and her disappearance which is why the self insert cracker main character is yellow fevered up and trying to solve an Asian girl disappearance mystery.

I think part of it is an obsession with schizo internet conspiracy shit in general. It just comes off pervier than it should. The update makes it clear that Alex is kind of a creep.

 

[Don Yagon]

I think part of it is an obsession with schizo internet conspiracy shit in general. It just comes off pervier than it should. The update makes it clear that Alex is kind of a creep.

Running Shine's interpretation of Alex as a sex pest obsessed with mixed race women is canon and you can't convince me otherwise.

 

[Nobunaga]

I think part of it is an obsession with schizo internet conspiracy shit in general. It just comes off pervier than it should. The update makes it clear that Alex is kind of a creep.

So the devs got butthurt running made 2 hours of alex is a sex predator jokers and to fix that.......they made him an actual yellow fever predator
Bravo alex YIIK

 

[Torque Wheeler]

I'm probably a loser but I really enjoy the look of Yeek. And weird conspiracy theories as the bedrock of a plot is so cool. This game is like 85% of what I like style wise but hardly any substance.

Someone make me a mod where Alex Yeek's monologues decrease in volume after 15 seconds as the screen fades to black everytime and that would make the game 9% funnier. It would at least get the point across that he's a self-centered weirdo

 

[Slur.EXE]

Has anybody figured out how to unlock the secret JuJu the cow boss fight? I found the cow costume and the strap-on; do I have to drop the items off somewhere…Do I have to make Alex put it on?

 

[FatMebius]

I'm probably a loser but I really enjoy the look of Yeek. And weird conspiracy theories as the bedrock of a plot is so cool. This game is like 85% of what I like style wise but hardly any substance.

Someone make me a mod where Alex Yeek's monologues decrease in volume after 15 seconds as the screen fades to black everytime and that would make the game 9% funnier. It would at least get the point across that he's a self-centered weirdo

I think there's some strong backgrounds and visual designs sometimes. Maybe not so much the character designs, but I do like the environments and atmosphere of some places. Wind Town at night, with the Soul Survivor (And now The Camera) in particular looks really cool. I think the decision to use the 3D models more now than the 2D artwork was a good choice. The models look a dozen times better than the artwork.