Trivia / YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG

• Author's Saving Throw:
  • In January 2021, a patch was released specifically to address many of the most common criticisms of the game. It completely re-worked the battle system to be less tedious and repetitive, added in several extra scenes and snippets to give additional context to the story and most notably revised the infamous Golden Alpaca scene to give it more plot relevance and seriousness rather than making it a surreal joke with a more fleshed out version of the post-dungeon scene that allows Vella and Rory to properly discuss his trauma and how it ties into the Soul Space and his Soul Survivor. It also added a more streamlined version of the story that cuts down on extraneous story content and turns Alex into a Heroic Mime, completely cutting out his rants.
  • YIIK I.V. changes the controversial combat system to one involving draining the opponents Karta and applying bleed damage before they do the same to you, adding in full length animated cutscenes and a much flashier visual design reminiscent of Persona, new characters and altered dialogue to refine the storyline, a new and improved soundtrack, a complete overhaul of the Mind Dungeon, more character interactions that explain info not explained in YIIK, and recontextualizing Alex's monologues as non-static talks with the audience at a comedy club, with so many other newer changes to the point it’s considered by the devs as both an update and a reimagined sequel to the original.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Alex is infamously quoted as saying "Nobody cares about your dead sister." While he does express indifference toward someone grieving their dead sister, the actual line is "No one cares about your sister right now, we almost just died ourselves!"
• Creator Backlash: Yuriofwind, who played Rory, openly admitted he didn't want to do the role, and tried to get the Allansons to "hire an actual voice actor" multiple times.
• Creator Breakdown: During production, the Allansons' mother became diagnosed with a terminal illness. Development changed to let the brothers work from home so they could keep an eye on her, but while they were attending PAX she took a fall that gave her an injury she never recovered from. After delaying the game to mourn, the brothers rewrote over a quarter of the game, claiming their aim was to make it "less cynical" — though many critics noted that it ultimately came across as the opposite, not the least due to the fact that most hopeful and positive ending was Dummied Out and unachievable.
• Dear Negative Reader:
  • One of the co-creators, Andrew Allanson, criticized people who play video games as being unable to handle complex themes and that the critics are only complaining because they haven't created anything in response to criticism of the game, on The Dick Show.
  • Accusations of lifting from After Dark led to an update putting a "references" option in the title screen, where the player can review the homages and references to other media in this game. The list goes into such extensive detail that it comes off as the developers' passive-aggressive response to accusations of plagiarism.
• Deliberate Flaw Retcon: The "Super Secret" third ending has several of the alleged steps needed to access it present in the game, albeit very glitchy and unfinished. This suggests that the developers tried to add a third ending, gave up, then attempted to cover it with a "So secret you can't even get it by data-mining" excuse.
• Missing Trailer Scene: Several scenes from past trailers don't appear in the final product, such as Alex and Essentia running from Uzu, the gang staking out the windmill area, or Essentia exploring a metaphysical plane. Somewhat justified due to the game undergoing major re-writes and changes as noted under Creator Breakdown.
• Release Date Change: Originally planned for release at the end of 2015, then moved to 2016 for the summer, later moved again for its official release on January 17, 2019.
• Troubled Production: The game was in development since 2015 and was planned for release at the end of that year, but was pushed to a later date when the makers wanted to make improvements, and it ultimately wasn't ready for its release until January 2019.
• What Could Have Been:
  • As seen here. Due to changes to the story during development, with alterations being a different final boss, Essentia being heroic instead of Evil All Along, and the ending with a proper closure instead of ambiguous.
  • One of the earliest previews had Alex fighting alongside a party member named Wilfrid, who fought using an umbrella. Wilfrid is still present in the final game as the Big Bad.
  • It was going to release on the Wii U, but production troubles and delays caused them to move that version of the game on to the Nintendo Switch.

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