YIIK: A Postmodern RPG

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YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is a game developed by Ackk Studios, and published by Ysbryd Games. It was released on January 17, 2019 for Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch.

Gameplay

Main Article: Combat

Combat uses unique minigames to use skills. For example, Michael's beatdown ability has you hit buttons at certain timings to dish out additional damage. STUB

Story

Note: the following summary is based on version 1.25.

Chapter 1: A Wild Cat Chase

A cat steals Alex's grocery list.

On April 4th, 1999, Alex Eggleston arrives home in Frankton, after graduating from college. He finds a note from his mother, asking him to pick up groceries, to his annoyance. He receives a strange phone call, hearing a distorted voice claim that "the needle of the record player has dropped," before hanging up. Unable to make sense of the call, Alex heads into town, becoming distracted by a forest along the way. Outside of this forest, he finds a cat with a "Salvador Dali mustache." Alex stops to imagine describing this cat to a fictional friend. He constructs a narrative where he and the cat have a bond, before admitting to having no relationship with it. The cat then steals his grocery list, leading Alex through the forest and into the Factory Hotel.

Alex follows the cat up an elevator, before the power goes out. Inside a familiar looking room, he finds Panda. With Panda's help, Alex enters a bizarre room which seems to defy the laws of reality. Inside this room, he encounters the Proto Woman, quoting text he is unable to make sense of. Alex soon finds his way into a room with a mysterious girl, who introduces herself as Sammy. Alex agrees to help Sammy look for her cat, Dali. After reuniting with Dali, the two then have to confront Wilhelm, Sammy's "roommate." Once Wilhelm has been dealt with, Alex and Sammy head into the elevator. Alex begins to fit Sammy's story together in his head, while admitting that he had fabricated some of the pieces. Their ride in the elevator is soon interrupted when Sammy is taken by some mysterious Entities, with Alex only able to watch, helplessly.

Exhausted from the day's events, Alex heads home to contemplate what has happened. He receives an email, linking to a thread on ONISM1999. In this thread, Alex sees footage of Sammy being taken from the elevator, before he goes to bed. He awakens after a rough night, having been unable to get the video out of his head. Elsewhere, an android girl with green hair lays in a bed surrounded by strange hooded figures. Back in Alex's home, he decides to go back to the factory to look for Sammy. He receives another odd message from an unknown caller, before leaving. Outside the forest, Alex is reunited with his childhood friend, Michael. They discuss ONISM1999, and the disturbing footage of the girl in the elevator. After picking up Michael's camera, they briefly stop inside the recently opened arcade. The two then make their way to the Factory Hotel. Inside, they witness a strange being made of stars. The pair escape from the building, and leave to transfer photos of the entity they encountered from Michael's camera.

Chapter 2: A Chance Traveller

Back at Alex's house, him and Michael talk about the paranormal while waiting for the photos to transfer. It's during this conversation that Alex learns Michael helped create ONISM. They also briefly discuss Sammy. When the transfer is finished, Michael is distraught to find that the photos are completely distorted. They upload the photos to ONISM. Two weeks after uploading the photos, another user posts about a girl who rips holes in time and space. Alex and Michael recognize the girl in the photos as the same girl from the arcade. They head over, where they fight due to a misunderstanding. After getting through to Vella, they return to Alex's home to show her the photos. As Alex explains his story, he feels a sense of familiarity with Vella that he is unable to explain. He remembers a woman in college he dated, and her theory on "Soul Mates." Vella tells the story of her first encounter with the Entities. The conversation shifts to metaphysics before Vella becomes uncomfortable and brings it to a halt. Before returning to the arcade, she introduces Alex and Michael to the Mind Dungeon. Alex once again receives a strange phone call, from his "BEST childhood friend" about the song 'Losing My Religion.' After training in the Mind Dungeon and receiving a message from someone in Wind Town about their missing sister, Alex gives Vella a call. She agrees to go to Wind Town, while informing Alex that the Elevator Girl has a name, Semi Pak.

"This is all my fault. It's all because of me. Because of what I'm like, you know?"

On the bus to Wind Town, the gang talk about Semi, before Alex offends Vella with some casual racism. After reaching the town, the group make their way to Rory's house. He informs them that his sister Carrie went missing three weeks ago. She'd been having trouble with the girls at her school. One day Rory found her holding her baby toys in the attic. She claimed to need them as gifts for kids who had less than she did, and took seven toys with her. Rory found these toys scattered after she had vanished. In each spot where a toy was found, an accident soon followed. The group investigate these locations before heading into the sewer, which Rory claims contains his sister's soul. What they instead find, however, is Rory's Soul Survivor. It's here when Rory reveals the truth, that Carrie didn't vanish, but rather she committed suicide. Rory feels guilt, blaming himself for his sister's death. He describes separating from his physical form in his grief, his soul nearly entering the Soul Space.

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."

- Vella

While Vella offers words of encouragement to Rory, the party is ambushed by a Golden Alpaca. He sentences the Soul Survivor to Soul Death. After the group defeat the alpaca, Alex grows increasingly frustrated by his confusion. Vella explains that the Entities, or Soul Survivors, are visual representations of souls that have escaped their bodies and entered into a world where a physical version of their soul already exists. After exiting from the sewer, Rory begins to break down over his sister. Alex, to the horror of his friends, yells at Rory "No one cares about your dead sister, right now. We almost just died ourselves!" Internally, Alex recognizes that he was in the wrong, but is unable to apologize immediately. The party spilt up, with Vella promising to be in touch.

Chapter 3: Reluctant Apology Tour

After a few weeks, Alex's Mom comes home with news to Alex that she has lost her job and needs Alex to get a job to help with bills. Alex initially hesitates, but goes around Frankton in search of a job and comes out empty-handed. He goes home for the night and again dreams of a mysterious android.

Alex wakes up in the middle of the night and finds an entity living in his home. He chases it through his backyard and to a radio tower, where he finds the sleeve of Mystical Ultima LP Legend. The entity wants Alex to play the record from the tower, but inside the sleeve there is no record. Alex decides to spend all of his efforts to tracking down this record.

In the morning, Alex checks out the Frankton Record Stop and has no luck. He asks Vella if she wants to venture down to Wind Town with him instead of working her shift at the arcade. Vella, annoyed by this, berates Alex. He explains to her what happened to him last night and shows her the record sleeve, and Vella freaks out at the sight of it. Alex doesn't seem to understand why, and leaves to go to Wind Town by himself. Luckily, right as he exits the arcade, he meets up with Michael.

When arriving at Wind Town, Michael pressures Alex to bring Rory along as well and to apologize for what he said. Alex, reluctantly, agrees and has Rory tag along. The LP is not at the Wind Town Record Store either, so they head to the Strip Mall. Along the way the three bond. Michael offhandly mentions Y2K, a supposed catastrophic event that will happen by New Years end. While Michael and Rory laugh it off, Alex is deeply terrified by the idea.

While the Strip Mall record store still doesn't have the LP, they decide to venture to the flagship store in Flag Town. There, the three meet the store's owner Claudio, who is also an ONISM user and recognizes the name of the LP from a post. While they also don't have it, Claudio knows a family friend who has a massive collection who might have it. Tagging along his sister, Chondra, Claudio joins Alex on his quest to find this LP.

Tracking along Mt. Town, there are reports from ONISM about the ghost of Semi Pak haunting a cave. Paranormal investigators from the site flood the caves looking for her. Alex and his friends are the lucky few to find this ghost, who is actually a woman named Liana. She explains how she made a mixtape for her crush, Shane G. Irving. However, on her way to deliver it, she was struck by a car. Slowly dying, she sees Shane with another woman and him not even seeing Liana. She now possesses the mixtape, wishing for it to finally be delivered to Shane so she can be with him forever. Alex takes the tape for later use.

Now exiting the cave and at the top of Mt. Town, the gang meets the Unkrich family's friend Mark, a world traveler and guitarist. Sitting down for some tea, Mark tells a grand tale and bonds with the crew. However, Alex just wants to know if he has the record or not. While Mark, again, doesn't have the LP, he reads the additional information on the sleeve. He notices that the album isn't even out yet, coming out on January 1st, 2000. Even more importantly, he reads the artist's name: Vella Wilde. Alex, completely dumbfounded, explains to the audience that if he had just read the cover a bit more he would've figured out it was made by Vella.

Before leaving to see Vella, Alex explains to Claudio and Chondra everything that has happened in his journey to far. Despite being told about extraordinary, paranormal things, they initially focus on Rory's sister's suicide, much to the bewilderment of Alex. They explain that in 1985, their brother Aaron went missing. While they spent all the effort they could in finding him, he never turned up.

Chondra pulls Alex aside to tell Alex a bit more about Aaron, but oddly she can't seem to recall a whole lot of details about him. She scolds Alex for expanding Claudio's obsession with missing people to Semi Pak as well.

Now returning to Frankton, Alex meets up with Vella and introduces Claudio and Chondra. After hanging out in Burger Joint for a while, Alex sleazily asks Vella about the LP, now knowing why she acted so strange about the record. It's revealed that the LP came from Vella's reality, so the only way to receive the record would be to explore Vella's Mind Dungeon.

The group explores and learns a bit about her history: how she was seen as a child prodigy, her parent's high expectations, her dreams of making it big and being a star. They find four Vellas from different periods of her life to play a show, with the real Vella perfoming vocals. The audience boos and is mortified by the terrible performance. This opens the way to a path, leading to the longingly desired vinyl of Mystical Ultima LP Legend.

Before deciding to play it at the radio tower, the gang listens to it together in Alex's room. This has mixed reactions, all creating an uncomfortable atmosphere. Vella runs out of the house and to the park, and Alex follows. The two alone, Vella tells Alex about her trauma involving her ex-lover who worked on the album. Their strong relationship suddenly ended when he vanished without a trace. Exactly a year later, Vella is playing a show where she sees him again, with an arm wrapped around a girl even younger than her. Traumatized, Vella longed for an escape from reality... which led her to explore the soul space, and arrive in Alex's reality. After this intense conversation, the two agree to go back to Alex's home so they can play the record for real.

Chapter 4: Mystical Ultima LP Legend

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The Essentia 2000 finally meets Alex.

Chapter 5: The Y2K Problem

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Epilogue (Chapter 6)

Main Article: Ending 1

After the Proto-Comet destroys all of reality, Alex is left alone with Panda on a stranded island version of his home. In a deep state of depression, Alex decides to use his phone to enter the Soul Space and wander. Hoping to confide in Panda, he asks what they should do next, but Panda doesn't have any answer. Instead, he reveals himself to just be a stuffed panda and floats away, leaving Alex alone.

Eventually, Alex stumbles across a "rock planet" (or a "lone star") and meets alternate versions of himself that suffered a similar fate he did. However, while Alex tried to fight the comet, all of these Alexes just let the destruction happen and entered the soul space prematurely. He gets told to not go to the other side of the rock, but ignores the advice and finds four robed Alexes aiming to destroy another reality and invites Alex to join. Alex declines, but watches as they form into a comet, destroying reality after reality. As this happens, Alex recalls his experience up to this point.

Alex experiences his grief all over again, witnessing his friends behind robed Alexes disappearing before him. While Alex cries out for them, none respond. After travelling through the Soul Space, Alex discovers a planet, not yet destroyed, and decides to do what he should've done and save it. Alex reveals that the reality he wanted to save is the player's. Once the player agrees, them and their reality's Michael, Vella, Rory, Claudio, Chondra and Essentia help Alex to fight against the comet.

The comet is composed of many "proto-alexes" which represent some kind of issue Alex has, like his pretentiousness, obsession with media, masturbation habits(?), and weight. Though, obviously, none of these really represent the issues which Alex got to this point, what Essentia previously described as "destruction." After defeating these supposed flaws, Alex briefly gets to meet a "Spectre" appearing as Sammy, warning him that what he's about to see is terrible, apologizing for "it" using her to get Alex to get to this point.

Alex finds himself in The Throne Room where he meets the Essentia 995 and Proto-Alex, together known as the Twisted Beings. Proto-Alex explains that Essentia 995 is a liar who envies Proto-Alex, and has manipulated Alex to end the division which ties them together. Essentia 995 confirms this to be true, as, "It is often necessary to lie to yourself to get a tough job done. You've done it. We've all done it. I said what I needed to say to get you here. I'm sorry if I used the poor girl's disappearance as a catalyst. But would anything else really have motivated you?" Pissed at this revelation, Alex and company attempts to defeat them, but they're seemingly invincible.

Alex ends up in Heaven and meets Roy Guarder, the protagonist of Two Brothers. Roy tells him that they're alike in that they lost everything. But despite that, Alex should keep fighting to end the division, and think about it in a different way. He is allowed to return and works with the player to pull the plugs around Essentia 995 and Proto-Alex. Despite the protest that it's, "...the only thing keeping this division permanent," and that, "WITHOUT THIS EVERYTHING GOES BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS!!," they go through with it and pull the plug.

The only thing left on-screen is The Player, posed in a cross. Alex apologizes to the player for dragging them into his business, but appreciates the help from them, idolizing them and wishing they were just like the player.

I.V

Main Article: I.V

I.V is an upcoming update to YIIK, which adds new story content and a new battle system.

Development

Main Article: Development History

The game was originally known as Project Y2K. A prototype was shown off in PAX East 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J147RRTmjM

Gallery

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Trivia

• The game was originally announced as Project Y2K.
• When deciding on the name of the game, one of the ideas was "1999: A Reality Odyssey", a reference to "2001: A Space Odyssey"