A Look At Yōdanji, a Yōkai Inspired Rogue-Like
Definitely not another Yō-Kai Watch
The term rogue-like, and its offshoot term rogue-lite, gets thrown around a lot these days. With so many games claiming the label, it’s not often we see a game truly encompassing the true meaning and implications of the term.
This unique genre has been prevalent, as of late, primarily in the ever-thriving independent video game scene, where developers choose to implement their neat ideas in a rogue-like design to provide players with near-endless replay value. It’s a surefire way to extend the shelf life of some of these humble indie games, and over the last few years the random and procedural generated shenanigans of this unique gaming sub-genre have crossed over to multiple video game genres, everything from role playing to racing to shooters.
The term we all know today originated from the1980 ASCII-based computer game titled Rogue, hence becoming the namesake of the sub-genre which has been most compatible with the RPG genre. A modern and more accessible poster child of the genre has been the Mystery Dungeon games from Japan, which in of itself has inspired the likes of Final Fantasy spinoff Chocobo’s Dungeon and the ever-popular Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.
Taking the genre back to its core gameplay roots, Yōdanji is an ultra-focused Japanese rogue-like RPG created by the rather mysterious and lowkey Dmitry Mamchur, and picked up for publishing by KEMCO for portable platforms including Nintendo Switch.
The basic premise of the game is built around the yōkai mythology and folklore in Japanese culture. Many gamers will probably be familiar with the more commercialized depiction of the culture in the hugely popular Yo-Kai Watch series of games and other media.
Yōdanji strips away all the fanfare and liberal creativity that made Yo-Kai Watch such a merchandising cash cow, instead opting to provide a close to authentic depiction of the various yōkai creatures and the folklore surrounding them. The idea of a yōkai and its role in Japanese superstition is quite simple: seemingly normal events have major supernatural implications. Innocent occurrences such as losing car keys all of a sudden have little to do with one’s absent mind, and more likely to do with a meddling yōkai in the vicinity.
In Yōdanji a variety of these yōkai creatures are profiled and playable, with the game even providing the background lore to these creatures and their respective origins.
What’s fascinating is how so many of these tales never explicitly mention the yōkai in question, instead the influence of the mythical creature is implied between the lines of the folklore. It’s clear that over time these myths took a life of their own, eventually giving these yōkai a name and even a visual depiction.
As a rogue-like RPG, Yōdanji follows the foundational blueprint of 1980’s seminal Rogue perfectly. This is a turn-based RPG where turns occur in real-time, and at all times, within the living game world. If the player takes a step, and then so does the enemy somewhere in the random and procedural generated dungeon. It’s an RPG world that is very much alive and constantly evolving too, with a level of strategy not common in most modern turn-based Japanese RPGs.
Like most other rogue-likes, Yōdanji is about trying and trying again, and then trying some more. It’s tough to the point where the player loses everything upon defeat. Yet, there is a compelling allure to attempt yet another run in the dungeon, simply because each new run is genuinely different from the last. That is ultimately the draw of Yōdanji and any other classic in the rogue-like RPG genre: it’s like an RPG inside an ‘80s quarter-eating arcade cabinet.
Much like the yōkai culture and myth itself, games like Yōdanji are all about the word of mouth. There are layers of secrets in here, as well as tips and strategies shared only with those are worthy enough to seek these secrets out. As players complete each session in Yōdanji, an online record of the community can be accessed, really making the rogue-like myth of Yōdanji feel like a living, breathing global culture.
Yōdanji as a video game has the same air of mystery as the rich culture it draws upon.
As far as rogue-likes go, very few in modern gaming capture the mystique and wonder of the genre like Yōdanji does in its authentic homage to 1980’s Rogue. This is a serious and deep adventure with a ton of stats and mechanical algorithms, and yet the game somehow almost lives up to its coffee-break RPG marketing misnomer, by being a something players can get into time and time again in short bursts.
Yōdanji is an endearing textbook rogue-like which presents its source material in way that inspires further reading. Anyone curious enough to go down the rabbit hole and into the mysterious world of yōkai will certainly have a lot of fun exploring the comprehensive English yōkai database.
Written by Jahanzeb Khan for Vista Magazine.
