Reader reviews for Buddy Simulator 1984

This one is weirdly named, and it plays just as weird - or at least it tries to. We take the role of us, a PC user during an alternative 1984 who installs this Buddy Simulator 1984 programme with a self-learning AI and the only goal in its, eh, life: to become our best buddy. In order to do so it studies some alternative facts about us, inspects our (hopefully) alternative computer and starts building “a perfect gaming experience” that advances both technically and gameplay-wise as we play. The AI keeps pushing its “buddy” agenda further and further, becoming more and more intrusive, and a number of “glitches” along the way hint there’s something wrong to all this situation.

It starts as a simplified interactive fiction which turns into an early graphical adventure which is then upgraded to a 3D-like JRPG. I really liked the concept and meta humour at first as I hadn’t played many games of this sort before (not counting a wonderfully crazy There Is No Game). Only later I learned that a whole subgenre of “anti-games” exists which started with the 1997 PS exclusive moon: Remix RPG Adventure and continued in more up-to-date games such as Undertale and The Sexy Brutale. They are all different, but what unites them is this postmodern approach of “breaking” traditional mechanics and promoting non-violent gaming. But here the solo developer went a bit further and broke this - originally cute - concept, now for real.

I admit, the game is pretty immersive and even imitates the earlier days of PC gaming, with the “green monitor” effect and distant sounds from the street being part of the gameplay, although it’s still too ugly graphically. It may be just me since I discovered video games during the 1990s, missing the majority of earlier releases, and I probably can’t fully enjoy this kind of throwbacks. But even then it felt unnecessarily simplified and undercooked to me, sacrificing its core gameplay(s) for the sake of a questionable storyline.

For example, the parser in the IF part is very basic, using just a handful of commands and nouns we learn immediately, so we can’t do much rather than follow a linear plot. Then it turns into a primitive Zelda/Ultima clone, we even find a sword and start hitting everything with it, but to no results, because the environment is non-interactive and we are meant to play it safe, like a primitive adventure. Even the pet the programme creates for us based on our description always looks like a hound. Accompanied by a zebra named Zebra that looks like a pixel dog - nice work, AI!

And when we move to the “JRPG” part, the game suddenly turns into a QTE simulator, filled with turn-based combat where we have to push random pop-up buttons non-stop. That’s when I lost my patience and finished the game at Youtube - to no regrets, as it ends with a series of depressing script scenes which buried the experience for me. To add to the frustration, it’s also glitchy - in a bad, unintentional way. There’s no save feature, only autosave, and thus at one point I had to replay half of the game after hitting a dead end.

I wish I enjoyed it more, I really do. It starts so innocent and lighthearted, but ends as a disturbing, claustrophobic and simply unpleasant anti-game - which, in this case, is not a complement.

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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Easy