Welcome to Orochi Park Demo

Whenever things get a bit too serious to be fun anymore, people turn to parodies to take the edge off and relax for a while. This is true for basically any form of art, because you can find parodic movies, songs and video games, depending on what the creators are trying to say about a certain subject. Most parodies are not intended to mock the original creations, since they are just there to make people laugh.

Welcome to Orochi Park is a pretty weird adventure game with strategy and simulation elements, which plays a lot like an interactive story. In essence, this is meant as a parody of Mass Effect and The Secret World, but there are also movie references and a variety of other such elements borrowed from multiple sources. The result is a convoluted concept that might just confuse you a bit at first.

You are basically in charge of an organization of sorts, which sends agents on missions in various locations. One of these missions goes wrong and you become stuck on a dangerous planet, with only a nuclear vault at your disposal to store equipment and the crew. Hence, the goal is to obtain weapons and slowly gain the necessary technology to leave the bunker and return to your usual business.

The disappointing part about Welcome to Orochi Park is the fact that your only method of interacting with the game is by reading text and pressing some buttons. All you have to do in order to start a mission and complete it is to press the authorize button and see the results, which is a bit anticlimactic. Granted, you are free to mess around with your research options, so you can prioritize certain technologies and unlock specific missions ahead of others.

Presentation is key for a parody, because it’s not enough to tell a good joke if the delivery is poor. In this case, the tools used by the developers consist of witty writing and exaggerated voice acting, both of which work really well, at least if you can come to terms with this type of humor. The graphics consist of static pictures, so don’t expect too much in this regard, although the artwork is pretty neat most of the time.

Even if it has its flaws, such as the fact that it may not make sense half the time, Welcome to Orochi Park is quite an entertaining game. Not much is shown in the demo at hand, however, so the full version might be even better at explaining things and including more gameplay variety.