Digging ‘Badman’ is Nearly Guaranteed

I often completely skip anti-hero games. Heroes are who I respect and a hero is what I want to be, even in my imagination. To an admittedly limited extent, “You are what you eat.” also applies to the mind and what thoughts we entertain. At the same time, games are art. I believe in developers’ right to create the games they want to create. Whether or not what they create is moral and responsible, not to mention fun, is on them. That said, any sort of morality within a game is tied to a fictional story who’s purpose is either to drive gameplay, or to tell itself. For this reason, a truly fun and innovative anti-hero game can do much more good than any harm it might possibly do. Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! is a game that flips the retro Japanese RPG on its head. Now you run the dungeon. The “impertinent” heroes are your enemy. This flip of gameplay is what appeals to me, regardless of story, and the setting is actually pretty light-hearted and fun.

Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This? (Yes, that’s the whole title) is a dungeon simulator for the Sony PSP. While “dungeon simulator” is not a new genre, Badman combines action RPG, strategy and puzzle gameplay elements into a unique, clever and fun experience. The main story mode places you in the role of the God of Destruction and the King of Demons (aka the Overlord) is asking you to create a dungeon for him. Heroes will occasionally barge in, often in groups, and try to kidnap the King of Demons! If they successfully drag the King of Demons back to the dungeon’s entrance, you lose. You’ll need a veritable menagerie of monsters to subdue them.

Badman‘s gameplay is surprisingly complex considering how simply the interface, adding to its retro feel. As the God of Destruction, it seems all you can do is destroy. (Makes sense, right?) You are given a pickaxe as a cursor with which you must carve narrow corridors from blocks of soil using limited “dig power”. This will be your dungeon. The soil blocks contain different amounts of nutrients and mana. As you destroy blocks, depending on the nutrients and mana contents, you’ll spawn monsters. This is how you begin creating your dungeons ecosystem, which is the core of Badman‘s gameplay. You have no direct control over the monsters. You can only create, power up and destroy them. Some roam freely, while the most simple monsters continue until they hit a block, then turn.

Using the natural intake and excretion of weak and simple “slime mosses”, you must redistribute amass enough nutrients in blocks to create more powerful monsters. After you create a few types of monsters you will find they not only feed on each other, but they reproduce and even power each other up. When heroes enter (and they will enter often) you must place where the King of Demons will stand. Your monsters will automatically attack heroes in sight. The heroes differ in class, level and abilities and certain monsters are stronger or weaker compared to certain heroes. When a hero uses magic, or when you successfully kill a hero, mana will leave their body and become embedded in nearby soil blocks. Destroying these blocks releases “spirits” which are the mana equivalent to the nutrient spreading slime mosses. Monsters can be created from nutrients, mana or, in the case of demons, nutrients followed by mana. The various types of monsters can also be leveled up using remaining dig power at the end of each stage of story mode. The games ecosystem is brilliant and while its core concept is simple it quickly creates complex situations as you expand your monstrous army. There’s more than what I’ve mentioned waiting for you, such as reanimating the skeletons of deceased heroes to fight for you.

Understanding of the monsters’ ecosystem, the individual behaviors of monsters and when to level them up, and how to structure your dungeon to best utilize these factors is key to succeeding in Badman. The training mode features 8 training stages, followed by several challenge stages. I highly recommend completing the training as well as a few challenge stages before playing much story mode. I spent far too long failing on stage 5 of story mode before I realized, tight, short corridors are the best way to make a dungeon. Long corridors with spacious rooms is a terrible breeding ground, as the monsters will spend too much time apart and spread nutrients and mana too thin. I was already enjoying Badman, but once I learned this, my enjoyment was greatly amplified. Especially since when you fail story mode, you are given your score and must start over from stage one, much like an old arcade-style action game. While I am a retro game fan and can handle this, others may be less patient. Luckily, the game is deep enough to allow for many different strategies and approaches. The extra challenge stages in the training mode give you an objective to complete within a certain time period (i.e. Create this many of this type of monster in this amount of time.) and are a welcome diversion when you need a break from story mode.

Badman‘s retro aesthetic, and simple but cute and catchy soundtrack, harken back to the days of the NES and Super NES with Japanese RPGs like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy. The games characters, monsters and environments almost look like a pixelated pop-up story book. This makes for a charming and attractive setting that manages to not go stale despite simplicity. The localization to English is excellent with a clever sense of humor from the King of Demon’s comments to the almanac’s names and descriptions of monsters and characters. These traits significantly soften the villainy and makes the game suitable for children and more fun for “goody two-shoes” like me. Adding to the fresh appearance and complex gameplay is the immense number of monsters, not to mention characters and effects, that can moving and acting on-screen at once with no noticeable slowdown.

Badman features a surprisingly robust story mode, a helpful training mode with extra challenge stages, an entertaining almanac, and an edit mode where you can design a party for your friends to battle. I would have liked more depth and features in the edit mode but the fact an edit mode is even included is nice. NIS recently announced Badman would be available as a PlayStation Network downloadable release instead of a retail UMD. This means you can easily snag the game for only $19.99 USD which I feel is definitely worth the price. Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! is a must for fans of action RPGs, action/puzzle games, unconventional strategy games, and anyone looking for something innovative done right. Please support this great game to encourage NIS to localize the sequel, which is already out in Japan.