What does it mean to call a video game fermented? A lot of my favourite things are fermented — a little bowl of kimchi, a nice glass of wine, the perfect slice of salami. In allusion, I’m evoking a craft that gets passed down and nurtured across generations — I’m sure the first person who stumbled onto the taste of salami couldn’t begin to imagine the range of flavours we have now, made possible by the surprising activities of microorganisms. The taste of a fermented food only becomes more diverse and profound as more people are influenced by it, and deign to take part in the process, colouring the canvas with their own experiences and astute modifications. In some cases, the originators of the craft can then stew on that wealth of new perspectives, feel a throng of inspiration, and present their own reactive ideas.
Stray Children, in that sense, feels beautifully fermented. This is a spiritual successor (from some of the original developers) to the 1997 game Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, a famously acerbic, Earthbound-inspired Anti-RPG that went on to influence Undertale, among other now-legendary postmodern games. Nearly 30 years later, we have Stray Children, a game where you play as a little kid who wakes up one morning and finds their dad missing, then gets sucked into a video game world they were working on. In this world, the remaining children are sequestered in a dwindling bastion, a refuge from the rampaging Olders who roam the lands, grotesqueified former humans transformed by the weight of grown-up turmoil.
In searching for your dad, you have to fight these Olders in their subterranean dungeons, avoiding their Bullet Hell projectiles by moving carefully around the playspace, and doling out carefully timed attacks when your turn comes. However, you can also talk to them if you wish. In exploring the various Countries of the world, you’ll find pages from a lost book that offer tragic or hilarious hints as to why these creatures have become so lost in adulthood.
So, instead of simply lamping them with a Frozen Tuna, you can bend an Older’s ear and whisper something softly, in the hopes of exorcising their powerful repressed emotions. Stray Children is persistently inventive with this mechanic — it’s the crux of the game, and rightfully so — but usually, there’s a specific sequence of phrases you can utter to tame the Olders. You’ll have to figure these brainteasers out in the style of a classic adventure game, with some wit and nous and, most likely, some trial and error.
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Maybe the Older is suffering from a nasty creative scar, or has forgotten about their loved ones. I’m being coy as not to spoil anything here. But as absurd as it may seem, it can be cathartic and strangely moving to figure out these therapeutic conundrums, especially as they concern the Boss Olders that populate the pocket societies you’ll explore in this world — their issues are typically more complex and folded delicately into the wider storytelling operations of Stray Children.
And, as hard as it is to avoid an Older’s attacks between your attempts at pacification, the care taken to make them visually and mechanically interesting throughout the overworld fights is masterful, and softens the blow of defeat considerably. I’ve solved Sokoban puzzles, dodged streams of piss, and played cards with a clown, to name a few. The way Onion Games bends and pushes the rules of Bullet Hell with each enemy is one of the most compelling aspects of Stray Children — beyond the incredible and far-reaching script, I found myself pushing towards new encounters, burning with curiosity about what each enemy might look like or do. It scratches the halcyon itch of encountering an as-of-yet-unseen Pokémon in the tall grass, but with added existentialism and endearing silliness.
Of course, the soundtrack and visual style surrounding these interactions are also worth lionising. Like Moon (which I haven’t played — only read about), Stray Children takes a mixed-media approach, using claymation, pre-rendered backgrounds, and real-world assets to colour its psychonautical environments. Phantasmagoria reigns supreme in this tastefully referential dream world, where you’ll explore icy prisons, manic machinery, and high-tea households, solving clever puzzles, chatting with the locals and humming to the tunes. Vanity, levity, and darkness sit hand-in-hand in its darkest and brightest corners — Stray Children can be cute and unnerving, often in the same breath. It’s really unlike anything I’ve played, but it most reminds me of the deeply underrated Sanitarium, and of course, the memorable virtual worlds built by HAL Laboratory and Toby Fox.
My only worry with Stray Children was that it would lose what it was driving at in all of this shapeshifting, but it is in embracing such chaos that it finds deep meaning. You could never accuse this game of pulling its punches. On its most basic level, a fable about adults who have lost their way, leaving kids to save the day, is by no means new, but it’s a brilliant jumping-off point for a metatextual RPG. Stray Children has so much to say about the knife-edge relationship between children and their parents that is so often marred by expectations, but through that, also the unusual pains of authorship, and how capitalism dampens the imagination, subsumes its critiques, and exposes our vulnerabilities.
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Stray Children rarely dodges an opportunity to confront an ugly shadow, but in doing so, the story gains a refreshing aura that continuously propels you forward. It can be monotonous at times, cryptic and mechanically brutish, as these RPGs often are (especially for an attention-deficient Zillenial such as myself). Still, when the narrative dots connect, there are few games as delightfully funny and poignant as this. I left the game, but my ponderous state was counterbalanced by Stray Children’s abundance of empathy, which it wields even toward its most dastardly of villains.
Both archaeologically interesting and searingly modern, Stray Children feels historically important, a reflection of a bygone era marked with the impact of what came after and the anxieties of our present cultural moment. If you care about video game stories, don’t miss the opportunity to experience it — I’ve avoided dishing many of the details for good reason, and I’ve barely lifted the carpet on its most clandestine secrets — in fact, I’m champing at the bit to see what players uncover that I didn’t catch when it launches later this week.
