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YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG is as the name implies, an RPG that takes place in the 90s. YIIK is notable for being extremely poorly written and pretentious. The main character is an extremely unlikable ginger hipster (a very 1990s stereotype) named Alex who often goes into long, pseudointellectual monologues about shit no one cares about. YIIK was inspired greatly by the Earthbound series. It took the format Shigesato Itoi perfected for the SNES but replicated it terribly.

The story is Scott Pilgrim but without any self-awareness. Alex chases after an Asian girl he barely knows, and despite having a black hole where his charisma should be, is able to meet a diverse group of friends, as they discover that Alex is an inter-dimensional dictator in every universe, and that robot women and Asians are a constant in his life, usually treated like trash by Alex until the player, who is also Alex, is asked to defeat all the other Alexs, including the YIIK Alex.

Characters

• Alex Yiik - The most obnoxious protagonist in any vidya ever. The quintessential liberal arts university grad, Alex can't get a job because his degree is useless. He spends his days simping over an Azn on a paranormal forum. The writers made sure to use a thesaurus for all of his dialog to make him sound smarter than you.
• Michael Kucinski - Alex Yiik's hilarious and memorable photographer friend who the writers forget about until the end of the game. You will wish the writers didn't remember him when he takes his shirt off.
• Vella Wilde - The cute goth girl who often calls Alex Yiik out for being a narcissistic retard. She is involved in a convoluted dimensional merge plotline that makes no sense, even to people who actually play the game.
• Rory Mancer - A kid whose personality revolves around his dead sister, who became an hero due to be literally being half-leg (please see the Funniest Joke of All Time section for more information). Rory himself can also lose his ipod and downs a bottle of bleach depending on the choices you make. Rory is completely useless in combat. You can't deal damage with him because he's a "pacifist". His gimmick of protecting his teammates is negated by the existence of the panda shield. Feel free to make him slit his wrists for the lulz.
• Claudio Unkrich - Black weeb who abandons his vinyl store (because vinyls were a huge thing in 1999 right?) to study the blade. He is canonically a lolicon.
• Chondra Unkrich - Claudio's stong, independent sister who hates white people. Her twin brother is dead too I guess.
• The Essentia 5000 - A sex doll that exists to dump exposition at the player.
• Sammy Park - AKA Semi Pak in Gookspeak. She is an Eliza Lam expy that Alex Yiik desperately wants to bang.

Plagiarism

In the first proper dungeon of the game, you can meet "Proto Woman" who looks like the lava girl from the flash games grew up. Her dialogue was pretty decent, a little too decent for some players, who started investigating to find out who wrote her lines. They discovered her dialogue is copied and pasted almost exactly from Haruki Murakami, a Japanese novelist. The developers explained that through some alternate reality bullshit, Alex's books are seeping into his dream and autist brain, which means he's thinking the same way his books are written. Not only was this excuse bullshit, it didn't explain why other lines that were copied and pasted Quizlet flashcards and Dictionary.com definitions.

Games Aren't Art

The most consistent and reoccurring criticism of YIIK on release was quite simple; Alex is a fucking asshole. The director of YIIK, Andrew Allanson, went onto the Dick Show to talk about the game, and quickly turned the show into the ramblings of a mad man as he used his favour with the podcast's host to turn the episode into a defence of his game; Allanson would defend the game and Dick would nod in agreement like a bobblehead. Allanson praised 4chan for "understanding his vision.", whilst insulting "gamers" for not liking a character he claims is intentionally obnoxious. Allanson is convinced his game about a self-insert, inconsistent, angry hipster going through Scott Pilgrim fan-fiction is high art with lots to say.

	“	My mistake was thinking that video games are art. I wanted to make a game about a guy who’s a piece of shit unlikable character, who by the end of the game has to transform. But too many gamers, when they look at this, when they play a game, they’re so used to having to identify with the character, that if they play a game where the main character is unlikable or has to do some bad stuff, they immediately get triggered by it. So, the thing is, games aren’t art. They’re toys for children and it’s considered in bad form to talk about anything meaningful, or impactful or thought provoking.	„
	—"Waah, why don't you like my self-insert?!

Elisa Lam

Nothing says respectful like making the video even more disturbing.

Early in the game, Alex meets Sammy, a girl that accidently seduces Alex with her being Asian. She mysteriously disappears and Alex makes it his quest to find her so he can awkwardly ask her to join his poly-cube. Later, Alex is sent a video on his computer of Sammy in an elevator, being dragged into a psychedelic-void. Even later, you can find Sammy being chased by ghostly-void monsters, bleeding from her eyes and begging for Alex's help. All of this seems pretty normal for a game with a paranormal story, sure it's dark and edgy as all hell, but hardly offensive on its own.

Until you realise this was all inspired by the Elisa Lam murder video, and that the developers thought this was a respectful way to acknowledge the inspiration of Sammy's character. Quriky games appeal to children, teens, man-children, artsy-types, people who tend to be sensitive, progressive types, the kind of people who need trigger warnings if a video on a morning routine has fruit in case it's fatphobic. Seeing an Elisa Lam reference, especially one as explicit and shocking as this, was not going to go down well with them. Hundreds of threads started to appear, demanding the creators apologise and repent for their sins. However, as previously mentioned, Allanson the director believes he's created a profound piece of art with lots to say, and didn't change a thing, lest it compromise his artistic vision.

A comprehensive list of images of both the real video and the game's recreation, complete with an angry rant of how much this offends the OP.

Toby Fox

Quirky earthbound inspired-rpg Undertale had released 4 years ago and had been smothered in praise from underage children and theatre kids across the world, so when Toby caught wind that another quirky earthbound inspired-rpg was coming along, he made sure his name was stapled on in some form to ensure he remained king of ugly nostalgia-bait. Providing a song for one of the mid-game levels, Toby helped promote the game through Twitter. But the moment YIIK started getting in trouble for being a bit shit, Toby immediately deleted his tweets and ignored anyone who asked about the game.

The deleted tweet.

Offensive Grave

I wish I was dead just so I could be in YIIK too.

Satoru Iwata was a creepy little Asian man who helped make a large majority of the early Nintendo games. When he died in 2015, hoards of overweight boomers felt they owed their whole existence to the man, and while they tried to honour his legacy, they became very protective of him whenever the games industry as a whole was being discussed, in case it slandered the Chinese man they didn't even know existed until he had died.

The creators of YIIK therefore wanted to honour this video-game goblin. After all, they had tastefully recreated the Elisa Lam video as a horror movie, if anyone was qualified to do respectful references to the dead, it was the YIIK team. In the shittiest, slumiest town in the whole game, the creators made a graveyard and among a bunch of joke gravestones, added Iwata's rotting corpse and a headstone that broke the 1999 setting to have his real date of death inscribed on it. Somehow, no one on the team realised this was a bad idea until they were swamped with hundreds of angry messages from pissed-off players who felt this tasteless inclusion was unnecessary. Why they didn't just add the man as an NPC or have his picture hidden somewhere is anyone's guess.

ResetEra discuss the gravestone.

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