Volume 11: Respecting My Elders

The first piece I ever wrote for Skybox was about Deltarune and how it drives a relationship between protagonist and player that defines a game AI could never make. I’m still very proud of my piece, but this month’s find had me experience one of the games which served as a direct inspiration for Deltarune as well as dozens of others across the independent RPG landscape. For all of its simplicity, OFF helped me to appreciate what came after, as well as being a delightfully uncanny game to scratch the itch for something spooky.

While OFF has been officially remastered and released on modern storefronts, it began life as a free RPGMaker project by Unproductive Fun Time, a team made up of developer Martin Georis, and composer Alias Conrad Coldwood. Originally released in French, OFF was translated by a dedicated fan in 2011, thanks to a large cult following. This fan translation, helmed by Quinn K, was explicitly approved by Martin Georis, and became the basis for the western fanbase moving into the 2010s. Which is to say, Joe didn’t know about any of this when it was happening.

OFF was a game I had heard whispers about in obscure corners of the internet. A bizarre-looking RPG that has apparently had a lasting impact on dozens of games that came after, including some of my all-time favourites. To not at least try it would be stupid. OFF plays with the building blocks of what makes an RPG, and the inherent violence within the genre, but never does so at the cost of a coherent plot. In fact, OFF is remarkably simple in what it wants us to do.

We control The Batter, a blank slate of a protagonist who is given the mission to “purify the land” by the unsettling feline called The Judge. It’s a mission given without much flair, and this is by design. The world of OFF is made up of places literally labelled “Zone 1,” “Zone 2,” and so forth. It’s a game that knows it’s a game, and at this point, isn’t anything I’ve not experienced before. I can’t exactly criticize OFF for being on the nose about this, given it was one of the heralds of this type of storytelling.

You travel to each Zone, you kill enemies, and you kill bosses. You get extra party members who are literal white circles. There aren’t “characters” in OFF, there are obstacles and it’s your job as the player to defeat those obstacles. Occasionally, you get a glimpse into a world with a bizarre history. A world made up of the production of plastic, ambiguous “meat,” and smoke. There’s certainly a discomfort throughout OFF which never falls directly into abject horror, but plays with some unsavoury implications.

The final straightforward Zone has you working your way through a factory that produces sugar from dead workers to feed the still alive ones, to motivate them. More than once I stood staring at something utterly bizarre, before having to either kill it, or just move on. It’s a horrible world, but it’s our job to wade through it and “purify” it.

Both versions of OFF roll with a pretty standard battle system; the original 2011 release sticks pretty closely to the template set by RPG Maker, and deviates only in item names. It’s unpolished, and it’s an obligatory inclusion to sell OFF as a criticism of the RPG fallacy. It’s combat by numbers, and this is all it needs to be. It uses a rudimentary version of the action time battle system which never goes beyond healing when you need to and using attacking moves the rest of the time, with the occasional call for a stat buff. It’s pedestrian fare, and it works for what it is.

The 2025 remaster makes an effort to give the battle system some unique wrinkles and ditches the intentionally bland original for a battle system you might actually want to use. While I’d be remiss to complain about a more engaging battle system, it makes the remaster lose some of the “game that doesn’t want to be played” feel I got from my experience with the original. The Batter’s job isn’t fun, it is tedious.

It’s a unique game to come back to, because I have ultimately played the games which took inspiration from OFF and its determination to interrogate us as players. Undertale is the example leaping to mind, and this familiarity has somewhat softened me to the philosophical lens presented by this one.

Which isn’t to say it didn’t affect me. The way OFF pushes us to do the unspeakable to then confront us with reality is admirable, and made for an effective stinger that sat with me for a good while. How we as players are predisposed to just roll with what we’re told without really thinking about why. We don’t know what The Batter wants to actually do, it’s just our job to direct him there. And in directing him, his actions become our responsibility.

You could argue OFF somewhat falters with not giving us the option to really say no to combat in the moment, but I never felt the same. Up until the point where the line is crossed, we have no reason to question what we’re doing. Once we go too far, then we can question. For me, it works. How far is too far to turn back? You might not know until the line is crossed.

For how it handles the relationship between us and it, where OFF most interests me is the format it’s presented. It’s a conversation far bigger than just the one game, but the original OFF plays creatively with the platform it occupies; there’s one particular puzzle which directs you to check a seemingly random .README in the game files, a solution which is possible by virtue of being on PC. The same puzzle is reinterpreted in the remaster to remove having to look outside of the game, having a drawer open on screen to show you the solution.

It’s the best solution to an unfixable problem, but speaks to how hardware can dictate the translation of mechanics. In moving to a more conventional platform, it feels like OFF loses some of the mystique that informs so much of the experience. OFF wasn’t ever designed to be conventional.

The most substantive difference between the original release and official 2025 remaster is the soundtrack. When I set out to play OFF, I made an effort to compare the soundtracks as I went through, and both are totally different compositions to backdrop what is ostensibly the same game. Both are worthy, and I don’t have a particular preference, but I do understand the split between fans.

The soundtrack having to be totally changed is down to the original composer not wanting to tie their work down into a commercial contract, and this is a conviction I appreciate. It takes a lot to want to keep your work as something everyone can enjoy without it getting muddied by the interference of a commercial label, and it’s refreshing for this to happen with mutual agreement from the original creatives.

OFF is a source of inspiration for some of the biggest independent games that are still being released to this day. A unique sense of humour and dedication to gazing beyond the fourth wall is to be commended even decades later. And for what it’s worth, there’s a decent chance you haven’t played this one either.

As I continue to say month on month, it’s never too late to play.

Skybox is worker-owned and reader-supported! If you like pieces like this, support us at www.patreon.com/skyboxcritics or ko-fi.com/skyboxcritics and help us elevate games media.