Wanna Play a Completely Naked RPG Dungeon-Crawler?
Well do you? And no. It's not naked in a rude way. It's naked in the sense that this is an RPG stripped down to its absolute fundamentals.
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I found this curious, and strangely compelling browser game a while back. Its name is Parameters, and it’s the creation of Japanese browser game developer Nekogames. Doesn’t look like much, because it isn’t. It’s an exercise in gaming ultra-minimalism: a representation of an RPG dungeon crawler, stripped down to its most fundamental components.
Part of the fun is figuring out how it works, which does require a bit of a mental leap. Just keep in mind that while this doesn’t look like a traditional graphical representation of an RPG, it nevertheless is one, albeit one that plays out at warp speed. It has monsters, chests with loot, a shop to buy gear, and requires the player to level up their non-existent character and ensure it has sufficient weaponry and stats to beat the next challenge. But all those elements are displayed in the most basic way possible, almost like a design prototype.
The most salient hints I can give you is don’t forget to select “English” on the main menu, unless of course you’re fluent in Japanese – and mouse over anything that pops out of a box to automatically collect it. If you don’t, you’ll lose the goodies contained therein, and make the game more difficult to complete.
Assuming you enjoy this slightly abstract game, I’ll be interested to hear how quickly it takes you to complete it. The first time around takes a little bit of getting used to – but once you’ve got the gist of it, speed-running though this is pretty easy, assuming you can figure out the quickest route through to completion.