I'm going to admit up front that I wrestled for a bit over whether or not to include this game in our "Best of Indie" line-up. It doesn't quite measure up to some of the others we've featured in terms of polish. It's a little easier to levy criticisms against it, and I suspect there may be a few raised eyebrows about putting this in over some other possibilities. But we didn't set out to make a Top 10 list (besides, we're not doing 10 of them). This series is about our personal favorites, the freeware games that are most memorable to us, and I'm choosing to favor ambition over proximity to perfection in this case. Great ambition deserves recognition, I think, and I'm hopeful that once you try this game out, you'll agree that despite its blemishes, it deserves to be featured among the best.
Set in the wake of an alien invasion of Earth, Iji tells the story of a young woman by the same name who wakes up with only a strange weapon and a disembodied voice to keep her company. With most of her family presumed dead and her brother Dan able to communicate to her only over the facility's PA system, she is surrounded by hostile creatures who will attempt to shoot her on site. She needs to survive, and if possible, she needs to either destroy the Tasen invasion force or get them to call off their attack.
How she does this is completely up to you.
While much more of an action game than an RPG, Iji takes a lot of its design cues from games like System Shock 2 and Deus Ex, presenting the player with a myriad of options for developing their character and encouraging them to experiment with solving problems in different ways. Experience ("Nanofields") can be absorbed through combat or exploration, and after gaining a level points can be put towards any of seven primary attributes: Strength, Attack, Assimilate, Health, Crack, Tasen, or Komato.
If that sounds like a lot, it is, and each one of those can have wide-reaching ramifications. Some, like Health and Attack, are fairly obvious. Strength allows you to break open security doors, potentially opening up alternate routes that avoid enemies or lead to hidden items; it also allows you to engage in melee combat more effectively. "Crack" levels up Iji's ability to tamper with electronics, and the game's hacking minigame (shown briefly in the trailer above) is employed all over the place - you can hack into some doors, you can unlock crates with special items, even the weapons and armor of your foes can be hacked, if you have the skill. Crack will also allow you to combine weapons more effectively at stations scattered around the map. Assimilate lets you regain health and armor from pickups more quickly, as well as increasing your ammo capacity. Tasen and Komato increase your affinity for the weapons of these alien races, allowing you access to better guns as you progress.
Of course, you won't have enough points for everything, especially early on - you're going to have to choose your path and change your playstyle to match. What's special about Iji is that to a surprising degree for a freeware title, the game will change to suit you, as well. Play Iji as a bloodthirsty warrior, and her tone and the tone of characters who interact with her will noticeably shift. Events may transpire differently than they would if you played her as a pacifist, sneaking and hacking your way through situations without violence. There are even enemies who will treat you differently if you haven't been aggressive towards their comrades, and overtly passive or aggressive playthroughs will each yield their own rewards in the end.
Iji begins as a blank slate. What sort of hero will you be?
Aesthetically, Iji alternates between pleasing and passable, depending on your tolerance for decidedly low production values. The visual resemblance to 2D sidescrollers like Out of This World and Flashback is strong, for any who played those games in their youth, though the animation isn't nearly as detailed. Level design is somewhat spartan, with a lot of repeated areas and not a whole lot of graphical variety. Some nice special effects help to make up for the otherwise bland look, though - explosions and particles specifically are well done, with some nice rudimentary physics taking over when things start blowing up. Frequent cut-scenes also provide a break from the sameness of the early levels, and they're generally well made. The music is good - it does get a bit repetitive from time to time, but never to the point where I turned it off.
From a gameplay perspective, there are also a few complaints to be made: for as many places as it gets used, the cracking minigame is extremely straightforward and not actually that much fun. Iji isn't quite as agile as I'd like her to be, even after leveling up - at no point can she shoot her weapons in midair, and avoiding enemy fire is often a practical impossibility, so you just need to level her Health up enough to take the damage until she can find pickups and recharge. Playing as a pacifist is also a little less satisfying than one might hope, and while it is a valid option, it often just involves running away.
Despite these minor issues, Iji is an impressive title and deserves to be played. Iji's developer and author, Daniel Remar, also created the previous Free and Worth Every Penny entry Hero Core - if that was his attempt at making an incredibly tight, focused game, then Iji was his "everything and the kitchen sink" game. Spanning 10 chapters, the game tells an intricate story that shifts to accommodate your actions; tension and uncertainty will chase at Iji's heels as she attempts to secure humanity's survival and her own in the midst of battle between two alien species. And please don't let the quibbles I wrote above mislead you. At some point you'll find yourself running down a hallway, ducking rockets from the sentry behind you and deciding on the fly whether to take the time to hack the door in front of you, turn and fight, or jump down the nearby elevator shaft and hope it isn't a jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, and you'll realize: Iji is serious, can't-believe-this-is-free fun.
Iji...
- is one of the most ambitious freeware games I've ever played.
- encourages you to play your way, and responds when you do so.
- might be a tad too broad for its own good, and won't win any beauty contests.
- has nonetheless stuck in my head ever since I first played it, more than I can say for many games I've paid for.
Iji is Windows only, and comes in a little under 40MB. Pick it up here.
"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers. This piece also appears there.