If there's any adjective to describe Hylics it would be "unique." This is the closest thing to abstract art that a turn-based RPG can be, and in that respect it succeeds wholeheartedly. Its metacommentary on the pointlessness of most RPG dialogue and its usage of RPG tropes make for a fun deconstruction of a genre that I love, but it's also fairly basic when it comes to actually playing the game (and remarkably short). Still, it makes for a charming playthrough even if it feels like the game could have been even more.

Particularly had a great time in the first hour or so, not because I didn’t enjoy the rest of the game, but because of the experience of the game’s difficulty. Often in a jrpg (this ain’t a “j” game but… clearly there’s some Mother here) you might have to grind a bit against weak enemies to ease your progression. In Hylics there’s a bit of openness to progression, so everyone’s experience might be a little different. Mine personally was getting my hylic kicked any time I ran into an enemy , eventually cowering my way around and avoiding them I amassed enough money to buy an item that spared me the blind status and I could fight my way to recruiting the first ally, which greatly improved my chances. Something about the experience of starting out beneath even being able to grind against the first enemies is going to stick with me.

It's hard for me to talk about this one because on the one hand I honestly don't personally vibe with this style of RPG (but that's not the game's fault and I feel like it does it fairly well) and also it made me feel weird and anxious and uncomfortable (which speaks to the quality of the game and its art direction but does mean that I did not Like It in the traditional sense). BUT. ALSO. It looks so fucking cool, the claymation thing kicks ass, it's like 3 hours long which is great, Somsnosa please call me. I love the existence of any art that can make me feel weird and nauseous and annoyed even if I don't Like It. Can't wait to play the second one and want to die the whole time.

I honestly feel like Hylics is more of an experience than a game. Just taking a glance at it, Hylics isn’t anything special. It has basic jrpg gameplay, boring level design, and almost no customization for your loadouts. However, Hylics makes up for all of this with its unique art and presentation. Every frame of this game is so surreal and hypnotic to look at, the music makes it feel like everything is melting away and the story and dialogue just sound like someone gave a monkey a typewriter. All of this just makes Hylics such a special and a one of a kind experience. Don’t go into this game expecting anything deep gameplay wise, just let yourself take in everything it has to offer and you’ll find yourself with something completely new.

It is actually not hard to describe what Hylics is but it is hard to describe what it is exactly. Only interpretation of the facets of the game. To me Hylics was all about changing shapes. Morphing. Twisting, Distorting, Changing. The whole game feels like a post-world. Humans don't exist anymore only the objects and that which is human-esque but is not human. Hylics creates a kind of melancholic and solitude with its world and art and music. You have little sparks with the other characters of the game but it all feels a little estranged. By design. The gameplay is pretty average at best for an RPG but I think it's actually alright because I believe the main part of this game was its exploration facet rather than its fighting mechanics. The fights in themselves are set pieces too to be viewed and played with. Though I can't help but wonder if it would have been fun to be able to interract in the fights to a deeper extent rather than what is provided in the game. Maybe a kind of morphing mechanic where you use your mouse to fuse different parts of clay to create a spell or something. The whole world is a-move, twisting and turning. Little creatures explode when you touch them, some share esoteric words. The feeling of being there is so excellent in this sense that I still feel really positive over the fighting.

a beautiful, unintentionally unsettling, and inspiring experience.

the simple and exploitable gameplay is a vehicle for the unique visuals and world and characters that Mason Lindroth created. it is not an exaggeration to say that the visuals and world and characters of this game changed my life, solely from how i approach illustrating. the music's really fitting too, i love Somsnosa's theme and the Graveyard theme, great stuff.

play this game.

The cutscene that plays when using the dynamite on a battle is the single best thing ever implemented in any videogame in all of human history and I’m only mildly exaggerating.

A macabre festival where the dance never ends, a fever dream made out of bones and clay; Hylics manages to perfectly capture the feeling of a nightmare that seems to be completely absurd, yet it manages to craft meaning within the spiral of chaos. Places with random names located in islands that make no sense; mazes and entire worlds inside machines down ladders that somehow connect, and half of the odd weirdos you come across seem to speak in riddles and the other half take the insanity of this realm as another Tuesday, but all share the incredibly exaggerated animations, that range from the smoothest hand and clay movement you could think of in battles to just three frames for each walk cycle, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

If Hylics delivers something in spades, it’s definitively a sense of style, of harsh clay figurines and contrasting colors, of poems and jokes, with mountaintops populated by cone-shaped cultists and an afterlife full of fishes and a couch. I could list every single area and enemy in this game and say, ‘’WoAH! That was pretty weird and cool!’’, but I think the fact the game is just that, an avalanche of nonsense and weird shapes—and somehow finds a way to make an actually pretty simple tale and a world that has some sort of meaning and makes sense—is far more impressive than the weird moments themselves.

The harsh and quiet melodies, the special moves you get by watching the TVs, the pals you meet along the way; it’s really hard to talk about individual aspects of Hylics because everything seems intrinsically connected with each other and totally unique at the same time, which ironically makes it so some of the moments that stand out like a sore thumb are those in which it feels like the game doesn’t go nuts enough with its ideas.

The combat system, as crazy as some of the attacks get, is still pretty light; there are some cool things about it, like how it connects to the afterlife, some item interactions, and how the game’s own openness makes meeting allies and gaining abilities completely up to you. But I think that’s where the interest peaks, in how the combat is pretty determined by what you do outside of it, and when it comes to battles themselves, while there are some interesting bosses, it soon became pretty clear others are just damage sponges and that you can become pretty powerful very easily, and that plus how the areas are designed often makes combat seem more like a chore you sometimes do to get past a certain point or gain meat and money, and that otherwise evading conflict is often the faster, less annoying option.

And again, it’s in these battles where some of the more abstract and impressive animations can be found, and if anything, the final area and boss fight will ask of you to have gotten many special secret moves and quite the amount of bucks, so it isn’t completely valueless to engage in combat, but in a game with such a crazy atmosphere and universe, I was hoping for something far more engaging.

I was hoping to see more of the party members, who seem to lose their mouths the moment they join you. I was hoping for some of the puzzles to be more out there. I was hoping for more of its insane style to slip into other areas, like the menus or the secrets… Hylics presents an impossibly creative world, and even if it doesn’t last longer than it needs to and it's full of amazing stuff, it feels as if its full potential has yet to be achieved.

But what was accomplished is unforgettable; despite wishing I got to see more of their personalities, the yellow devil and his three friends singing and playing in a bar in the middle of nowhere and plowing through the forces of the moon before facing the final fiend are some amazing moments that made me laugh despite no words being said. Wade is a menace, but not one that has to be locked up; in fact, it should be let out even more wild. Godspeed, you crazy bastard…

Also, big fan of Somsnosa, it’s always nice to see another hat with horns appreciator…

Hylics is a weird psychedelic RPG maker game with some of the most unique-looking visuals I've seen due to Mason Lindroth's mind-bending clay sculpting. Even battles are a joy most of the time due to the unique items and fighting animations. Sadly besides that, it's a pretty basic RPG-maker title. This game oozes character but because of its limitation, doesn't expand in terms of gameplay. I'd recommend it if you want a small cool rpg to play however if you're looking for more substance Hylics 2 overshadows Hylics in almost every way.

je pense que ça m'a bien pris trois tentatives avant de réellement jouer à Hylics. je ne tenais pas plus de trente minutes, largué dans ce jeu à l'atmosphère absconse et à l'écriture inexistante.
puis j'ai décidé de lire la page de téléchargement du jeu, qui dit "Hylics est un programme récréationnel avec de légers élements de JRPG" ; programme récréationnel ? la lecture de cette phrase m'a donné l'envie de donner une dernière chance à ce jeu, et vu que Hylics n'est pas un jeu, je l'appréhenderai comme ce qu'il est, c'est-à-dire un objet de divertissement.

ainsi, j'ai rappris à jouer à un jeu sans l'intellectualiser, et j'ai beaucoup aimé hylics. c'était nul scénaristiquement, c'était médiocre en terme de gameplay, mais en termes d'oeuvre, d'objet manufacturé, c'était vraiment fou.

i really like hylics 1. hylics 2 may be objectively more polished, plays better, has more interesting mechanics, but i absolutely love how jank and homemade hylics 1 feels. the limitations of rpg maker can lead to some really interesting creations, and i feel hylics 1 is the posterchild of that. if you look at mason lindroth's other works from around the time, you can see just how smooth and refined his style was, so to see it trimmed down and chopped up as it is in hylics 1 due to rpg maker's limitations is really interesting. definitely worth your time, and is at a really low price on steam