#loveindies Day 3: Alicemare (Miwashiba)

By: Rae

Sometimes when we play a game, it’s easy to forget just how much work and frustration goes into making it. It’s even easier to forget that everyone had a starting point – a place where they had to start learning it all from scratch. In the afterword of the Alicemare novel, Miwashiba is blunt about their beginnings. Alicemare was their first game – born from a simple “I want to do this too,” after seeing other works. Frustrated with the unfamiliar software, it was set aside for years, and eventually picked up into a complete game. By now, there are more Miwashiba games – LiEat and 1bitHeart are both completed and can be purchased on Steam for $2.99 each, while The Faceless Double is currently in progress – but this first adventure is still purchasable and playable if you want to see where it all started.

Alicemare drops the player directly into a big mystery. Youstart the game as Allen – a young boy with no memories. Who are you? Where didyou come from? Who is the teacher, and why are you there? As you begin talkingto other children at the facility, it seems there’s a lot more than meets theeye. One night, you discover the impossible – another world, with doorways intothe hearts of your new friends. Sent by a mysterious figure on a search for keys,it’s up to you to figure out how to escape.

On the surface, Alicemare is a fairytale-inspired, almost-horrorgame with a lovely artstyle, nostalgic gameplay graphics that feel like the oldGameboy game days, and a surprisingly incredible soundtrack. Dig deeper and you’llfind an incredibly disturbing set of tales about loss and loneliness.

It should go without saying that Alicemare isn’t a perfectgame. There are some small control issues – for example, occasionally the spacethe character moved was far too big compared to the amount of space interactableitems or narrow pathways took up, forcing me to readjust over and over againuntil I finally was placed just right. Some puzzles were also very clunky, withno hints and few chances (others, I’ll admit, were incredibly clever). Overall,there’s not a whole lot of gameplay – you’ll wander through a mostly linearworld, solve a few puzzles, and move on.

But story, laced with compelling mysteries and surprisinglycharming characters, more than made up for anything that was missing. If you’restill looking for answers after finishing, there’s actually an Alicemare novel.The original can be purchased in Japanese, but there is an unofficialtranslation available online (permitted by Miwashiba under the condition thatno art was included).

LiEat, Alicemare, and 1bitHeart are all available on Steam.Miwashiba’s upcoming game, The Faceless Double, only has a prologue so far. WhenDouble wakes up with no form and no memory why, he has to set off on a journeyto find answers. I’m hoping that The Faceless Double carries the same air of mysterythat Alicemare did, but I’m excited to play more of these lovely little games.