This is a fraught and annoying question, but what are they? I just typed this into google and you would not believe how bad the answers can be. A lot of people read things superficially, I guess. I mean, would someone who likes Earthbound really want to play a worse version of it? That leads me to really ask the question to possibly the only community equipped to answer, what games should someone play if they like Earthbound?
Thinking about it, Moon and Chulip come to mind, but maybe there’s a more lateral answer out there. Maybe someone who likes Earthbound should play Mercenary for Atari 8-bit computers. There’s more in common than you might expect…
I’m gonna be That Guy who comes out and says it… Undertale and Delta Rune. Though they are more imitators than cohorts. They’re the best of the imitators though imo.
Weirdly I think the original GameCube Animal Crossing? The cute, stylish graphics with a slight dark edge underneath. The fun but artsy music that apes bands like YMO. The feeling of being a kid in a weird community that treats you as somewhat of an outsider. I dunno, there’s something about it.
Maybe Chrono Cross also, which doesn’t get enough credit for its experimental side and melancholy existentialist writing. I strongly feel that more people should look at that game as an idiosyncratic passion project.
LaSalle Ishii’s Childs Quest
Flowering Nose in Slugland
Anthology of the Killer
Katamari Damacy
Barkley Gaiden
Baba Is You
I’m Sorry
Fly Guy
Samorost
Expelations of the Little Green Pod Man
this english translation of a typing game rpg, sword of kumdor: The Sword of Kumdor
–
the insistence of ‘earthbound-like’ is kind of eye-rolly now to me. its kind of a weird standard because its really hard to communicate to most folks when its an inspiration without having to borderline dress as a thinly-veiled fangame, and players like to label anything they can’t really immediately parse themselves, or basically anything with trippy gfx as ‘like earthbound’.
the fans of the series are also particularly vocal about this being some kind of actual genre you can just invite existing games to be a part of. this always troubles me because it feels like fans impart a ton of expectation onto projects that may have widely different goals of their own. like there is this kind of weird fantasy about the existence of a ‘mother 4’ waiting to be crowned in the indie games landscape, and that Itoi quote has kinda emboldened people in the exact wrong ways
This is why I made the thread. I was so disgusted by the misshapen clones I saw on an AI-generated list. I don’t want to hear about Earthbound-likes. I want to hear about games that I would like to play if I liked playing Earthbound.