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Ghost in a Bottle

Deciding it was time for another RPG Maker game review, I thought it could be fun to browse the list of games on rpgmaker.net, but set the sorting to random and pick the first item on the list. What could go wrong, I thought. It could be fun, I thought.

After all, it couldn’t be much worse than Eternal Destiny, right?

Well, as it turns out…

Essential Information

Available On: RPG Maker (PC) (2009)
Author: TFT
RPG Maker Version: RPG Maker 2000
Game Length: <1 hour
Download Link rpgmaker.net

Grave’s Thoughts

I knew this was going to be terrible from the screenshots alone, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the levels of sheer bizarre awfulness present in this mercifully short game. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect is the amount of effort that seems to have gone into making this strange joke of a game — while the music is blatantly stolen from other games (mostly in the form of bad MIDI files), and I can only assume the art is mostly lifted from other sources (aside from a few exceptions, such as a very poorly-drawn, human-sized penis), some amount of effort seems to have been put into the map construction and ‘cutscenes’.

Don’t let this fool you into thinking that Ghost in a Bottle is anything beyond an absolute train-wreck, however — the extremely short game (about half of which consists of scripted cutscenes) has a largely-incomprehensible plot, due in no small part to the plethora of what I can only assume are intentional spelling errors strewn across the bizarrely lengthy dialogue. Playing the role of a wheelchair-bound kid and apparent Ghostbuster-wannabe, you are thrust into a 4chan-esque convoluted mess of memes, in-jokes, and what can only be described as the worst Ghostbusters fanfiction ever written.

If this sounds even remotely interesting, like something you might want to download and try for yourself just for a laugh — trust me, it’s not. This hectic conglomeration of meme-like content seems to be trying its absolute best to be both offensive and amusing, and fails spectacularly on both counts. The combat system is random, poorly-cut-out JPEGs set to an awful MIDI mix of Butterfly, the questing is as complicated as talking to a few nonsensical NPCs and pressing a switch, and the whole thing looks like something that a 12-year-old probably thought was the height of hilarity and originality.

But hey, there’s a silver lining, at least: surely the next RPG Maker game I play can’t be any worse than this…