Originally developed by pretty much unknown developer Ride On, Nippon Ichi America brings us Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida, which was renamed “Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What did I do to deserve this?”. The fun 8-bit-looking graphics and the random title reminiscent of oldschool Batman reeled me in, and the possibly fun gameplay and concept (being the bad guy trying to kill heroes) made me quite interested.

This is Ride On’s third game. The first was a Darius port on GBA, and the other was a Beat ‘em Up featuring maids with guns(from the Simple 2000 series). Their track record is short and not very inspiring, but Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida definitely looks interesting.

So with an english demo out (there was a demo before on the japanese PSN), we can see if it’s actually any good.

Read on!

What is in the demo?
There’s not that much content, of course. You get basic tutorials on how to play the game, an almanac that you can fill with all the creatures in the game(you don’t have access to all of them) and a story mode with 3 levels.

This gives a pretty good view as to how the final game will be like, without revealing too much. Considering the rather simplistic gameplay, it might be better not to show everything the game has to offer.

How does it play?
So here’s how the game works. You play as the God of Destruction (a pickaxe). You have a big cave with a bunch of squares. At first, most of the squares have dirt and nutrients. By pressing Square you remove the dirt at the square you’re on. If that space had nutrients on it (green stuff, sometimes white…), it summons a monsters. The first monsters you’ll summon are slimes. So slimes produce more nutrients, sometimes they upgrade spaces so they can produce different monsters like lizardmen and bugs. Each monster works differently. They all evolve in some way, reproduce in some way. For example, slimes become plants, then flowers, then they split into more slimes. The bugs (named Omnom, or the upgraded version, Omnomnom), eat slimes and grow wings. Lizardmen lay eggs in caves to get more population.

So what’s the goal of the game? Well, you have to dig the cave, with a limited amount of Dig Power, build an ecosystem in hope that it sustains itself and, when heros attack, that you monsters can protect the Overlord, Badman. When the hero attacks (either when you “go out the door” or the invisible time limit ends and the hero comes in by himself), you place Badman where you want in the cave, which SHOULD be a kind of labyrinth by now. So the hero comes in, and fights with any creature he finds on the way to the Overlord. He doesn’t always take the fastest path to the Overlord though, sometimes taking wrong turns in the labyrinth. If he reaches the Overlord, he ties him up and brings him out of the cave, and you have to hope your monsters will kill the hero before then. Also, some levels have multiple heros attacking you. Some with magic powers and healing magic.

When the hero dies, you go to the next level. Before that, you’re graded on your performance. The better you performed, the more Dig Power you get for the next level. If you have a lot of dig power left, you get more on the next level, and you can also upgrade your creatures with the leftover dig power you have, changing normal slimes to American Slimes, and Omnoms to Omnomnoms. Each creature needs a certain amount of levels to upgrade, and each level costs 100 Dig Power.

Hype Meter
Not incredibly high, but reasonably high anyways. Considering the REALLY simple gameplay (all you do is dig, really), it’s surprisingly fun to play and trying to maintain a self-sustaining ecosystem where your monsters will both multiply and grow, but also where one creature won’t completely overun the weaker ones, is really fun and surprisingly challenging. This is definitely a fun little game and is well worth checking out.

The humor is not too bad from what I’ve seen, but it’s normal NISA stuff which references to games, net culture and pop culture (the game’s title references Batman, obviously).

Definitely something I’ll pick up. Expect it to come out in July 2009.

jobocan demo, Games, Handheld, impressions, Preview, psp