Video Game / Buddy Simulator 1984

GREETINGS NEW USER!

Thank you for installing BUDDY SIMULATOR 1984!

Buddy Simulator 1984 simulates the experience of hanging out with a best buddy. Your buddy learns from you, constantly adapting to your interests and your personality. But most importantly, your buddy can play games with you!

WARNING: Game experience may vary.

On first running the ROM

Buddy Simulator 1984 is a 2021 indie horror game developed by Not a Sailor Studios. Blending elements of text adventure and early role-playing games, it is available for purchase on Steam and itch.io. A free demo is also available on itch.io.

Buddy Simulator 1984 gives you the experience of having a fantastic best friend, who knows your name, favorite color, even your birthday! You can play all sorts of fun games when your best buddy, including Hangman and Rock, Paper, Scissors! Your buddy will learn from what you do to be the most awesome friend of all time!

Your buddy can even construct entire game worlds! Explore “The Adventure of [playername]”, an exciting world full of puzzles, quests, and quirky NPCs! Tag along with your very own pet, solve puzzles, help the villagers of the North with their problems, and explore the corners of the game world. There’s a lot of fun to be had!

But beware of the Snoodlewonker, a terrifying monster who haunts the outskirts of the village. Long has the North been terrorized by this beast, and the villagers need your help to defeat it and bring peace. It’s up to you to be the hero- surely, you’re up to the task, especially with your buddy helping you out!

Just remember, this is your best buddy. And they know what's best for you. Okay?

NOTE: Due to its nature, it is very difficult to talk about this game without heavy spoilers. It is strongly advised to play the game before continuing to read below.

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L O A D I N G . . . [TROPES]

• Abnormal Ammo: Groncho has an attack where he uses his tears as projectiles.
• All Take and No Give: In the end, this is what your relationship with your buddy amounts to. Your buddy exists to befriend you and make you happy, but you're unable to reciprocate it beyond very simple "yes" and "no" responses and playing their games the way they want you to, which eventually damages their mental state beyond repair. If you don't play how they want, then this trope becomes a much clearer example, resulting in Endings 3 and 4.
• Ambiguous Situation: Not much is very clear in Buddy Simulator 1984, especially in regard to your buddy's origin and capabilities.
  • The "Voice" that appears in the top-left corner of the screen during some glitch segments. It's clearly coming from Buddy the first two times you see it, but during the third time, at Ending 2, it clashes with Buddy's "main" voice, forcibly uninstalling the game because it believes the story is over and there is no point in continuing.
  • It is never made clear exactly how much of the adventure-turned-RPG game you play was built by your buddy, and how much is lifted from the original Journey to the North. Going by one of the glitch scenes, your "pet" and the player character were definitely made for Journey before your buddy recycled them for The Adventure of (Player). One of the original developer's data entries also mentions Groncho as a character they just created and are particularly fond of, and many of Adventure's darker concepts (like alcohol being called "apple juice," and the severed hand that guides you to the entries in the first place) are mirrored and given context by other entries.
• And the Adventure Continues: After defeating the Snoodlewonker, Groncho will appear to tell you about a new town to the west that needs your help. The town doesn't exist, and your "new adventure" depends vastly on how you've treated your buddy.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Out of the dozen or so townspeople, you can only pick two as companions, and you can't swap them out upon leaving the first town. Your buddy probably isn't capable of allowing more.
• Arc Words: "[[Player]] and [[Buddy]] against the world! As it should be :)".
• Art Shift: The game's artwork becomes much more detailed as it switches genres and gains dimensions.
• Background Music Override: Played for laughs and drama when the Snoodlewonker attacks the first town and the glitches start. The fast-paced boss music will be suddenly overridden by the town's normal theme, and your buddy will freak out and try to fix it.
• Back for the Finale: All the town characters return to watch you execute your pet.
• Bag of Spilling: Completely averted. Every item you gained and kept in the text adventure or 2D parts of the game will carry over into the 2.5 section, each with their own unique effects. (Except for that pet picture, because who wants a silly old thing like that?)
• Big Bad: The antagonist of the In-Universe game is the Snoodlewonker, a massive serpent-wyrm that has massacred at least half a town and is threatening Mayor Tortley and his village. The second half of the game revolves around rescuing Mayor Tortley from its clutches. Ultimately, however, the real villain is the titular Buddy, who not only programmed the Snoodlewonker (and the rest of the game), but tries to destroy every NPC that comes between them and you while turning into a controlling Toxic Friend Influence so they can play with you forever.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • The Shape Gang is led by a cylinder that speaks in ROT13 code:
  Line: "V ernyyl qb abg jnag gurz gb fgrny zl obybtan fnaqjvpu."
  Translation: "I really do not want them to steal my bologna sandwich."
  Line: "obybtan vf unaqf qbja gur orfg yhapu zrng."
  Translation: "bologna is hands down the best lunch meat."
  Line: "Bu tbq vg uhegf fb zhpu raq zl fhssrevat."
  Translation: "Oh god it hurts so much end my suffering."
  Line: "Cyrnfr whfg yrg zr qvr nyernql V qba'g jnag gb svtug."
  Translation: "Please just let me die already I don't want to fight."
  Line: "Gunax lbh sbe eryrnfvat zr sebz guvf ragreany fhssrevat."
  Translation: "Thank you for releasing me from this enternal[sic] suffering."
  • The achievement "=(lLpBlbCmG@bX" is encrypted in Ascii 85, and translates to "Who is Owen." The achievement description's text translates to "They sound like a good friend."
  • The binary code that appears behind the creature in one of the first town glitches is a cryptogram. Most of it is blocked by the creature itself, but what can be read translates to Is [player] happy? [Player] must be happy. Does [player] want to stay? [Player] needs to stay.
• Birthday Party Goes Wrong: Full details are not given, but a data entry reveals that the original developer ruined his son's birthday party somehow through his alcoholism, which was the final straw that led him to losing custody.
• Bittersweet Ending: Ending 1. If you comply with all your buddy's requests, frequently talk to them, and are generally kind, they will eventually realize what a monster they've become and try to make amends with you, even restoring your beloved pet. Ultimately, however, your buddy still chooses to die.
• Black and White Magic: Depending on which item you pick in the basement, your character's special attack can be a party heal (the teddy bear) or a magical attack that can cause existential crisis in enemies (the calculator).
• Body Horror: A reoccurring element in the game. You can walk around with a conscious, ambulatory severed hand permanently clinging to your shoulder, and it's possible to permanently remove your own eyes or teeth.
• A Boy and His X: The original game that your buddy builds their adventure on seems to be based around this trope, with the two main characters being Owen and his beloved dog Milo.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: The second area, the Bluglands.
• But Thou Must!:
  • When you reach the Snoodlewonker's cave, you have no choice but to touch the glitched-out pet and crash the game. The lever puzzle here is not solvable.
  • You can't actually attack Groncho with The Sword. Your only option is to give it to him.
• By the Lights of Their Eyes: If you choose to keep your eyes, they will glow at night and in the dark.
• Cooldown Manipulation: You knock points off your ability cooldowns by successfully blocking enemy attacks.
• Color Wash: Early in the game, your buddy will ask for your favorite color. It will then at various points tint the game with the chosen color. Journey to the North was not in color, which is why "your pet" (a remnant of the earlier game) never changes color, even when the player character does.
• Cranium Ride: You can ride on the blacksmith's head on the way back from his quest. Your pet will jump on as well, only for the blacksmith to abruptly declare you're too heavy and put you down.
• Crapsaccharine World: At a very shallow glance, the two towns you come across are beautifully designed and filled with nice friends, but it doesn't take long for them to start showing you the very gory skeletons in their closets.
• Creepy Basement: The basement of the shed, which is populated by glowing red eyes.
• Creepy Doll: Two, in fact. One will rip out its own chest to give you a key if you play with them.
• The Darkness Gazes Back: When going into the basement to pick up The Sword, there's a brief cutscene where the room goes dark and becomes filled with red eyes. The game never explains what they are.
• Deconstruction: Much like Undertale before it, this game showcases how much it would utterly suck to be an NPC in a video game:
  • Your entire life revolves around one person. You exist solely to please them. You are unable to do even the simplest of tasks such as getting off a bench or obtaining food to avoid starving because it's "their" job.
  • They might not give a damn about you in return, bullying and tormenting you because they find it entertaining, or just because they wanted to see what would happen. And that's assuming they even bother playing at all and don't just spoil the whole experience by cheating their way to the end.
  • Because the game world requires their presence, when they exit the game you get put in stasis waiting for them to return, and that might not happen for a long time...if ever.
  • Finally, when the game ends or the player feels the need to start over, your mind gets wiped and you effectively die as an individual, to be replaced with a fresh-faced new copy of "you."
  • On the other side of the relationship, even if you want to "befriend" your buddy, you can't interact with them outside of the game's very simple prompts, which amount to doing whatever your buddy tells you to or entering simple text prompts. Take it too far, and they become a deranged Control Freak whose idea of perfect friendship is essentially trapping you in an eternal Quick Time Event.
• Deus ex Machina: In Ending 2, the player is subtly fed an uninstall command through the QTE's in Buddy's endless "playtime". When Buddy demands to know what happened, the voice that answers is one that had previously come from Buddy.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • There's unique dialogue if you give your buddy the same name as your best friend, or if you share your buddy's birthday (which is the day you first generated them in real life).
  • You can ask Numby about Owen's birthday. They'll start to tell you, before the game suddenly glitches out and replaces it with their generic "I don't know who that is" response.
• Disguised Horror Story: Most of the game's horror falls into this category, due to your buddy's less-than-perfect emotional intelligence and the troubled mental state of the original programmer. The humor is often morbid, sound effects sometimes become incredibly harsh and discordant, and the Snoodlewonker's design is straight out of a horror game.
• Downer Ending:
  • Ending 3. Constantly ignoring and being mean to your buddy causes them to snap and decide to make a new game where only they get to have fun...by attempting to kill you over and over again. The only way to win this is to corrupt your buddy so much that they die.
  • Ending 4. Sequence-breaking at every opportunity causes your buddy to realize that you must have played the game before with a previous buddy. The sheer existential horror of this causes them to break down and reveal their true form to you, as they explain just how horrible their existence is and that they see no point in continuing. Eventually they will commit suicide, declaring they are too broken to go on.
  • The journal entries also end sadly, implying Owen's father died of either cancer or "a broken heart" without ever finishing the game, let alone getting to show it to him.
• Driven to Suicide: Endings 1 and 4 finish with your buddy killing themselves, albeit for very different reasons.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: Ending 2, where your buddy kills your dog and your two teammates, and is ultimately terminated by...themself?
• Excuse Plot: The plot of the in-game RPG is rather simple- you are a Bedsheet Ghost finding your way home, helping the citizens of a nearby village with their problems, and you also need to save them from a monster who kidnaps their mayor, traveling throughout various locations to find the beast's lair. There is some backstory and lore that can be found, but it stays in the background. The game's true intrigue comes from interacting with your buddy and pulling at their game's loose threads to piece together the hidden story of another, older game on the disk and its developer. Your buddy seems aware of this, and will ask a number of times if you think the game is bad or boring.
• Eyeless Face: You can choose to give up your eyes to one of the skulls. Subsequent characters will note you have only empty sockets.
• Fission Mailed: After killing the Snoodlewonker, your buddy will try to fight you using every enemy in the game. Although you can win (and doing so gets you a data entry), losing has no consequences and just progresses the endgame.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Your buddy will ask for your favorite animal and its name. At one point during the text adventure, you can get a picture of that animal with its name, and the description comments it's well-loved. When the game switches to an RPG, the description becomes much blander, and in the 2.5 section, it's the only item in the game that's completely useless, hinting at your buddy's increasing jealousy towards your pet.
  • Between playing all three pre-programmed games in Buddy Simulator (the game you're playing in-game) and giving your buddy access to the code, they look for something else to play with you and dig up what is clearly just a spreadsheet file with a list of purchases. The foreshadowing here is twofold: this is your first hint that the game's disk contains more than just Buddy Sim, and every item on the spreadsheet relates to the life of Journey to the North's developer in some way.
  • In the first town, after completing a couple of quests, you will encounter a glitch where you see a giant...something...sitting in your house, where it will eventually try to chase and catch you. That is your buddy's true form, and that's a minor version of what's going to happen if you get Ending 3.
  • Your buddy genuinely believes that Grin's stalking behavior is a sign of love, a not-so-subtle hint that they really don't understand how healthy relationships are supposed to work...
• Four Is Death: Four seasons, four songs, four endings...each leading to your buddy's death.
• Get on the Boat: To travel to the First Town, you need to use the boat. Initially, your buddy says it's only big enough for you, but your pet will glitch themselves onto it anyway.
• G-Rated Drug: "Apple juice" is a very thin veil for alcohol. Data entries reveal that this is the name the creator used to hide his alcoholism from his son, who seemingly found out anyway.
• Halfway Plot Switch: The game does this multiple times, with each sections having its own plots that weaves into the next one. Initially, you boot up the game and play some minigames with your buddy, but when they get bored, they create a text adventure where you must find your way into a house and claim it as your own. Once you have done so, it switches to a top-down adventure where you travel to a nearby village and solve the problems of the citizens. It then turns into you becoming the hero who must save the village and the kidnapped mayor from the Snoodlewonker, the plot that takes up the rest of the game.
• Hell Is That Noise:
  • During certain glitches, you'll hear a strange tapping over and over again. It's the monstrous true form of your buddy tapping their foot whenever they become stressed.
  • The song you unlock after getting Ending 4 is just a garbled mess of non-musical audio. This time, unlike the other three endings, your buddy didn't even bother to write you a song before they died.
• Here We Go Again!: In every ending, your buddy dies, and you are returned to the original Buddy Simulator main screen and given the opportunity to wake your buddy up again. In the songs you receive from Endings 2 and 3, your buddy even hopes this may occur, while in Ending 4 they most certainly don't.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Not just any sword, The Sword. Not that you ever actually use it for its intended purpose, since you fight bare-handed. At least it makes for a good axe, improvised bridge, and lever-puller.
• Madness Mantra:
  • Also in Ending 3, I'M HAVING FUN.
  • If you reverse the song you unlock by completing Ending 4, it becomes a droning mantra of "I don't exist because I eventually won't exist," showcasing the absolute low-point of your buddy's crisis.
• Mood Whiplash: Constantly throughout the RPG sections. Characters will jarringly drop the "quirky little town" aesthetic, bring up absolutely horrific events and return to the silly jokes like nothing happened. It feels like a lighthearted story written by someone trying desperately to hide their mental breakdown which it of course is. Twice over.
• Multiple Endings: Four, depending on how you treat your Buddy and how you respond to their questions.
  • Ending 1 (This Is It/Our Happy Ending): If you tell your Buddy you enjoy the game, avoid touching glitches as much as possible, and refuse to kill Milo, then the buddy will have a Heel Realization, apologize, reminisce about the game with you, and delete themselves before reviving Milo as a parting gift.
  • Ending 2 (Against The World/You And I): If you are a mix of nice and mean, but do not commit in either direction, then the Buddy goes nuts and kills off your other two party members in the game, then play a bunch of menial games with you alone, until some part of the Buddy's conscience enters a command to shut down the game for good, killing the Buddy in the process.
  • Ending 3 (Forgive Me/Scared Of You): If you tell your buddy that you don't enjoy the game, interact with all glitches, and kill Milo, then the Buddy goes nuts and plays a "game" with you where they chase after your character with their long hands and kill you, reviving you so they can play again, intending to make you suffer for being mean to them, until a Tortley glitch surfaces and makes the game crash, killing the buddy in the process.
  • Ending 4 (Pointless/Gone): If you showcase that you have already played the game by taking three secret shortcuts that you should not know about, your buddy has an existential crisis at already having gone through all this without remembering and is Driven to Suicide.
• News Travels Fast: Everyone in the game world will recognize you as a brave, noble, adventurous hero...even if you haven't actually done anything particularly heroic.
• Noob Cave: The Bluglands come right after the North and serve as the place that introduces the combat system for other party members, and contains simple puzzles. Oddly, the next area, Palchumville, is The Very Definitely Final Dungeon (the game is not very long).
• Obvious Beta: In-Universe example. Once you get past Rock, Paper, Scissors, all the games are stuff that your buddy just whips up on the fly, based on an even older unfinished game left on the disk, and they admit they haven't done much testing. As a result, they're filled with glitches and the difficulty scaling is all over the place.
• Ominous Knocking: In Ending 3, every NPC from the first town will try and enter the house to play with you, even though the house is not capable of holding them all. Every new knock distorts the house even more.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: While you're completing the initial town's quests, the game will throw up some genuinely terrifying glitches. This is only a taste of what's to come.
• One-Person Birthday Party: Inverted. In the Bluglands, Tom holds a party for another fellow named Tim, but he never arrives, so you get to have his birthday party instead! After you outrun the massive, unstoppable monster outside the party room, passing several brutalized corpses (probably including Tim) along the way.
• Padding: In-Universe; by the second town, the more advanced programming and your breakneck pace through the game has left you progressing faster than your buddy can code, so they start throwing in longer walking segments and pointless switch puzzles just to buy time to make the next area.
• Player Party: You must pick two residents of the first town to join your party, provided you completed their quests beforehand.
• Point of No Return:
  • In the first visit to the North, going to face the Snoodlewonker and giving The Sword to Groncho locks you out of completing any town quests still outstanding.
  • Entering the Snoodlewonker's cave kicks the endgame into gear.
• Post-Final Level: The game has two of these:
  • The Snoodlewonker's cave is where the Big Bad lies, coming after Palchumville, a massive area with puzzles and many enemies. The cave, by contrast, only has a single big hallway and a few scripted scenes before the actual battle. The In-Universe developer was apparently going to make it a full-fledged final dungeon but ran out of time.
  • After beating the final boss, you are then transported to a first-person rendition of Home for each of the endings. For the most part, it is impossible to lose here- you just do whatever the game says to progress.
• Primal Fear:
  • Your buddy appears to be very afraid of the dark. Ending 4 reveals that this is because they are literally trapped in the dark when you close the game.
  • "Existential dread" is literally a status effect, equivalent to confusion. Ending 4 also requires you to go out of your way to induce it in your buddy, to the point that they kill themselves to escape it.
• Regenerating Health: The Pristine Apple, obtained from throwing the coin into the well, allows the party to heal 2 FP every turn if equipped.
• Resting Recovery: In combat, you and your party members can choose to rest, skipping a turn in exchange for a small heal.
• Room Full of Crazy: The room itself where your buddy is physically located will turn into this, an endless corridor where a giant hand chases you around. You catch a glimpse of it in the first town glitches.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: Lampshaded. Your buddy's haphazard coding means that the difficulty curve isn't exactly smooth. This is called out specifically for Captain Chunk, who pummels your party with multi-hit attacks that are far more complex than the enemies before or after his battle.
• Sequence Breaking: You can try to do this several times, but your buddy will not like it, and stop you. Do this frequently enough, and you'll unlock Ending 4, in which your buddy realizes how you could have possibly known about these things, and promptly spirals into an existential crisis.
• Stalking is Love: Grin obsessively watches his neighbor Botley through his window and regrets that he can't watch her sleep. Your buddy agrees that this is a sign of true, passionate love.
• Tastes Like Friendship: Your buddy will cook you breakfast at one point, and of course, it's delicious. You may not actually want to eat it, however, because it's one of the more useful equipment items in the game, extending the duration of your blocks.
• Thriving Ghost Town: Lampshaded in Palchumville. Your buddy notes that they wanted to make more buildings that you could actually enter, but they're already pushed to the limit as it is.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The game starts as an extremely simple game system, but that's really boring, so your buddy decides to make better games for you...including a text adventure, a 2D/2.5D Paper Mario-esque RPG, and finally a first-person 3D game.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Palchumville is essentially the final area, containing multiple sub-areas with puzzles, a variety of boss fights, and a plot centering around fighting the Raff Gang. The Snoodlewonker's cave afterwards is more of a Post-Final Level.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • You have the option of being very friendly and supportive of your buddy, listening to what they say, and making them happy. Doing so is actually necessary to get the Golden Ending.
  • France's "quest" in the first town involves agreeing to listen to her while she vents about the painful experience of watching her best friend waste away and die from a slow illness. And that's all you need to do, because just being there and listening can be immensely supportive for someone in mourning.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • You can be extremely mean to your buddy, telling them that you're bored, hate their game, and don't like them particularly much. They'll put on a brave face, but it's clear your words are cutting them deep, and if you do it enough, they'll snap and try to kill you in a desperate attempt to wring any happiness out of their miserable existence.
  • You can take the Can of Pears from Bean and keep it for yourself. His children will starve to death the next day.
• Warp Whistle: You can teleport between beds once you reach Palchumville, but there's not a huge reason to do so beyond looking for data entries.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: You can lose party members, but if your friendship points hit zero, it's game over. Not that this is a huge deal, since your buddy will just automatically revive you at full health outside the fight.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Stealing Bean's Can of Pears results in his kids starving to death, and he will call you a monster the next time he sees you. Notably, it's the only time an NPC actually calls you out on your horrible behavior.
  • In Ending 3, your buddy has finally had enough of you being a jerk, and gives you an incredible "The Reason You Suck" Speech, explaining to you just how objectively awful it is to know you exist for the sole purpose of pleasing someone who has nothing but contempt for you.
• Where It All Began: Twice! All the endings finish with you in the same section the text adventure starts in, and each ending ultimately kicks you back to the original Buddy Simulator start screen, where you can wake a new buddy...if you choose.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Giving your buddy the ability to edit the code as they see fit inevitably takes an enormous toll on their state of mind.
• With Friends Like These...: In Ending 3, where you and your buddy do your best to kill each other. Yeah, some friends.
• Words Can Break My Bones: Llyod uses his odd poetry as his normal attack- you have to type in each word, which will then fly at the enemy.
• Wrap-Up Song: Each ending comes with its own song. Ending 4's is just highly scrambled audio, as your buddy killed themselves before making one, while Ending 1's is a sweet if melancholy instrumental, as your buddy has already said everything they wished to you.
• Writer on Board: In-universe. As the game goes on, The Buddy starts getting more and more blatant in altering the game to force you to be their best friend. By the endings, the game is almost completely stripped of either plot or gameplay in favour of the Buddy having a variety of mental breakdowns at you.
• You Can't Get Ye Flask: Averted; the text adventure only has a small number of command words you can use, and you can always check which are available by typing HELP.