Ib (video game)

Last updated

Ib
Ib cover art.png
Cover art, featuring Ib on the right
Developer(s) kouri
Publisher(s)
Engine
Platform(s)
Release
  • Windows
  • February 27, 2012
  • April 11, 2022 (remake)
  • Nintendo Switch
  • March 9, 2023
  • PS4, PS5
  • March 14, 2024
Genre(s) Adventure
Mode(s) Single-player

Ib [lower-alpha 1] is a 2012 adventure horror game developed and published by kouri for Windows. Players control the titular character from a top-down perspective trapped in an eldritch art museum, where they meet the characters Garry and Mary. Together, they make the goal of escaping the museum and returning to the real world.

Contents

Ib was the debut game of its creator, who developed it using the RPG Maker 2000 game engine. The original game was released as freeware available for download from the developer's personal website. A remake using the RPG Maker MV engine with updated graphics, music, and mechanics was published by Playism for Windows in April 2022, for Nintendo Switch in March 2023, and for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 in March 2024.

The game is considered a cult classic and a influential title among indie horror adventure games. Upon release in 2012, Ib was a critical success, and quickly became popular both in Japan and internationally. The remake had a generally favourable reception.

Gameplay

Ib is a single-player adventure horror game. Players control Ib, the title character of the game, from a top-down perspective as she navigates and tries to escape a surreal art gallery. The gameplay consists of examining and interacting with objects in the world, collecting items, and solving puzzles. There are enemies, but no combat. Instead of fighting, players must evade enemies by escaping into other sections of the gallery. Getting caught depletes the player character's health, represented in the form of petals of a red rose. Once health reaches zero, the player loses. [1] [2]

Ib is a silent protagonist, and dialogue between characters is sparse. The gameplay is non-linear; players can achieve different endings depending on the choices made and actions taken throughout the game. [1] [2]

Plot

Ib in the fabricated world Ib gameplay.jpg
Ib in the fabricated world

A young girl, Ib, is visiting an art gallery with her parents. While examining a strange painting, a sudden power outage ensues, the gallery's doors lock, and other visitors disappear. Guided by a trail of paint splatters, she is lured inside another painting and finds herself within a surreal painting-like "fabricated world". Making her way through the otherworldy realm, she comes across a collapsed figure on the ground. After successfully reviving him, the figure introduces himself as Garry. Like her, he is also trapped inside the gallery, and the two resolve to escape together.

Later on, they encounter Mary, an eccentric girl around Ib's age, who joins the group. Soon after, the group gets separated by an emerging wall of vines, leaving Garry isolated. The player's perspective alternates between Garry and the duo, and the former uncovers the true nature of Mary as a painting and the game's antagonist. As Garry finally catches up with the pair, Mary turns hostile but is fought off, and the other two escape.

From there, the plot diverges depending on the player's actions. As Ib and Garry continue to explore, Garry may die or become insane, with the latter triggering an immediate game over and the former forcing Ib to continue alone. The player will discover Mary's painting that they must then burn, effectively killing her. Failure to do so causes Mary to follow Ib back to the real world and be recognised by Ib's parents as their second child. Successfully burning the painting allows Ib to escape back to the real world. If Garry is alive, he will be either stripped of his memory and leave, or retain it and promise to meet Ib again before parting ways.

Development and release

Ib was created by kouri, a Japanese indie game developer of whom little is known. [3] It was developed using the RPG Maker 2000 game engine and initially self-published in February 2012 as freeware, available for download from the developer's personal website. Updates continued until June 2014, culminating in the release of the final version 1.07. Ib was kouri's first experience in game development; he chose an art gallery as the setting because he thought it would be an easy one and horror as a genre because he, mistakenly, thought he would never get tired of it. [4] [5]

In November 2019, development started on a remake of the original game. According to the developer, this was due to popular demand, particularly from outside Japan, and a desire to update the game to conform with modern hardware standards. Created with the RPG Maker MV engine, the remake features updated graphics, gameplay mechanics, and a remastered soundtrack. [1] [6] Unlike its predecessor, the remake is not free and was instead published by Playism for Windows via Steam on 11 April 2022 and Nintendo Switch on 9 March 2023. It received an English localisation on 17 May 2023. [7] A port to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 was released on 14 March 2024. [8] [9]

Reception

Ib is considered a cult classic and a influential title among indie horror adventure games. Critics have compared it favourably to older titles in the genre such as Yume Nikki and Corpse Party , and seen its influence in later entries such as The Witch's House . [12] [2] [1] [11] [10] The game quickly became popular after its release, accumulating over a million downloads in Japan and a similar number internationally after receiving an English translation. [1] [4] The remake received "generally favorable reviews", according to the review aggregator website Metacritic, which calculated a weighted average rating of 82/100 for the Nintendo Switch version based on 11 critic reviews. [13] Aggregator OpenCritic found that 89% of 10 critics recommended the remake. [14]

Critics identified the game's atmosphere as its main appeal. Joe DeVader of Nintendo World Report called it "genuinely creepy and off-putting", commending the use of silence and sudden sounds to catch players off guard. [2] RPGFan's Des Miller saw clear inspiration taken from Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland while finding the world much "darker, claustrophobic, and deadly" than the one Alice found herself in. [1] Famitsu , on the other hand, found the atmosphere "cute yet eerie"; chilling but not overly frightening. [15]

Reviewers highlighted the game's simplicity and brevity. Miller regarded these aspects as integral to its allure and charm, arguing that "less is more". [1] Shaun Musgrave of Touch Arcade shared this sentiment, labelling Ib as a "very simple game with ... a lot of heart". [11] Multiplayer.it disagreed, finding the "extreme" simplicity to be too much. [3] Conversely, critics felt certain elements of the game were overly complex. Miller found some of the endings "largely impossible" to achieve without external help. [1] Both Musgrave and DeVader agreed that, while generally well-designed, at least one of the puzzles relied excessively on trial and error. [11] [2]

Notes

  1. ↑ Japanese: イヴ, Hepburn: ivu

Related Research Articles

<i>Luigis Mansion</i> 2001 video game

Luigi's Mansion is a 2001 action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo. The game was a launch title for the GameCube and was the first game in the Mario franchise to be released for the console; it was released in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, in Europe on May 3, 2002, and in Australia on May 17, 2002. It is the third video game in which Luigi is the main character instead of Mario, after Mario Is Missing! and Luigi's Hammer Toss. Players control him as he explores a haunted mansion, searches for Mario and deals with ghosts by capturing them through a vacuum cleaner supplied by Professor E. Gadd.

<i>Super Mario RPG</i> 1996 video game

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is a 1996 role-playing game developed by Square and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It was the final Mario game published for the SNES. The game was directed by Chihiro Fujioka and Yoshihiko Maekawa, produced by Shigeru Miyamoto, and scored by Yoko Shimomura.

<i>The House of the Dead</i> (video game) 1996 video game

The House of the Dead is a 1996 horror-themed light gun shooter arcade game developed by Sega AM1 and released by Sega. It is the first game in the House of the Dead series. Players assume the role of agents Thomas Rogan and "G" as they combat an army of undead experiments created by Dr. Curien, a mad scientist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video games in Japan</span> Overview of video games in Japan

Video games are a major industry in Japan, and the country is considered one of the most influential in video gaming. Japanese game development is often identified with the golden age of video games and the country is home to many notable video game companies such as Nintendo, Sega, Taito, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Capcom, Square Enix, Konami, NEC, SNK and formerly Sony Computer Entertainment. Japan is currently the third largest video game market in the world after China and the United States.

Numerous video games were released in 2018. Best-selling games included Madden NFL 19, NBA 2K19, NBA Live 19, WWE 2K19, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Marvel's Spider-Man, Red Dead Redemption 2, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Far Cry 5, God of War, Monster Hunter: World, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and Dragon Ball FighterZ. Games highly regarded by video game critics released in 2018 included Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Marvel's Spider-Man, Forza Horizon 4, Monster Hunter: World, Dead Cells, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Celeste. The year's highest-grossing games included Fortnite, Honor of Kings/Arena of Valor, Dungeon Fighter Online, League of Legends, and Pokémon Go.

<i>Mad Father</i> 2012 video game

Mad Father is a survival horror role-playing puzzle video game. The game was developed by Japanese developer Sen, published by Miscreant's Room and released on 10 December 2012. The game centers around an 11-year-old girl named Aya, who breaks into her father's secret laboratory to uncover the horrifying truth of his research. A Steam version, published by AGM Playism, was released on 23 September 2016.

In the video game industry during 2019, both Sony and Microsoft announced their intent to reveal their next-generation consoles in 2020, while Nintendo introduced a smaller Nintendo Switch Lite, and Google announced its streaming game platform Stadia. The controversy over loot boxes as a potential gambling route continued into 2019, with some governments like Belgium and the Netherlands banning games with them under their gambling laws, while the United Kingdom acknowledging their current laws prevent enforcing these as if they were games of chance. The first video cards to support real-time ray tracing were put onto the consumer market, including the first set of games that would take advantage of the new technology. The Epic Games Store continued its growth in challenging the largest digital PC game distribution service Steam, leading to concern and debate about Epic Games' methods to seek games for its service. Dota Auto Chess, a community-created mod for Dota 2, introduced a new subgenre of strategy games called auto battlers, which saw several games in the genre released throughout the year. Blizzard Entertainment faced criticism due to their involvement in the Blitzchung controversy, which began after they had banned a Hearthstone player for making comments during a tournament regarding the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests.

<i>Octopath Traveler</i> 2018 video game

Octopath Traveler is a role-playing video game developed by Square Enix, in collaboration with Acquire. The game was released for the Nintendo Switch in July 2018, for Windows in June 2019, for Stadia in April 2020, and for Xbox One in March 2021. It received generally favorable reviews, with praise for its presentation, music, and battle system, while its story received more mixed responses. The game had sold over 3 million copies worldwide by September 2022.

In the video game industry, 2020 saw the launch of the next generation of video game consoles, with both Microsoft and Sony Interactive Entertainment having released the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 consoles, respectively, in November 2020. The industry was heavily affected by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic which had begun in March and was characterized by COVID-19 lockdowns and remote work. While this caused numerous delays in software and hardware releases and the cancellation of live conferences and events in favor of virtual shows, it also created a boon for the industry as people turned to gaming as a means to pass the time. The industry also reacted to various political/cultural events.

<i>Spirit Hunter: NG</i> 2018 video game

Spirit Hunter: NG, short for No Good, is a 2018 horror visual novel adventure game developed by Experience. It is the second entry in their Spirit Hunter series, following 2017's Spirit Hunter: Death Mark, and is planned to be followed by the in-development Spirit Hunter: Death Mark II. The game was originally released for the PlayStation Vita, and has since been ported to the PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, and Nintendo Switch.

In the video game industry, 2021 saw the release of many new titles. The numerous delays in software and hardware releases due to the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted development schedules, leading to several games being delayed into 2022 or even postponed indefinitely. Additionally, computer and console hardware were impacted by the combined effects of a semiconductor shortage and a rising growth of bitcoin mining that strained the supply of critical components.

<i>Various Daylife</i> 2019 role-playing video game

Various Daylife is a role-playing video game developed by DokiDoki Groove Works and published by Square Enix. The game's development was led by key staff in charge of developing the Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler games. It was released on iOS, exclusively on their Apple Arcade service, in 2019 and on Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4 in 2022. It was re-released on iOS as a paid version named Various Daylife mobile with an Android release on January 23, 2023.

<i>Monark</i> (video game) 2021 video game

Monark is a 2021 Japanese role-playing game developed by Lancarse for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. It was localized and ported to Microsoft Windows by NIS America in February 2022. The game received mixed reviews from critics.

<i>Jack Move</i> 2022 video game

Jack Move is a role-playing video game developed by So Romantic and published by HypeTrain Digital in 2022 for Microsoft Windows, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

<i>Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo</i> 2023 video game

Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is a 2023 visual novel video game developed by Xeen and published by Square Enix for Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, and Windows. The game received positive reviews from critics.

<i>RPG Time: The Legend of Wright</i> 2022 video game

RPG Time: The Legend of Wright is a 2022 adventure video game developed by DeskWorks and published by Aniplex. Described as a "handwritten role-playing game", the visuals of RPG Time are depicted as a hand-drawn series of paper-and-pencil games on a notebook presented to the player as a role-playing adventure. Development of the game was led by Japanese designer Tom Fuji, who had worked on the game for over ten years, and cited his childhood experiences with hand-made games from craft materials as the inspiration for the game's visual design and theme.

<i>Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection</i> 2021 video game

Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection is a pair of video game compilations developed by SNK and Code Mystics. Each of the two volumes contain emulated versions of 10 games originally published by SNK between 1999 and 2000 for the company's short-lived Neo Geo Pocket Color handheld game console, including some featuring characters from fellow game developer Capcom. The first volume was released for Nintendo Switch in March 2021, followed by a release for Windows the following September. The second volume was released for both systems in November 2022.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Miller, Des (25 May 2023). "Ib (Remake) Review". RPGFan. Archived from the original on 7 August 2023. Retrieved 7 August 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 DeVader, Joe (9 March 2023). "Ib (Switch) Review". Nintendo World Report. Archived from the original on 2 April 2023. Retrieved 7 August 2023.
  3. 1 2 Perri, Marco (12 March 2023). "Ib Remake, la recensione del particolare horror di Kouri". Multiplayer.it (in Italian). Archived from the original on 15 March 2023. Retrieved 12 August 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 "狂気に満ちた美術館からの脱出――その先にある感動。口コミで広まったフリーゲーム『Ib』の人気の秘密に迫る". Famitsu (in Japanese). 11 June 2012. Archived from the original on 25 July 2023. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
  5. ↑ kouri (19 June 2014). "Ib_1.07公開しました。". monochrome blog (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 6 August 2023. Retrieved 7 August 2023.
  6. ↑ Mizutani, Shunji (12 April 2022). "Ib developer interview: Why a remake after 10 years?". Automaton. Archived from the original on 3 April 2023. Retrieved 7 August 2023.
  7. ↑ Romano, Sal (4 December 2022). "Ib for Switch launches March 9, 2023". Gematsu. Archived from the original on 4 December 2022. Retrieved 7 August 2023.
  8. ↑ "Ib coming to PS5, PS4 on March 14, 2024". Gematsu. 10 September 2023. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
  9. ↑ Sal Romano (10 March 2024). "This Week's Japanese Game Releases: Ib for PS5 and PS4, MACROSS Shooting Insight, more". Gematsu. Retrieved 30 March 2024.
  10. 1 2 Ryu, Bohyun (12 August 2022). "이브 리메이크 리뷰". IGN (in Korean). Archived from the original on 10 August 2023. Retrieved 10 August 2023.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Musgrave, Shaun (23 March 2023). "SwitchArcade Round-Up: Reviews Featuring 'Ib', Plus 'Rakuen' and Today's Other New Releases and Sales – TouchArcade". TouchArcade . Archived from the original on 3 June 2023. Retrieved 12 August 2023.
  12. ↑ Liu, Stephanie (13 September 2022). "Enter Guertena's Gallery With Ib on the Nintendo Switch". Siliconera. Archived from the original on 3 March 2023. Retrieved 12 August 2023.
  13. ↑ "Ib (Switch)". Metacritic . Archived from the original on 31 March 2023. Retrieved 7 August 2023.
  14. ↑ "Ib Reviews". OpenCritic . Archived from the original on 7 August 2023. Retrieved 7 August 2023.
  15. ↑ "Ib（イヴ） (Switch)のレビュー・評価・感想". Famitsu (in Japanese). 1 August 2023. Archived from the original on 9 December 2022. Retrieved 12 August 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.