HOW TO MAKE ART WITH CRAYONS

by BROGAN CHATTIN

Video game history is tough. There’s really no true canon, no essential tome or library kept up by esteemed academics. The legacy of a game is found within communities it inspires. Sometimes a must-play game is some 2008 RPG, needing an English translation patch, found on message boards. When consumers start their journey into games, they only know what they see. It’s possible that when OFF finally released on digital marketplaces in 2025, your first thought was “This looks a lot like Undertale.”

The switch is set to ON.

OFF was made with RPG Maker 2003. To put it simply, it was made with very limited tools. OFF uses a simple Active Time Battle system and the visuals are pretty much all tile based jpegs. The game’s scripting mostly consists of flags, triggers, and switches.

What does that mean? Well to put it in simple terms, you’re often given a binary choice and the game will reference and inspect what choice has been made. A lot of how game logic works can be boiled into “if, then” statements. For example, a common one in OFF would be “If the switch is set to ON, then the door will be locked.” More complex games with broader tools will have different system elements play a role in outcomes. Many modern RPG’s for instance could have an actual live battle system with enemy intelligence. To contrast, a more classic RPG enemy might do two moves, and heal every three turns “if HP is below 30”, for example. That’s not to say these elements don’t play a role in complex games, but with OFF? That’s all there is. Just flags, triggers, and switches.

Oh my, are there a lot of switches. OFF boldly takes this limitation and makes it a design philosophy that takes the title literally. OFF puzzles are about switches and numbers. You may have to take a moment to understand what the numbers mean, and perhaps that gives you a deeper view of the game’s world, but ultimately it all ties into switches opening the way forward. Often, the switches are already on, and you’re merely trying to turn them off (get it?) OFF is didactic thematically tying itself to what you’re meant to do in it, and the narrative what and whys of doing it in the first place. Sometimes, what it’s able to do in this and all of its other constraints is surprising.

The most surprising elements of OFF remain how it looks and what it says and does. The main plot is pretty simple: you control an entity known as the Batter, who must go through three zones and purify the ghosts and guardians within the realms. If “purify” makes you uncomfortable here, congratulations you’ve stumbled into some of the deeper moral dilemmas of the game. That’s not to say the batter is solely evil. The game also questions whether these worlds are good or even functional in the first place. One world creates a library with books you can’t read, afraid to inflict any pain or pleasure on its denizens. One world exploits its laborers so the sugar they produce is refined into the same addictive meal that pushes them to refine more sugar. Sometimes the world is decaying around them already, haunted by the ghosts of the past, and the authority remains in denial until there’s a bat in the face. 

The sprites are incredibly simplistic, but the battle designs – the screens we are teleported to when the turn-based battles are underway –  feature fully drawn art pieces that evoke something juvenile but deeply disturbing and fascinating. They’re drawings from an edgy high school sketchbook, in the best way possible. I would much rather look at what an artist makes with crayons than what the uninspired makes with oil and canvas. The resolution crunch of the drawings also helps create another layer of dense and blurry abstraction. It also helps that the gore and horror remains latent but present, felt within the repetition of constant battles and plot turns, but the general dialogue and pace of the game is kept with an up-tempo beat by the industrial swing battle theme Pepper Steak (yes, you’ve read all those words correctly) and its humor. The humor is the louder and prouder companion to the horrors of the game, and is often what pushes the player to the next room. These elements are easy to take for granted, but even rough, simple elements made by artists can be made into something meaningful.

OFF’s official retail release in 2025 features an entirely new soundtrack. The original composer, Alias Conrad Coldwood, did not give the rights to his work. The developers and publishers involved enlisted talented artists and fans of the original release to provide new tracks. Toby Fox helped compose the new battle theme, White Meat. Toby keeps a lot of the sampled swing and jazz elements, but the new tracks lose a lot of the industrial grit that created a sonic texture. There’s nothing wrong with White Meat, but I think Pepper Steak is something that ages better and better every day. Having Pepper Steak lost to this release speaks to something, and I still can’t place what it is. For a long time, Pepper Steak was perhaps the most famous thing about OFF. Perhaps Pepper Steak now represents a slipping history it was already resembling. You will only hear Pepper Steak on those dingy forum downloads, or preserved by fans who care. That’s the only way video games can truly find their place in the canon of history, White Meat be damned.

OFF has connected to audiences deeply, in such a way that has left a ripple effect for many games to come. There aren’t many anti-RPG’s, even now,but OFF is likely more responsible for this developing sub-genre of independent games than Earthbound or Moon ever was. Other quirky, off beat, ethically complex RPGs have sprouted in the wake of OFF. Undertale’s humor and aesthetic design remain deeply affected by OFF. OFF’s legacy remains the other half of influence to artistic RPG Maker games that Yume Nikki complements.. Games like Omori, Suits, Oneshot, Hylics, Space Funeral and many fangames directly take inspiration from OFF. If a game has meta, humorous, psychological elements rolled up into a package that subverts traditional game sensibilities and forces the player to examine their actions, OFF has had a fingerprint on the experience.

The switch is set to OFF.