Playing Mad Father A Decade Later
(Source: https://www.ign.com/games/franchise/mad-father)
I am playing Mad Father for the first time in a decade! 😃
Oh, how I miss the days of online gaming... I'm talking retro online gaming! 😵 I'm talking about games that were made with Adobe! I'm talking about the addictedgames site! 😂 I'm talking downloading .zip files and opening them in WinZip!
One of my very first experiences with these games was during my days of Tumblr (don't judge; I haven't gone on that site in several years 😬). It was quite common for amateur game creators to offer their games for free in the form of .zip files.
I discovered Mad Father and was intrigued. Seemed like a standard click-and-find anime game, so I took a chance.
Playing the game almost a decade later, my opinion has remained unchanged: it's aight! 😅 In fact, I have some criticism to add as well...
Look, I love Japanese culture, I used to be a high school weeaboo, etc. -- I need Japanese video games to be games 😅 I buy a video game in order to play a game, not watch a full-length feature film; stop with the cutscenes 🛑
Even the other day while watching footage of the new Like A Dragon game... For the half an hour that I watched, there were maybe only 7 minutes of gameplay. The rest were cutscenes 🤦
This concept is compounded when the genre is supposed to be horror -- enough with the backstory! 😭 I'm not trying to get invested, I'm not trying to get attached, I don't give a shit that father bought you a bunny when you were 10!! Just give me the bare basics and scare my pants off 👖
By that same token, if a horror game must have a plot, at least make it make sense?? 😅
For example, who is this guy?! no explanation whatsoever, just a "salesman" who knows the main character and can teleport?!
(Gameplay taken from my Switch lol)
The wife -- the wife knows what her husband does during his "experiments"/he murders people. If my husband was killing people, not only would I refuse to support his work, but I would leave??
Meanwhile the daughter witnesses all of the atrocities that her father has committed -- "Yeah but he's really a kind person, plus people can change." ??? It's that easy, huh?...
Now, that isn't to say that Mad Father doesn't have some (one? 😅) redeeming qualities...
I really enjoyed the little surprises, "Easter eggs," if you will. The game is filled with little quirks that catch your eye at the last second and make you question everything. For example, you may go to exit a room, and right at the last second a doll will full from a shelf. Stuff like that! 😃
I ended up going through all of the endings, as well as collecting all 20 gems for the ✨ secret ✨ ending. In one of the "good" endings, the daughter goes on to "continue her father's work" -- she becomes a doctor and experiments on people.
In another ending, the red-eyed man saves one of the doctor's victims, with the intention that the boy will grow up to "stop the lunatics of the world."
I like the idea of creating a sequel based off of this concept. A relationship had been established between the two of them prior, but now the two will have to consider facing off against one another...
This game is amazing!!! I love horror games developed in RPG Maker and Wolf RPG Editor, they have such a great vibe. Mad Father, The Crooked Man and The Boogie Man are the best, in my opinion. Of course, there are other excellent games, but the ones made with the same engine, Wolf RPG Editor, are definitely the best. If I’m not mistaken, The Sand Man is also by the same developer as The Boogie Man, but I don’t remember that game very well.