I really loved Sea of Stars last year, but I’m admittedly a sucker for games like it. I like charismatic characters and pixelated graphics that make otherwise grand and fantastical views foreign to me feel home-y and warm, even nostalgic. But what if a game kind of tried to be the opposite? Well, I think it’d be kind of like My Familiar, an RPG in the vein of the Super Mario RPGs but with a lot more grime. You begin the game as a down-on-your-luck guy who’s tricked into a dingy apartment where you’re essentially jumped and then pushed out of a window to your death. As you hit the ground though, you seem to pass into another world called Wish City, where people are monsters in some fantasy take on grimy urban living in the 80s. Described to me as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles meets Super Mario RPG, My Familiar immediately makes its inspirations known.
My Familar’s gameplay consists of timing-based attacks not unlike the games I’ve already invoked, which can be quite enjoyable but is also very…well, familiar, meaning that its strongest pull was the presentation and story. While it’s entirely too early to tell how it’ll pan out, I did appreciate a number of things about both. Firstly, the battle UI is largely graffiti set against brickface walls that wouldn’t look out of place in the TMNT TV series I grew up on, which imbues it with a wholly unique nostalgia I can actually relate to. Secondly, I liked its brash writing and intentionally decrepit feel. Wish City is thoroughly unclean, and that seems to extend to its people and institutions. The game doesn’t outright say ACAB, but the early introduction to the police doesn’t paint them in a great light, and your first party member is an alcoholic private eye who could give Harry Dubois (of Disco Elysium) a run for his money.
The developers see My Familiar as the beginning of a story they’re invested in telling, sharing that they intend to release DLC episodes for free that would effectively double the game’s content and function as a sort of sequel to the main release. A lengthy demo is available right now, and the game is slated for release in Q4 2025. — Moises Taveras
