applecinnabun

fatigue elemental raccalope

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game dev/sk8r grrl/guitar/flute/tree liker/indie game obsesser/basic autumn bitch. working on hoptix!

<3 @static-echo <3


play the latest (free!) hoptix demo!
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twitter.com/hoptixGame
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someone tell me if i'm overthinking/being hypersensitive?

so, more people keep picking up a game called Corn Kidz 64, a very high quality n64 collectathon throwback with cute character designs and killer trashy emo aesthetic. it also has a setup for the biggest level in the game, where you'll spend like half your time, where the conceit is that you're in a cozy little forest town full of pigs that was nice until the mayor allowed owls to immigrate.

some things that literally happen:

  • a good churchgoing pig is being literally shit on by an owl in church, and when asked about it, says they're "sure it's fine because they said so on tv"
  • a child pig asks their father why it's ok for the owls to do whatever they want, and the father says "if you keep talking like that your mom's going to spank me"
  • the mayor expresses mixed feelings about being rescued from the level-boss owl, because they were accepting some kind of "political donations" to be cool about the situation (...of... literally being tied up and held prisoner)
  • when confronted and asked to stop being a cartoon villain, the level-boss owl describes the oh-so levelheaded and reasonable player character as "pig-aligned" and immediately gets violent

i have never seen anyone other than me so much as raise their eyebrows about any of this? am i missing something? that all seems extremely wack to me lmao. 100% ok if you feel the answer is "yes, you're being hypersensitive," i still want to hear it!

edit: also just to be clear, if you're following me and you played and liked it, and either didn't notice that stuff, or you think i'm misinterpreting it and it's fine, i am super not trying to like. guilt you or start a brigade against you or whatever. i just feel like the game i played is very different from the one i hear others talking about and am trying to get to the bottom of that!


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in reply to @applecinnabun's post:

yeah that's a good point, i'm not either! although no matter how much context there is it still feels like the dev could have taken a moment to ask "what does it look like i'm saying here, exactly" lol.

anyway, relieving to know that apparently at least one other person noticed, thank u

Part of this seems (for better or worse) like standard throwback N64-era stuff. For example I recently replayed Spyro the Dragon, and it's full of silly cartoon plots like "you gotta help the forest dryads -- they were living in harmony until a bunch of ogres came and started beating them up and stealing their sheep!"

That said, it really does seem like the framing in Corn Kidz is more malicious and overtly fascist than in Spyro. Like its creators want it to be political commentary. (I should note for full context, I haven't played Corn Kidz and probably won't)

My guess is that people who had a positive impression of Corn Kidz 64 probably thought no further about it than "dumb cartoon game has a dumb cartoon plot". And that's kind of a bummer... as someone who enjoys dumb cartoon stuff from time to time, it's crappy to realize how well these things overlap:

fascists --> black and white thinking <-- stories written for literal 9 year olds

oh that is such a smart last point. i'd never really thought about how it works both ways: of course it's easy for fascist ideas to creep their way into simple children's stories because they're simple, black and white ideas,

but then from the other direction it's also true that it can be hard for well-meaning people to recognize that stuff in something presenting as a simple, children's story for the same reason...