Love-de-Lic was a Japanese game company that, while small and niche, left behind a strong legacy. Their defining work was Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, a quirky subversive take on the RPG genre. Beyond former parts of the company splitting off to contribute to further works (with designer Yoshiro Kimura founding indie studio Onion Games), Moon was a big inspiration for Undertale, which in itself has inspired other works, undeniably one of the most defining works in the indie game space in itself.

Maybe you played Moon when it was re-released, or the remake of Super Mario RPG, whose original iteration was also worked on by some Love-de-Lic designers. Maybe you want to latch onto more of the vibes present in those games. Maybe you’re waiting for Onion Games’ Stray Children, but maybe you want those good vibrations right now. There’s gotta be more works inspired by Love-de-Lic out there, right? Well, last year one such game was released…

24 Killers is a game by Happy Shabby Games, where you’re working to expand the multiverse of the Foam through slice-of-life hijinks and minigames. You play as a cursed being named Home, taking control of a corpse of a soldier of an army that abandoned an island for its weird vibes that cursed some of the soldiers and island denizens. But that’s a-okay. As it happens, these vibes are essential to expand the multiverse, and Home is tasked by the island’s administer Moon to work toward this for the betterment of the Foam and to free himself.

From the get-go, 24 Killers presents an interesting quirk with its save system. The saves are represented as worlds within the Foam and your goal is essentially adding a new save slot. However, when you clear a world, you not only get to create a new save slot, but you also adopt a blessing that carries on to future playthroughs. Rewards include having no limit to consumables, getting to fast forward through events, getting passive whisper gain, skipping tutorials entirely, etc. I think it’s a really interesting way of approaching new game plus that fits into the lore of the game. From what I’ve seen, a new blessing was added last month that gives local bastard Johnny Puzzles a new sidequest and lore, so there’s definitely some replay incentive present.

So, how do we go about bringing a new world into existence?

Home wakes up every morning to do his humble work. Beings called mons work in a vault under the island and he spends day by day bringing them up. Maybe do a little chore for them to take their picture, maybe bring them over to his house to check out some sick furniture he got from a gacha system… it’s all very chill.

Ain’t got any important tasks to do? You should spend some time farming whispers. Whispers are the strange entities that accumulated on the island and source of vibes, used as a form of currency. You essentially do simple minigames to grab whispers with a few of the powers gained from scanning in mon photos. I personally like running through hoops because it’s the most active one.

The whispers are mainly important for powering the machine that’d call wandering Echoes from the Foam to be used to give birth to the new world, which you’ll eventually be able to access through all the mon-freeing work. However, by the time you start working toward this, it won’t feel like much of a grind. You’ve probably already built up whisper multipliers by poking around a bit and showing off furniture to friendly mons on the island, and you can chug a bunch of energy drinks to boost that further to get huge payouts. But of course, that energy drink crash will come for you…

Even though your character’s essentially just a corpse, he needs to sleep eventually. If you collapse, a Mole friend will take you home… and also take half of your whispers to be used as a scratch ticket prize, which feels really counter-intuitive considering that you’re supposed to be on the same side. Jerk. But do not worry! Whenever you get the right to take a mon’s picture and scan it, your maximum energy increases to give you more breathing room for farming whispers. And also toast. Everyone likes giving you toast.

Toast is essential to progressing the plot, though it doesn’t seem big in itself. However, almost all the toast in the game are gifts to show appreciation to Home. 24 Killers is very much a game where small things like that hold a lot of meaning. There’s the taxi that represents the will of its former driver, which Home uses to drive ghost mons around to encourage them to pass on. There’s a birthday card that more important NPCs sign to get the local workaholic to take a break, a coffee bean that rouses the spirits of a mon that was losing it over desertification harming his livelihood, certain pieces of furniture that reminds some mons of what they once were… Small things can mean a lot to some people, and in a sense, even the dirt simple whisper collecting minigames play into this, as they contribute to the creation of a new world. And for Home, it’s a game about encouraging him to take his time and enjoy the little things in life. Really, that’s the freedom he’s looking for.

There’s a little bit of danger on the island, but they’re easy to deal with. The most danger comes from dealing with the antics of Johnny Puzzles, who forces the player to deal with his nonsense puzzles, which relies on the mon abilities you gain. He also fights you like an asshole, which flips the game to being an action puzzler where you have to figure out how to use those abilities to hurt him; I did say that small things mean a lot to some people, and for Johnny Puzzles, it’s all puzzles, baby. They’re simple fights, though it’s a step up from the usual gameplay loops. This will probably be the one place you’ll end up using consumables outside of sustaining your whisper farming endeavors.

The Moon: Remix RPG Adventure inspiration in 24 Killers pretty apparent. There’s the sprites running around with environments and models that feel like toys or sculpted from clay, and the system of satisfying the needs of mons to take their pictures feels like a much friendlier version of saving the souls of “monsters” in Moon. Besides having a shared general mood, 24 Killers is also about encouraging you to take your time, because unless you have the blessing that creates a day limit, you can really take your time with things. However, it’s also a game that clearly goes off in its own direction, with its simple gameplay loops and end goals, so it’s the ideal of a game taking inspiration from things and not a game just trying to be the thing.

I really liked playing through 24 Killers, though I absolutely feel like it’s a game that you’d only really enjoy if you’re down with its sensibilities. Like hey, if you’re really into “wholesome” games, I say that this is absolutely worth checking out, if you just want a chill time. I wish it didn’t take so long for the game to rain so I could fix some desert to advance the plot, but yeah, I liked playing this.