Did you ever get lost when you were little? I do, but I’ll admit that it wasn’t a traumatic experience at all because I took the opportunity to sit in a little corner and play with my brand new Game Boy. For those of you who got lost and it was a traumatic experience, I come to tell you the story of Ib. It’s a video game originally released in 2012 and developed in RPG Maker 2003, which recently underwent a remake in RPG Maker MV and finally arrived on Nintendo Switch after a year on PC.
Like from Tim Burton’s head
In our hands we have a product from Run, an enigmatic and anonymous developer who has only developed this title so far. A video game with neo-Gothic influences, based heavily on the works of Tim Burton and the drawings of Margaret Kaene, that attempts to create a modern Coraline closely related to Neil Gaiman’s classic.
Ib is a 9-year-old girl who goes to an art gallery with her parents. Artist Guertena’s exhibition has a large collection of modern paintings and sculptures, the kind most mortals don’t understand. Like any child, Ib separates from her parents to explore on her own, but she doesn’t expect what Guertena’s art has in store for her. We walk through the gallery one by one, examine the paintings and talk to the visitors. Information that we do not yet know to what extent will be of crucial importance.
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From here, Ib enters a fantasy world from the artist’s mind. Like Alice through a looking-glass, we walk through one of the paintings and immerse ourselves in a distorted reflection of our own reality. A nightmare forged from the fears of a girl who doesn’t understand the images she’s seen. The rules of the gallery and the titles of the works bend, taking us into a world of puzzles and riddles. From here, our goal will be to return to the real world without dying trying.
By the time you figure it out, you’ll have worked through the full three-hour length of his story. It’s probably at this very moment when you’re finishing a game that you get that weird, classic empty feeling: Now what? Don’t worry, Ib’s aftermath is stunning in its simplicity. You will soon see that it will take you a few tries to eliminate all the unknowns that the game has generated for you. There are several different endings in Ib (we won’t tell you how many) and each run of the game will provide new data to complete the overall picture of our adventures with young Ib.
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Ib in the Land of the Metroidvanias
Although Ib is developed in RPG Maker, sometimes behaving more like a Metroidvania. We’ll have to pay attention to any messages the game gives us, and part of that will be to empathize with our situation and story. From here the game connects a series of puzzles mixing horror and psychological terror in which we have to get keys and open doors. Our destiny will be tied to a rose, the petals of which will mark the signs of life. To recover them we must put our flowers in vases of water scattered throughout the map.
Despite not being a horror game at all, Ib manages to surprise and execute at times moments of shock effective although it was developed in pixel art. In just a few scenes and thanks to its intelligent artistic style, it achieves an immersive atmosphere that will captivate you from minute 5 of the game. Throughout the map we will find numerous save points where we can save our game. Ib doesn’t pretend to be a difficult game, in fact it has no difficulty levels, what it wants is to get you hooked by its story. The quick succession of riddles of medium difficulty and short duration makes us say: “One more stay and I’ll quit”.
Although very subtle, there is a slight mechanic of choices that we have to make throughout the adventure. These choices do not prevent us from completing it, but little by little it will mark our path through the adventure. The choices we made determine one of the endings of the game.
Perfect for portable mode
The game is fully translated into Spanish. Something very necessary given the large amount of text that we find in the game. In addition, it is very important to pay attention because most of the puzzles are based on information taken from our environment, on word games and riddles.
Ib is a game that requires few resources, so its performance on Nintendo Switch is accurate and conscientious. The movement on the stage is fluid and fast and we only need a few buttons and the joystick to execute it. Its arrival on the laptop is the confirmation of its ideal platform. Although the game originally came out on PC, its controller movement is the most appropriate.
Something we would like to recommend is using headphones or a good sound system. The sound in Ib is excellent, both in terms of music and sound effects, immersive and enveloping, especially in terms of scares and moments of shock it means.
