LittleBear
says: You're singing to the preacher.
15.01.08
Harpooned
Harpooned: Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator is officially released now. I’m a little unsure of how to approach it, I don’t know whether to treat it as a protest or a game. Obviously it’s both, and I’m sure monoRAIL‘s intent is to bring attention to the subject matter (which I admittedly know very little about).
The core of the game is the harpooning of whales to harvest their meat. You lose points for hitting the unarmed protesters’ boats, and you can incur damage on your ship by running into things.
I do think it’s an interesting experience, one quite different from just about any shmup I can think of. I found myself completely uninterested in my score, and I preferred shooting the Green Peace boats, despite the penalty. Not sure why, maybe they’re less defenseless, though this is part of the odd mix of feelings I felt.
The result is a game that kept me interested to see, visually, what would happen. It kept me wanting to follow the “story” and experience the result a little. I don’t like whaling, but I’m the sort to keep it out of mind. Frankly, there are too many other things that need fixing in the world, and I feel sometimes I can only care about so much. But the game succeeds, here, by bringing these issues back to our conscious brain. Though other forms of media have larger audiences than shmups 
I don’t know whether it should have any replay value, I suspect not. Play (or watch) it once, and you’ve received the message. It’s a solid package, well put together.
Harpooned » Blog Archive » the2bears indie shmup blog on Harpooned said,
January 16, 2008 at 4:15 am
[...] Read the full article here. Thanks for the writeup Bil! [...]
monoRAIL said,
January 16, 2008 at 4:23 am
I designed the game so that a casual gamer wouldn’t have much trouble getting to the ending on the first play through. It was important that they see the ending to get the full message from the game, and I know that most people won’t have the time or the desire to play it more than once.
For the more experienced gamer I’ve set the scores on the high score table very high, but not unreachable, and the combo system allows for very high scores with creative chaining. As you said though, playing for score seems like a strange thing to do at first.
Andrew said,
January 16, 2008 at 6:03 am
Downloaded the game for fun, haven’t played it yet. Should help to re-inforce the message, i.e. “STOP THE DAMN WHALING!” Great to see someone have the ‘oomph’ and conscience to create it.
Alex said,
January 18, 2008 at 2:48 am
If you “skim” against the small greenpeace craft you should be able to “kidnap” people off their boats. Then, warships will chase you and if you can dodge their bullets and reach the end of the level, you get a hefty “Ransom” bonus…
Kuraku said,
January 19, 2008 at 8:39 am
killin wales is kool. stoopid fish. they shuld all die. idiot i am.
Alex said,
January 20, 2008 at 7:18 pm
The youtube video has had 12000 hits so far…
When I checked last night it was at 10000 hits / views.
Looks like monoRAIL hit upon a controversial topic and sparked some interest, some quite interesting feedback there…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR4KN6EfX6M
the2bears.com » Go Beryllium! said,
May 7, 2008 at 10:00 pm
[...] monoRAIL’s latest. Shows a very different style (variety is great!) from both Droneswarm and Harpooned. The bullet patterns on the boss are almost procedural, pretty [...]