Space Funeral is an odd, cult classic RPG Maker game. From the eyes of an observer, it is a game that looks bad. However, if you actually take the time to play it, you’ll come to revel in what it is.

You play as Phillip, a boy wearing pajamas that’s constantly crying. He never speaks, but his constant tears and bizarre walk cycles manages to make him oddly charming. His appearance is just one symptom of a world that had suddenly turned grotesque. He wants to go out and fix it, in spite of people telling him that it is too late for him, that he’s doomed. On the way out, he meets a talkative, abrasive horse made of legs appropriately called Leg Horse, who is on his own quest to restore his form. Together, can they reach the City of Forms and fix the curse that plagues the land of Space Funeral?

The art is bad. Character sprites are never clean. Environments feel like horrible mismatches of color. Yet, I find myself loving it every time I play this game. For one, the sheer goofiness of the setting and the bizarre enemies makes it work, as the grotesque art style really highlights how things are. The other thing is that within the canon of the game, the world is supposed to be rotten and ruined. Instead of going with a post-apocalypse of grime and ruin like games typically do, Space Funeral‘s apocalypse was a reality-bending one that bent the forms of the people and the land, preventing it all from achieving a cohesive whole.

Of course, our heroes are trying to fix that. Their quest is a bizarre one that comes off as an affectionate parody of early JRPGs, a journey from point to point with little connecting threads. That road is filled with NPCs that speak in complete jokey nonsense; though sometimes that jokey nonsense is actual, helpful advice. Space Funeral takes the trend of old games all-caps-ing important terms and exaggerates it, coming off as NPCs suddenly screaming mid-sentence. One of the greatest joys of Space Funeral is just going around and talking to NPCs; in particular, there’s one NPC toward the end of the game that gives one of the most absurd conversations I’ve ever seen in a game.

Underneath the joking exterior, there are genuine statements about creating things that pops up toward the end. Space Funeral actually has a philosophical basis in that the City of Forms is based off of Plato’s theory of forms. It’s the idea that things in the physical world are mere imitations of absolute, unchangeable ideas. Like, what is a “good RPG?” Within the context of Space Funeral, the very game itself is a distortion of what people would consider to be a traditionally good game. With the City of Forms corrupted, the imitation of Space Funeral becomes an absurd mess and within this context, the art truly shines.

Battles in Space Funeral are super simple, to the point that it feels like an afterthought. They are so simple that you can probably just cruise through the game by spamming attack. However, the gameplay is not what people come to Space Funeral for. It’s the writing and humor that really makes the experience. Besides the bizarre enemy art, the spirit of the game is carried on with the “Mystery” command. Usable once per battle, Phillip can cause a random, context-sensitive thing to happen in jokey dialogue. Sometimes it benefits you, sometimes it doesn’t. The pure joy of the Mystery command culminates in stuff like a group of frogs being instantly killed and the game saying that they suddenly “croaked.”

The game’s soundtrack is interesting in that instead of being made of original tunes, they’re a compilation of music thecatamites took. It very much champions the early RPG Maker tradition of creators throwing licensed music in their games. Going back to the art, the music combined with the art embodies a DIY game making attitude that’s charming and rarely seen nowadays.

Unlike the art though, the music isn’t grotesque. It is actually a really enjoyable mix that manages to embody the moods of the game. The start of the game, that shows the miserable state of the world and Phillip, is set to the depressing White Waking. The horror tonal shift is set to Ruth White doing spoken poetry of works by Charles Baudelaire, the downright wacky dungeon of Rip-The-Blood is set to the jaunty My Marie, etc. The music really helps bind the experience together and makes for an enjoyable listen.

As a cherry on top, Space Funeral is free and can be beaten within an hour and a half. It’s a good jokey time, that is short enough to not overstay its’ welcome either.

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Space Funeral

Free

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Wonderfully messy graphics.
• Fun dialogue.
• A nice short and free time.

Cons

• Gameplay is an afterthought