Alicia aims to be the cool aunt to her niece Dottie. One of the aspects of being the cool aunt is fighting weird otherworldly creatures that both naturally find themselves attuned to see. The creatures are just kinda weird scary pests, like the scorpions that invade my home during the summer, so there’s no serious problems.

But then, something weird and unfortunate happens. Dottie’s hometown of Daybreak suddenly vanishes from the outside world. Alicia, who was called before the town disappeared, pokes into the strange otherworld the town became adjacent to. In the new world, deadlier otherworld creatures run rampant, dancing to the tune of Inner Evocations responsible the town being spirited away.

Alicia allies with the Outer Evocation Elothu, who bestows greater power on Alicia so that she may be able to rescue Dottie. Allying with some other humans blessed by their own Outer Evocations, Alicia goes on to put an end to the weird and unfortunate things happening.

Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening is a 2020 game by unity, who went on to publish the game on Steam under Sapphire Dream Games. Hey, remember the Misaos stuff from a long time ago? The game was actually the winner of the 2020 iteration, and the dev’s previous game, Luxaren Azure, is mentioned in that post. Weird Things has been in the back of my mind for a loooong time, so it was a blast when I spun it for my backlog bingo.

(Also god I need to fix that post up, RPG Maker net going offline for a while really messed with things…)

The game starts with Alicia delving into a distorted modern day small town. There’s some goofy bits of graffiti and a few friendly monsters, but it’s hardly an “Earthbound inspired game about depression” like internet losers talk about. Even with the bouts of humor that can be found, the game is a miserable cosmic horror story. The character designs are cute, but the horror isn’t. The friendly Outer Evocations contrast strongly with the Inner Evocations, who eagerly distort and kill humans and urge the lesser apparitions to do the same in pursuit of a goal that’s a huge spoiler. Human bosses make classic devil deals with them, and they wind up distorting into nightmarish abominations when their contractors find their work inadequate. There’s very little downplaying the effects the otherworldly had on Daybreak; like, even with part of the violence abstracted, the game is pretty open about the survivors of the local school being in the single digits. I was slow to play through this game because I’m generally not in the right headspace for it, but when my mood was good, I was loving this shit.

But why stress about the horrors? Why not beat them to death? We love beating things to death, folks.

Weird Things is a game of classic turn-based action with four core characters. Alicia is a fine middle of the road character that dabbles in different fields, but when it came down to it, I preferred building her as an offensive tank. If you got a move that attracts and counters physical damage, you gotta be a tank. It feels fitting for her to be the tank storywise, as the events of the story’s dependent on her wanting to shoulder the burdens of the quest to protect Dottie.

The second character Miriam is an aggressive woman who was put out of work before getting dragged into otherworldly hell, so she fights with guns like a true angry hot-blooded American. A fun thing is that she could fire unique bullets that are much stronger, but they’re limited in number. When a boss battle’s going south, I absolutely have Miriam treating things like a shooting gallery with her special bullets. Her having moves that poison people in a game where poison’s actually a pretty reliable damage dealer makes her a truly respectable American.

As a teacher that truly cares for his students and the people around him, Lamar has direct heals to work alongside Alicia’s own and can apply shields against damage types and a shield that nullifies status ailments. When he isn’t helping everyone, he can really tear things up with magic, as he’s definitely a brilliant man outside of his teaching job, and as we all know, smart characters in RPGs are the best wizards. An interesting thing about using Lamar is that his basic skills are different depending on which grimoire he has equipped, so it may be worth holding on to grimoires if you want to use the skills connected to them instead of selling them off to the Normal merchant.

Meanwhile, we have Dottie, who was targeted by the Inner Evocations for her unique magic potential. While the other characters have elemental specialties, Dottie has the strongest variety in who she can target. Dottie also has a unique skill that charges up between turns that carries after battle, and I actually thank the developer for making it and advising me on how to replicate it. And meanwhile, she can also gift her mana to other characters, becoming a magic battery of her own free will as opposed to being forced into that role.

Dottie can also sacrifice chess pieces for party buffs, I guess, but I’ll be real, I kept forgetting she could do that.

The characters all have their own tech trees with fresh new skills and passives to buy into. Advancing the tech tree requires obols, a currency you get from fighting enemies and finding them on the field. Scattering stuff to advance the tech tree on the map lends a stronger incentive to explore around, so I wound up enjoying the tech tree stuff. A fun thing to find when exploring around are small otherworld pockets that offer a bunch of treasure and obols in what feels like a Yume Nikki fangame. Weird Things really is a game that tries to embody RPG Maker culture.

There’s a strong variety of enemies to fight, from classic RPG fare, stuff based on mythological horrors, references to horror media, abstract horrors, and robots (aka the modern day horror). I played the game on the second hardest difficulty, which was a pretty healthy challenge. Just enough throat cutting action to be engaging while not being too much to be alienating. The game is pretty healthy about throwing healing resources at you, so as long as you’re good about searching the map for stuff and conserving resources, I feel that Weird Things makes for a tough but fair ride.

I was comfortable at my difficulty. However, I wound up turning the difficulty down toward the end of the game. It wasn’t because I found things too hard, but because… I just wanted the game to end.

That takes me on one aspect I feel mixed on: the game’s length. Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening is surprisingly lengthy, which you probably won’t see as a bad thing. It’s just that it sincerely feels that there are multiple good end points. After fighting someone what could have been the final boss, the game kept going. I was like, alright, makes sense, the player got Dottie just earlier, you should spend more time using her.

A fairly lengthy dungeon follows, and a loose end in the story shows up to fight, and you’re probably thinking, “oh, THIS is the final boss!” And… no, it keeps going. While the further content justifies itself, it keeps feeling like the game should have ended earlier. With how the setting and goals of the game shifts after the first point I thought the game would end, I can’t help but feel like another game was stitched onto this one. It’s not that I was straight up bored, because interesting things WERE happening… but man, things really could have wrapped up earlier. And even then, there’s a bonus dungeon lying around…

Personally, I think if the game was going to have more content, it should be more character stuff with the main cast. While there’s plenty of banter, most character building happens in the arc they’re introduced in. There is a segment of the late game that provides flashbacks to the lives of the characters that I thought was nice, but I ended up wishing there were more moments like that, especially regarding characters introduced in the flashbacks. The main characters are fun, but I wish there was more to them. Like I dunno, maybe the endgame mini-dungeons could have been themed after the characters and given them more story moments that I would have been more invested in instead of just being… more dungeons. Like, forget five mini-dungeons, let’s have four mini-dungeons that give better glimpses into the characters.

And while the Outer Evocations feel like more could have been done with them, it makes sense why they’re content to just be sponsors. Still though, I think they paled in comparison to the Inners, who feel like they have more active presence than the Outers, even if some may feel like cartoon villains.

However, despite my misgivings, I think Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening is a damn great game overall that I think more people should play. Hell, there’s very little to stop you from playing it – it’s completely free. And honestly, it’s a crime that it’s free. I may be ??? at the amount of Content in the game, but the fact that there’s this much stuff available for free is bonkers. It’s especially admirable when you consider all the tilesets in the game, as the game really does try to make every location distinct. I may complain about those endgame mini-dungeons, but them having unique designs is something to appreciate.

If you want to kill time with an indie RPG and don’t got the cash to burn, this is definitely one to check out. I personally think things should have been tighter, but overall, I think Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening was a good time.