“Pssst! Hey kid… Want to go on an adventure?” asks the store-page for The Edge Of Allegoria, an upcoming Game Boy-styled retro RPG. It might look like an old Pokemon game (and play like one, too, minus the creature collecting part), but this one’s for GROWN UPS. Or at least teenagers discovering the siren song of games with swearing and the occasional (very) pixelated boob. The store page does promise “Nudity and Sexual Content, Pervasive Coarse Language, Alcohol and Drug Use”, after all.
See, the ‘Edge’ here in Edge Of Allegoria seems very literal. This is, at first blush, a crude parody of classic Game Boy RPGs, right down to a world broken up into Pokemon-style ‘routes’ and a very familiar combat engine, but with more than a little swearing, and casual use of joints as consumables. The stakes seem a little higher here, with rampaging monsters threatening to destroy towns, and some kind of ancient demonic force in the backdrop stirring up trouble, but the player character—a dungaree-clad country bumpkin named Joe—doesn’t seem particularly interested in it. He just wants to fish. And fight.
There’s no denying that this one looks and sounds the part, at least. The game may run in a widescreen aspect ratio, but otherwise has a fittingly low resolution full of chunky typefaces, simple (but well drawn) sprites and an authentic commitment to monochrome art. The combat also does a decent impression of early Pokemon, albeit with Joe being a customizable, equippable character without any beastie buddies to call up to fight for him. It’s nostalgic, up until characters start talking.
The demo does contain some hints that there might be something smart going on here. Or at least that it's smarter than it first appears. Joe isn’t just an arsehole, but an archetypical murder-hobo, pointedly disinterested in the plot when there’s things to kill and stuff to be taken. Taking out a Goblin King leads to his house being burnt down, and a forest god’s attempts to get Joe engaged in the story gets him straight into casual deicide. Will any of this eventually make him care? I’m genuinely curious.
It’s hard to tell at this point just how much self-awareness the game has, and whether it can pull off the (admittedly challenging) feat of telling an RPG story worth following while still being crude and irreverent and having a very Chaotic Neutral protagonist, but I’ve got my fingers crossed. The Edge of Allegoria launches on December 4th, with a demo available now on Steam. In the meantime, those looking for something slightly more mature but Pokemon-adjacent might want to check out the excellent and notalgic Cassette Beasts or the apocalyptic and edgy Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance.
