Truly fan-made.
Aaaah, fan-made games. It sounds romantic, doesn't it? The fan-made game is the opposite of the corporate production led by faceless PowerPoint men in dark suits driving company BMWs. Deciding to make a game that you give away for free means you are the opposite of the present-day consumer society that lives from hype, popular personalities and (since this is anime territory) scantily-clad underage girls with shiny thighs. It means there still is a place where artistic freedom isn't just in the picking of the school uniform color scheme, or in choosing the name for the stepsister. Creating a fan-made game and sharing it with others is proof that there are things more important than website traffic, sales figures and mass-appeal. And the visual novel Narcissu may be (it certainly is cited as) a prime example of this. Developed and given away for free, it puts story above everything else, it says no to shiny graphics and goes back to basics. By being minimalistic, it forces us to imagine, to think and to feel. It may well be the best fan-made visual novel that's available in English.
Yet, this doesn't really matter to me.
You see, Narcissu isn't a fan-made game. It's a game made by professionals, it's high-profile doujin. Don't get me wrong - it still is a great work. It has thought, love, and it has emotions. But it isn't a fan-made game. Yes - the excellence of execution, the artistic value and the fact that this was done for free for fans, it's all more than enough reason to make it a true, selfless doujin game, one that is (rightfully) often being put well above other fan works in terms of quality.
So here, now, I admit it. I'm not the Narcissu type. Because I like a different game. It's called The Garden Society: Kykuit.
Kykuit was done within a month's deadline, by one person pushing herself to the limits - design, programming, artwork, story and the musical help of a friend. In comparison to this, the great Narcissu looks a bit too sterile, too calculated, and without that certain something, that "fan-made charm", it's indeed... too artsy. And art isn't charming. Perhaps art is overwhelming, and Narcissu surely is spectacular in its minimalism and memorable in its emotions. But it never really feels like the work of a fan.
Fan-made games are inventive, because they need to be. If they are minimalistic, there is primarily a practical (not artistic) reason for this. Fan-made means doing whatever you can, with whatever you have at your disposal. It means inventing new ways of cheating in some areas of game development, simply because you don't have the skills. It's photographic backgrounds when you can't draw. It's using templates and trying to customize them to make them unique, but with less effort. It's making two-channel music in a freeware tracker. It's pushing yourself and having to make things that are new to you, because no one volunteers to help you. It's making virtues out of necessities, it's being creative, not because you choose to be, but because you need to be. It's seeing the game through, despite the discouraging screenshots of a better-looking project and then releasing it, even though the criticism you know will come will hurt the more the more of yourself you've given it.
Games like The Garden Society Kykuit are your basic cars, put together from home-made components and materials found at the scrapyard. They have a steering wheel, an engine and some seats. So forget the luxury, forget even the paint on the outside. Their creators are happy to see them move and giving a few of their friends a short ride. This is a world of improvised budget cars, a world where Katherine is at home, where Fade fits in so nicely and where Pygmalion is one of the recent completions. It's not surprising to see other true fan-made games in here, just as it's unsurprising to see others not really fitting in. And it's here, where Narcissu stands out so much - it's a Rolls Royce, with scrubbed-off paint, and inside with all the leather from the seats torn off. Narcissu is art. Kykuit is heart.
Perhaps I have even made a mistake when I first played Narcissu, treating it like a fan-made game, rather than a doujin game. In my defence, I didn't know any of the names behind the project, I didn't know anything, really. And it may well have been that first playthrough where I was looking for this charm and didn't see it, that made even subsequent replays unable to make me like it anymore. And now I have to admit to being already too influenced, biased and protective of true fan-made works, and as a result of this, making a comparison that's easy to challenge. But if the price for all the great games is one Narcissu, then it's something I'll pay happily.
And so, Kykuit is, for me, a symbol for all those other truly fan-made games. They have been thought up, rather than designed. Created, rather than produced. They are today's games, and for their creators, tomorrow's memories. Fan-made works are by far the best thing to happen to visual novels, they are the slightly burned cookies of a young wife, they are - in all their imperfection - perfect.
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