>>57453288Jeuxvideo.com, a French website that has a bunch of forums.
You’ve never heard of it and that’s normal, but it’s actually massive in France. Its "blabla" forums which are basically their equivalent of /b/ has a legacy of around 20 years by now and has a lot of past and current inside jokes and an entire culture surrounding them.
The idea of making a pokemon parody game centered around this culture and referencing its jokes has always existed and attempts have been made, but Risimon was the most ambitious one, especially starting in 2022 when the then dying project has been revived by newer users.
Problem is, the decision makers of the team eventually started wanting to bite more than they could chew and make a game that would become popular even outside of that community, going as far as making an English version for it. But since the jokes, plot etc are still rooted in JVC culture it doesn’t really make sense out of context.
They also intend on making the full game paid, which forced them to go to insane lengths to avoid copyright issues, like remaking all the assets from scratch, fundamentally changing the battle system, renaming moves, changing the status conditions etc. It hardly even feels like pokemon anymore which kind of ruins the point, even if it gives it that "parody" aspect that can work too.
The main issue is still that they obviously cannot pick a target audience. I’ve been part of the team early on then left, and I played the demo when it released this weekend. It’s good but I did notice that they seem to have changed some Risimon name and designs to make them more appealing to a broader audience outside of JVC culture, which completely ruins the point of their game by ironically not making them appealing to anyone.
I also noticed there doesn’t seem to be any reference to the JVC culture of 10+ years ago, only the modern day one that is much more mainstream compatible than the more niche stuff that existed back then.
