Day 145 - The Lion King
Visual Novel, Shitpost, Pig Game ·
Skeeter’s Take:
I’m honestly like totally LOL-ing right now. Like, I’m totally almost like LMAO-ing or maybe even like ROFL-ing. Not quite ROFLMAO-ing, but pretty close.
To explain today’s game, “Lion King”, I am going to refer to the 1994 animated Disney film by the name of The Lion King. This movie is extremely important to mention as “Lion King” is a recreation, demake , reimagining of “The Lion King” using Gifs, internet memes, and sounds clips/music from the original movie.
“Lion King” takes a striking and bold stance to reinvent the beloved story by allowing the player to interact and make decisions as Simba.
Remember the water buffalo stampede scene from the movie? Well, what if Simba didn’t climb a tree narrowly escaping the stampede, and instead chose to try to keep running in an attempt to escape the stampede?
If you answered “He’d probably fucking die”, you and georjen15 (the creator) would be in agreement!
I couldn’t load my save either.
But that’s because I realized the screen before this gave me the option to hit “save”, which naturally I had failed to do, mistaking it for one of the player choices.
he whole game plays like this. There is no illusion of choice. Every choice you make in “Lion King” results in either loss or progress, and the losses just force you to reload so you can pick the other (correct) option. These choices boil down to “Do the thing that happened in the movie, or don’t do the thing that happened in the movie and lose”. Of course, they have to reduce to that as this game is just the Lion King, so the story cannot deviate from the Lion King. If the story deviated, where would the assets(read: gifs, story, ideas, and IP) come from? Lion King 2? AS IF?
I’ll be real, I just wanted an excuse to post the only good thing to come out of Lion King 2.
One of my favorite examples of these choices was when the game asked if I would rather follow Scar to see what his surprise is (aka the slaughter of my dear old Dad), or go back home because it was bathtime. Naturally, I picked the bathtime option and was met with an image of pride rock, no text, and the smallest gif of Simba getting bathed. It looped endlessly. There was no further explanation. There was no “reload save” button. There was only a back arrow that I could click that allowed me to choose the correct version
Shockingly, “Lion King” uses the music from the original motion picture, “The Lion King”, something nobody could have seen coming.
Naturally, “the Circle of Life” plays throughout the intro. The Lion King logo sat tiny in the center of the black void of my screen, “NAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH ISMABNBAYYYYYYYYYY” screamed through my eardrums.
Suddenly, I was there in Africa…
…In a movie theater watching the Lion King be told to me through powerpoint and some theatre kid’s Intro to Theatre final presentation…
… and there’s a gas leak (Season 4 shoutout!)
The problem with these sound clips is they loop, which I’ll admit is probably better than them just ending, but it’s very clear the developer didn’t expect the player to sit on the screen and listen to the music. If you do this, a small section of the song will loop and then the next part of the song will loop on the next screen. This makes it near impossible to have continuity through the entirety of “The Circle of Life”. Even if you clicked through the screens quickly, you would only hear the first part of the looped section, and then upon entering the next screen, the start of the sequential loop would play. The player would have to sit on each screen until the perfect spot of the song and then progress to the next screen with perfect timing to create a seamless, full playthrough of “The Circle of Life”.
I don’t know why I’m mentioning it, I just find this design choice fascinating and impractical. My best guess is it’s a combination between learning how to make a game and wanting the song to hit specific spots like it did in the movie, and this was the solution.
Before I leave, I wanted to share with you the game’s toughest decision:
Recommend: It’s funny, but it’s also just the Lion King. I’m torn on this. On one hand, if this was an original IP that came from someone’s weird little brain (like Space), it might just barely clear the bar. But unfortunately it’s just the Lion King. That’s it. The whole story is just the Lion King. The game is you, playing the Lion King. And that’s the other side of it - the fact that it’s just the Lion King, but like the worst way to experience the Lion King is funny and that’s part of the charm. I’ll say “no”.
Replay Percentage Chance: 0%
Time Played: 8 Minutes
Sam’s Take:
The Lion King by Georjen15 is a work of unparalleled genius. There are so many funny things in this visual novel that I feel like there’s no way I can convey the totality of its madness to you, but in this endeavor we shall strive.
Every time you click a link to see a Lion King gif, there’s roughly a 50% chance you see a missing image icon:
The grammar is all over the place, sometimes normal english, sometimes jumbled nonsense, at one time culminating in my favorite line in any visual novel to date:
SIMBA FOLLOWED THEM UNTIL HE WAS A MAN!
Skeeter already touched on the constant music and sounds, but I don’t think I can stress enough that this isn’t a part of Lion King. This is a visualization of the entire film. Why? Is this a joke? Are the grammar mistakes on purpose? Are the dead images out of laziness or just ineptitude?
I need more information about The Lion King, but I’ll never have it. We have stumbled upon an artifact. We can study it all we want and try to come to conclusions about why it exists, and the mental state of its creator, but we can’t know for sure. Imagine going to a museum and seeing the most baffling sculpture you’ve ever laid eyes on. Then you look at the plaque to the right and it says, “???????????????????”.
The Lion King is at all times both someone’s genuine attempt to recreate The Lion King film, and a shitpost for no one. We must protect it at all costs.
Recommend: Yes
Replay Percentage Chance: Lion King 2%
Time Played: 10 Minutes, then making my wife play it for another 10 minutes
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