Giftpia
Profile | Preview (1) | Reviews | Impressions (1) | Screens (37) | Artwork (1) | Media (1)
Preview
By Ben Kosmina, INACTIVE
May 11, 2003
Skip's bizarre cel-shaded RPG proves that it's not always a good idea to sleep in late.
At last year's E3, there was only a brief mention of Giftpia, classified as an “alternative RPG”. The brief footage displayed a cel-shaded RPG with some quirky looking characters and very odd gameplay. After that, no more was heard of it outside of Japan. With this year's E3 rolling around and the Japanese release of the game already passed, details on Giftpia are popping up.
Giftpia begins with the player's character, called Pokkuru, sleeping in late. However, everyone on the island of Nanashi is waiting to celebrate his coming-of-age ceremony. The coming-of-age ceremony allows Pokkuru to officially be recognized as an adult in Nanashi. Unfortunately for Pokkuru, everyone else gets sick of waiting for him and goes home. When Pokkuru finally wakes up and goes to the ceremony, it's no longer there!
Pokkuru goes to see Nanashi's Mayor (cleverly named Mr. Mayor) who tells him that if he doesn't attend his ceremony, he'll be stuck as a child forever. Having already used the mane, Nanashi's currency, for the first ceremony, there's no more mane in the city for a second. All Pokkuru has to do to become an adult is simply raise 5,000,000 mane... and not miss the ceremony this time.
Rather than fighting to earn money as you would in other RPGs, you'll need to interact with other people, including Mr. Mayor, Pokkuru's girlfriend Kyappie, a robot named Mappo who wants to be a police officer, and a goat called Yukio. How you'll interact with a goat will be quite interesting to see. It seems that Giftpia may be similar to Animal Crossing in that you might have to perform various tasks for the townspeople. Maybe you'll need to find Mappo a police badge or some mace or something like that.
Despite having to earn this money to become an adult, Giftpia claims to have 'no real goal'. Skip wants the game to be different from common RPGs, so it will certainly be exciting to see what they'll have to keep the player amused.
