#daniel remar

When she wakes up, she hears some scientists being attacked by aliens but through the intercom she hears her brother and he explains the situation. It's been months, the labs were taken over as an alien facility, basically everyone died including her family, she survived because they made her a cyborg and implanted her with alien technology such as a nano shield, which allows her to use alien weapons. She is basically their only chance of survival and this is clearly too much for her.

I really admire how the game shows us that yes, putting a kid through this is definetly too much ans iji needs to sit down and process all of this before she sets out. She isn't a door kicking, gum chewing basass, or at least not yet. And the game has many moments similar to this one where it makes the choice to show something that isn't seen too often in storytelling. Like the effects of denial in the loss of loved ones.

The gameplay is kinda simple. Plays like a pretty grounded 2D platformer with the kind of animation from the old prince of persia games. Iji can use her nano gun to utilize either lethal or stun rounds to either kill or avoid enemies. I love this cause the game doesn't tell you this but it reaaaaally has details about sort of pacifist and genocide runs like in undertale, but this game precedes it by almost a decade. There are so many little and big details about the story that change through your own actions.

Through the game, iji can find logs made by the aliens, which she can read through the translation built into her nano field. She is worried at how human the aliens are, how she can understand them, how she knows that they are actually in a deplorable state running away from a bigger alien faction and this might be the last hope of their species. I empathise a lot with them, even if they did basically kill all of humabity. Oh yeah they did do that, iji doesnt find out till later and this also takes a toll on her. Knowing they might be the last if not some of the last humans alive but also the fact that her brother prefered to ommit this big important fact??

So yeah, you do either the spare or kill on the aliens and the story differs on that a bit, making you feel like you are really paving your own path. The leader of these aliens that are called the Tasen fights you regardless and dies. Then the alien faction hunting them down finds them, these are the komato. Who at first were presented by iji's brother as alien police but nah, warmongering alien race.

Hell breaks loose as both alien races are fighting and killing eachothee and with iji in the middle. The Komato know of her as "Human Anomaly" as she has avoided all their attacks or killed enough of them be threatening. That's when the assasins show up, who are special forces that teleport around to kill their target, with the highlight of them all being Asha.

What a legend that Asha. A full psychopath who says he is a big time killer, is missing an arm due to deleporting like a dumbass and has voicelines(??).

(I thought the fake transparency was funny)

When the game first came out, regrettably, I wasn’t all that interested. I knew it was there, I just never had the desire to seek it out. But about a year later, I discovered how it actually played, thanks to DeceasedCrab’s Let’s Play, and I was hooked. I had to experience this game for myself. It had everything I liked - crazy weapons and battles, high action, expansive and detailed levels, lots of secrets, interesting lore to discover, memorable characters, and it never assumed the player would approach things any one way, the story actually changing to match your decisions - the creator thought ahead and made player choice matter.

I was inspired by this game; it spoke to me on such a level. I wanted to create worlds and stories as deep and thought-out as what Daniel had made. And I wanted to pay tribute to the man who made it all possible for me in the first place, by putting out this treasure for me to discover. Despite being a free release made by one guy because he was bored, it’s still one of the most polished and professional games I’ve ever played; certainly the best free game I’ve ever played. I kept coming back to it. I wanted to discover all the lore, all the mountains of backstory that sat hidden behind the game and made it feel all the more real, a living and breathing universe. I wanted to find all the secrets, all the hidden areas, weapons, and items.

When I finished Iji for the first time, I got out of my seat and applauded. I knew full well that Daniel couldn’t hear me. But it just felt like the right thing to do.

To this day, I’ve never had that feeling after any other video game, with the exception of original Dark Souls, which is my favorite video game of all time. Somehow, Iji made a lasting impression with me, standing out as being so much of an accomplishment, so much a triumph of one man’s creativity and ingenuity, that it warranted a standing ovation. It was the least I could do.

At the time, the MS Paint Adventures forums were still a thing. Back when MS Paint Adventures was cool. Before the dark times. Before Homestuck jumped the shark. And fan adventures were a thing - people would draw panels, tell a story, and what the readers commented and responded with would influence how the plot moved forward. I found this concept fascinating, as though it combined a story, a comic, and roleplaying - all things I enjoyed. I wanted to get in on it too, and tell my own stories - collaboratively, with my readers - in such a medium.

As it so happened, someone at the time was doing a fan adventure based on Cave Story. I decided to follow suit and adapt what was at the time the other pillar of the indie gaming community.

What I created was incredibly stupid and bore no relation to the original at all. It was a hideous, poorly drawn, poorly written maze of bad decisions, nonsensical plots, and only tangential connections to the game it was supposed to be based on. Someone commented that it prevented them from doing a fan adventure about a Tasen soldier on a quest for hot drinks, and to this day I feel bad, because I would’ve loved to see that come to fruition.

But, for some unholy reason, it eclipsed the Cave Story fan adventure in popularity, and it dragged on for several years. And I had a blast writing and drawing it.

I was 15 then, and in high school. Now in a few days, I’ll be 24.

In the time since the original fan adventure, I’ve gone on to college, and then to vet school (because, yes, of all things, I want to be a cow doctor). I went through three jobs and four computers. I got a driver’s license. I met my girlfriend, and I am eternally grateful for all the happiness she’s brought to my life. I decided to resurrect the old fan adventure, and this time do it right, when I discovered that Daniel had referenced it in one of his games. I’ve had to come to terms with my depression, and it’s proved an obstacle in my life, but I’ve done my best to persevere. Iji got an update, and it totally invalidated everything I had theorized and believed about the universe, but I didn’t give up.

In all that time, Iji has stayed with me. Always inspiring me, and standing as a monumental achievement, something that speaks to the power one person can have to create something that can speak to and mean so much to people around the world. The sort of creative power I could only dream of, but at the same time, that I know could come from just a single man’s hobby project put together in his spare time.