YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is a psychedelic indie Earthbound

News
By published

YIIK

I love an RPG set in the real actual world most of us live in. There's something deeply comforting about the way they make modern life more magically real, transforming it into a place featuring experience points and monsters, where you never, ever have to go the dentist or fill out a tax return. RPGs set in the real world are still so rare that they tend to be called 'Earthbound-inspired', and to be fair they often are to a large extent. This description fits pretty well with YIIK: A Postmodern RPG, but I can also detect a bit of Persona in there, a bit of indie beard, and it's shaping up to be as strange as you might expect.

From the website, which hasn't been updated yet with the game's new moniker, YIIK is "a Japanese-style RPG developed by Americans. [...] The game contains action and platforming elements, as well as meticulously designed story-based dungeons. In addition to these story-based dungeons, [YIIK] will feature randomly generated dungeons called "The Mind Dungeon" that contain puzzles, story elements, and opportunities for the characters to level up beyond the standard leveling experience that is expected from battle".

Having more JRPG-style games on PC always feels like a Very Good Thing, particularly when they're this interesting, and they give rise to trailers as unusual as this one:

I mean, what's going on there? I've no idea. But I'm intrigued to know more. YIIK, developed by Ackk Studios and published by Ysbryd Games, is coming to PC later this year.

[Note: one of the game's producers, Cassandra Khaw, is a PC Gamer contributor.]

Tom Sykes
Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.

Latest in RPG
Scorched person with their hands on their head
Ghoul players in Fallout 76 are starting to place their camps in the most radioactive areas of the map, and regular humans aren't happy: 'I had to inject 30+ radaway into my veins'
Gale, a wizard from Baldur's Gate 3, looks very bloodied and very sad at the player while a celestial midnight blooms behind his depressed mug.
Baldur's Gate 3's latest stress test update fixes heartbreaking bug that caused a total party-wipe on Ironman Mode at the game's final boss, forcing dejected testers to restart the entire game
Lady smiling with the sun in her face
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's director was 'starving for new turn-based RPGs,' and figured if he wanted them, there would be others out there who'd want to play his game
Astarion, a silver-haired vampire from Baldur's Gate 3, places a hand on his chest and pouts.
Wizards of the Coast gaming head says Baldur's Gate 3 'certainly raised the bar' and changed how they think about big budget D&D, but they still want 'different entry points' including smaller games
Natarkveld, a horrific amalgamation of Nata and Arkveld, screeches like a creature in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds player spits in the face of creation, fuses Nata with Arkveld like they're doing a Full Metal Alchemist villain speedrun
Fallout 76 ghoul screenshots
How to become a ghoul in Fallout 76
Latest in News
Lenovo Legion Go S in someone's hands with an apartment behind it
The first non-Steam Deck SteamOS handheld is now available for preorder, and Lenovo may be aiming for the ROG Ally X's throne
Scorched person with their hands on their head
Ghoul players in Fallout 76 are starting to place their camps in the most radioactive areas of the map, and regular humans aren't happy: 'I had to inject 30+ radaway into my veins'
The "mind blown" meme from Tim & Eric.
Friendship ended with human race: Boffins declare the 'meme Turing test' has been passed, and AI is now making funnier captions on average than you useless lumps
Gale, a wizard from Baldur's Gate 3, looks very bloodied and very sad at the player while a celestial midnight blooms behind his depressed mug.
Baldur's Gate 3's latest stress test update fixes heartbreaking bug that caused a total party-wipe on Ironman Mode at the game's final boss, forcing dejected testers to restart the entire game
Two adventurers face off against a pair of undead scallywags in Frosthaven
X-Com creator Julian Gollop unexpectedly takes over sequel to sprawling board game adaptation, and you can try out the closed beta next week
Naoe and Yasuke pose against the backdrop of a burning building.
After Ubi came crawlin' back to Steam, Assassin's Creed Shadows blasts past a million players in under 24 hours and has already smashed Valhalla's player record
More about rpg
Scorched person with their hands on their head

Ghoul players in Fallout 76 are starting to place their camps in the most radioactive areas of the map, and regular humans aren't happy: 'I had to inject 30+ radaway into my veins'

Gale, a wizard from Baldur's Gate 3, looks very bloodied and very sad at the player while a celestial midnight blooms behind his depressed mug.

Baldur's Gate 3's latest stress test update fixes heartbreaking bug that caused a total party-wipe on Ironman Mode at the game's final boss, forcing dejected testers to restart the entire game
Lenovo Legion Go S in someone's hands with an apartment behind it

The first non-Steam Deck SteamOS handheld is now available for preorder, and Lenovo may be aiming for the ROG Ally X's throne
See more latest
Most Popular
Lenovo Legion Go S in someone's hands with an apartment behind it
The first non-Steam Deck SteamOS handheld is now available for preorder, and Lenovo may be aiming for the ROG Ally X's throne
Scorched person with their hands on their head
Ghoul players in Fallout 76 are starting to place their camps in the most radioactive areas of the map, and regular humans aren't happy: 'I had to inject 30+ radaway into my veins'
The "mind blown" meme from Tim & Eric.
Friendship ended with human race: Boffins declare the 'meme Turing test' has been passed, and AI is now making funnier captions on average than you useless lumps
Gale, a wizard from Baldur's Gate 3, looks very bloodied and very sad at the player while a celestial midnight blooms behind his depressed mug.
Baldur's Gate 3's latest stress test update fixes heartbreaking bug that caused a total party-wipe on Ironman Mode at the game's final boss, forcing dejected testers to restart the entire game
Two adventurers face off against a pair of undead scallywags in Frosthaven
X-Com creator Julian Gollop unexpectedly takes over sequel to sprawling board game adaptation, and you can try out the closed beta next week
Nvidia Blackwell GPU with specs annotated.
CEO Jensen Huang reveals that Nvidia is now making chips in the USA but will that help with gaming GPU supplies?
Naoe and Yasuke pose against the backdrop of a burning building.
After Ubi came crawlin' back to Steam, Assassin's Creed Shadows blasts past a million players in under 24 hours and has already smashed Valhalla's player record
Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.
Valve CMO threatened the company would walk away from games if it didn't own the rights to Half-Life—'It wasn't an idle threat—we weren't going to take on all of the risk to make other people rich'
Uplifted chimp Penn and cyber-rat Trip in the key art for Animal Use Protocol
Animal Use Protocol's dysfunctional chimp-rat alliance drags the Stasis series into a horrible new first-person era
A woman with short hair stands next to a pot plant, provocatively
GOG's version of Silent Hill 4 has been updated with missing content from the original console game