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drawing and dadposting

The Fungus Zone Blog



The more I play Bokunatsu 2 the more I'm appreciating opaqueness as a game quality: the ways that a game deliberately hides the numbers and counters for checks and events.

Not every game can pull this off, and it can be just as equally frustrating as it is compelling, but there's something special going on here that really works well with the game and the story they're trying to tell. Boku, as a character, is still too young to understand the conversations and relationships that the adults around him have. He has to piece it together on his own, often only catching glimpses of other characters expressing their feelings. I feel like the game expresses this through its gameplay just as well as in its story.


Screenshot of the end of a beetle sumo match, after pulling off a move called LIVING BOMB for the win

A lot of this came from me focusing on the beetle sumo minigame in my playthrough.1 So far, I've managaed to clear the Weak ranks a few times and made progress on Strong, but there's so much to how it works that still escapes me. How are special attacks triggered? How much should bugs be touched before a match? What factor does size play? How do the different bugs match up against each other? Do losses affect a bug's motivation or trade value?

To get through this, I feel like the process is going to be: 1) Get a bug, 2) Train the bug, 3) Trade up for better bugs, 4) Repeat until you clear all ranks. New tips will get unlocked as I face off against new bugs or hit new milestones (like when your bug gets 10 wins). Other than that? I have no idea. That's part of the fun, though.

Screenshot of bottle cap item in Boku's inventory, with description: "This dino has a big meaty head. It probably gets better grades than I do."

There's a board game called City of Six Moons that's meant to feel like an artifact from another civilization. Everything is written in a fictional language, even the game's manual. Part of the fun is deciphering how to play, even if you misinterpret a rule or a symbol.

There's a lot of that in Boku. The opaqueness of the game's causal relationships puts everything on an even ground, so that watering plants could potentially carry as much narrative weight as talking to your aunt. Maybe winning beetle sumo will be the defining moment of Boku's summer. Maybe it'll just lead to a new screen with a place for him to sit down. Who knows? You engage with the world around you but you have no idea what the impacts and consequences of your actions will be until you experience it for yourself. Yet even when anything can be as equally meaningful as it can be meaningless, we can still take pleasure in all of life's moments as we experience them.

And damn, if that doesn't feel like growing up...

Screenshot of Simon saying to Boku, "I've fallen in love with this town and its people."


  1. I also started playing Natsu-Mon! 20th Century Summer Kid on my Steam deck, and just got overwhelmed by its adherence to, I'll call it, "open-world game best practices." I thought I'd be able to play these games concurrently but I'll probably have to wait until September to give myself time to properly switch gears.


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