Tales of the Black Forest
May. 26th, 2024 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingTales of the Black Forest
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1093910/Tales_of_the_Black_Forest/
Tales of the Black Forest is a 16-bit RPG Maker narrative adventure game whose tone is split evenly between wholesome cuteness and graphic horror. Although Tales of the Black Forest features a few simple puzzles, a few short chase sequences, and limited elements of exploration, it may be more appropriate to call it a “visual novel” instead of a classic “adventure game.” Tales of the Black Forest takes about three and a half hours to play, and more than half of this time is spent reading character dialogue as you progress through a linear story.
You play as a high school student named Kihara Kashin who wakes up on a bench outside an abandoned train station. Kihara has somehow been transported to Kuromori (“black forest”) Town, where she used to live until her mother died in a car accident. Kihara meets a mysterious shape-shifting woman named Kiritani Yuki, who tells her that she is trapped in Kuromori by a curse. The only way to escape Kuromori is to use “Nensha,” a magical power that allows Kihara to travel back in time by touching retro electronic devices. By going back to the 1990s with Kiritani as her guide, Kihara can learn the origin of the curse and hopefully break it.
The story of Tales of the Black Forest is divided into three chapters, and the overall story arc admittedly doesn’t make much sense. Rather, each chapter showcases the character story of one cute yōkai girl while allowing the player to spend time in her world. Along with the cute yōkai girls, each chapter is themed around one urban legend and one social issue of the 1990s.
The first chapter is about a deserted village, Shiranaki (a play on the urban legend of Inunaki Village), and rural depopulation. The second chapter is about a magical ghost train and a fictional version of the Aum Shinrikyō “new religious movement” that carried out the Tokyo Subway Sarin Gas Attacks in 1995. The third chapter is about a haunted movie theater that serves as a case study for how many small businesses from the postwar Shōwa era were forced to close during the prolonged economic depression of the 1990s.
Along with urban legends and social issues, Tales of the Black Forest is strongly inspired by the movies of Studio Ghibli, and its magical worlds are filled with quirky yōkai and gentle kami. The character illustrations of cute girls that accompany the dialogue are somewhat generic, but the developers clearly put a great deal of love and attention into the 16-bit character sprites and their environments. There’s not a single part of this game that doesn’t make a gorgeous screenshot.
Alongside its whimsy and beauty, however, Tales of the Black Forest contains serious and sometimes graphically violent scenarios with disturbing themes and imagery. The overall tone of the story is more “character drama” than it is “horror,” but the gruesome and upsetting elements are still there. You’ll be talking to adorable cats in the beautiful green yard of a forest café, and fifteen minutes later you’ll be watching a young woman beaten to death by a deranged cultist.
This mix of wholesome and horror worked for me, but both tonal aspects of the story are equally prominent. I wouldn’t recommend Black Forest to anyone who can’t sit through The Ring or My Neighbor Totoro.
Tales of the Black Forest is made by a Chinese studio in an obvious homage to Japanese popular culture, and I also wouldn’t recommend the game to anyone who wouldn’t be comfortable sitting through an attempt to filter an “Introduction to Contemporary Japanese Society” lecture course through the medium of fiction. I personally found the references to the Japanese social problems of the 1990s to be well-intentioned, but I could understand that some people might find these elements of the story a bit cringe in the way that the “onigiri means rice ball desu” American anime fandom of the 2000s was a bit cringe.
Tales of the Black Forest was originally written in Chinese, and the English translation feels as though it was created by someone without much experience in localization. It’s serviceable, for the most part, but it can occasionally be awkward. I personally think “standard English” is a lie, and I found the translation to be charming, especially because it reminded me of how pirated anime used to have English subtitles created by people whose first language was Chinese. In keeping with the retro theme of the game, I very much appreciated this unintentional element of nostalgia.
Tales of the Black Forest isn’t perfect, but it’s a solid 7/10 game that’s elevated to an 8/10 by virtue of the love and care that the two-person development team put into every aspect of its creation. Tales of the Black Forest caters to all the Japanese pop culture nerds who are fans of both cute anime characters and creepy urban legends, and I’m surprised that it hasn’t attracted more attention since it was released in 2019. In my eyes at least, this game is a small but shining hidden treasure.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1093910/Tales_of_the_Black_Forest/
Tales of the Black Forest is a 16-bit RPG Maker narrative adventure game whose tone is split evenly between wholesome cuteness and graphic horror. Although Tales of the Black Forest features a few simple puzzles, a few short chase sequences, and limited elements of exploration, it may be more appropriate to call it a “visual novel” instead of a classic “adventure game.” Tales of the Black Forest takes about three and a half hours to play, and more than half of this time is spent reading character dialogue as you progress through a linear story.
You play as a high school student named Kihara Kashin who wakes up on a bench outside an abandoned train station. Kihara has somehow been transported to Kuromori (“black forest”) Town, where she used to live until her mother died in a car accident. Kihara meets a mysterious shape-shifting woman named Kiritani Yuki, who tells her that she is trapped in Kuromori by a curse. The only way to escape Kuromori is to use “Nensha,” a magical power that allows Kihara to travel back in time by touching retro electronic devices. By going back to the 1990s with Kiritani as her guide, Kihara can learn the origin of the curse and hopefully break it.
The story of Tales of the Black Forest is divided into three chapters, and the overall story arc admittedly doesn’t make much sense. Rather, each chapter showcases the character story of one cute yōkai girl while allowing the player to spend time in her world. Along with the cute yōkai girls, each chapter is themed around one urban legend and one social issue of the 1990s.
The first chapter is about a deserted village, Shiranaki (a play on the urban legend of Inunaki Village), and rural depopulation. The second chapter is about a magical ghost train and a fictional version of the Aum Shinrikyō “new religious movement” that carried out the Tokyo Subway Sarin Gas Attacks in 1995. The third chapter is about a haunted movie theater that serves as a case study for how many small businesses from the postwar Shōwa era were forced to close during the prolonged economic depression of the 1990s.
Along with urban legends and social issues, Tales of the Black Forest is strongly inspired by the movies of Studio Ghibli, and its magical worlds are filled with quirky yōkai and gentle kami. The character illustrations of cute girls that accompany the dialogue are somewhat generic, but the developers clearly put a great deal of love and attention into the 16-bit character sprites and their environments. There’s not a single part of this game that doesn’t make a gorgeous screenshot.
Alongside its whimsy and beauty, however, Tales of the Black Forest contains serious and sometimes graphically violent scenarios with disturbing themes and imagery. The overall tone of the story is more “character drama” than it is “horror,” but the gruesome and upsetting elements are still there. You’ll be talking to adorable cats in the beautiful green yard of a forest café, and fifteen minutes later you’ll be watching a young woman beaten to death by a deranged cultist.
This mix of wholesome and horror worked for me, but both tonal aspects of the story are equally prominent. I wouldn’t recommend Black Forest to anyone who can’t sit through The Ring or My Neighbor Totoro.
Tales of the Black Forest is made by a Chinese studio in an obvious homage to Japanese popular culture, and I also wouldn’t recommend the game to anyone who wouldn’t be comfortable sitting through an attempt to filter an “Introduction to Contemporary Japanese Society” lecture course through the medium of fiction. I personally found the references to the Japanese social problems of the 1990s to be well-intentioned, but I could understand that some people might find these elements of the story a bit cringe in the way that the “onigiri means rice ball desu” American anime fandom of the 2000s was a bit cringe.
Tales of the Black Forest was originally written in Chinese, and the English translation feels as though it was created by someone without much experience in localization. It’s serviceable, for the most part, but it can occasionally be awkward. I personally think “standard English” is a lie, and I found the translation to be charming, especially because it reminded me of how pirated anime used to have English subtitles created by people whose first language was Chinese. In keeping with the retro theme of the game, I very much appreciated this unintentional element of nostalgia.
Tales of the Black Forest isn’t perfect, but it’s a solid 7/10 game that’s elevated to an 8/10 by virtue of the love and care that the two-person development team put into every aspect of its creation. Tales of the Black Forest caters to all the Japanese pop culture nerds who are fans of both cute anime characters and creepy urban legends, and I’m surprised that it hasn’t attracted more attention since it was released in 2019. In my eyes at least, this game is a small but shining hidden treasure.
