Cricket: Jae’s Really Peculiar Game balances heavy themes with childlike whimsy

Childhood carries with it a certain duality. No doubt many of us as children had wacky, carefree fantasies like going to the moon on a toy rocket ship or using a snot-covered rock to sneak into a secret base run by sentient flowers.

At the same time, children aren't shielded from the uglier aspects of life like loss, abandonment, neglect, or racism, sometimes having to experience the worst the world has to offer head-on.

Cricket: Jae’s Really Peculiar Game features everything mentioned above and more. Inspired by genre greats like Earthbound, it’s a contemporary RPG starring Jae, a boy on an epic quest to Yimmelia, a fabled land on the moon said to grant any wish, in the hopes of bringing back his mother who recently died of cancer. Along with five other children with their own dreams on the line, they’ll fight malicious hot sauce mascots, overzealous cosplayers, and sentient sock puppets in turn-based combat.

However, their biggest struggles are internal, whether it be jokester Symphony’s difficulty fostering meaningful friendships with others or the hotheaded Zack’s desire to win a boxing tournament so that his long-lost father will notice him. It’s wacky, childish hijinks and somber feelings in equal measure.

Initially, Studio Kumiho founder Jimmy Spencer was just dabbling with the game’s engine to keep his skills sharp. “I didn't have high ambitions to have it, you know, do things,” he says. “It was just something I was doing in my spare time after work and school.” Before long, he realized the engine was robust enough to support a full-on game, and he knew just what kind he wanted to make.

“My great-grandmother died right before I turned nine,” he explains. “She was the one who raised me up to that point, so I wanted to make something to honor her and pass on the message to kids who have lost someone important in their lives that, with the right friends who support and love you, you can get through anything. It’s a story about loss, loneliness, and friendship, three important aspects of my life growing up.”

Spencer settled on making an RPG, a genre that lends itself to character-driven stories. Cricket was originally more of a traditional fantasy inspired by Spencer’s love of Dragon Quest. However, his thinking shifted after playing the classic RPG Earthbound. “I was like, this would work better for my writing style, using humor as a vehicle to deliver real, sometimes punchy messages,” he says. “It can be disarming, and I felt like that contemporary setting fit the scenario better, made it a bit more digestible, more in our wheelhouse.”

Combat in Cricket is turn-based, utilizing the timed-hits system popularized by games like Super Mario RPG. By timing button presses correctly, the characters dole out additional damage when attacking or reduce damage taken when defending. Three children fight at a time, and depending on the groupings, a wide variety of crazy combo attacks can be unleashed. Zack and Symphony, for example, can spin around in a tornado of youthful energy, whereas pairing Zack and Twila enables him to use her elemental watermelons as fiery boxing gloves. Experimenting with different combinations can yield all sorts of unexpected results.

A core component of Cricket’s gameplay is interactivity, something Spencer feels that even his favorite RPGs like Dragon Quest lack. “One of the big beefs I had with the series for a long time was that they were so rigid in their approach to what a JRPG was,” he says. “It's like, walk on the overworld, random encounter, fight the thing… very little interactivity in the overworld. You could pick up a barrel and drop it, and that was it. I wanted to create something more interactive.”

Indeed, there’s a certain fluidity to Cricket that is not often seen in similar games. Jae can pick up and throw objects not just onto the ground or at enemies but at NPCs as well. Players can also walk away from NPCs while they’re speaking, eliciting an annoyed response. Such fluidity comes at a price: Annoy people enough, and the enemies will be granted a temporary power-up, making them harder to beat in battle but with better rewards. 

Part of Cricket’s appeal is its cast's believability; the kids talk, act, and react to situations like actual kids. “I was having to go back and really channel my younger self,” says Spencer, “having to remember key moments of my life and how I reacted to something similar, or how my brother or my sister reacted to something. The dynamic of Jae, Zack, and Symphony—that's myself, my brother, and my sister. Writing has to come from a real place.”

Of course, when the game’s title calls it Cricket: Jae’s Really Peculiar Game, it’s not exaggerating. There’s no shortage of silliness to be had, whether it’s smacking a giant muscular flower with a rake or crashing a fandom convention to win a rare figurine for a malicious college dean who terrorizes students with oversized shadow puppets. When crafting the narrative, one wacky idea would often snowball into another. Spencer brings up the aforementioned sock puppet enemies: “We just thought the idea of a sock puppet chewing on somebody to be funny. So, we were like, oh, that can be an attack. Then a punch came naturally out of that. You’d come up with a bunch of funny ideas, then battle designer Dean Hulse, co-writer Kiri Schwedler, and I would go through what had been suggested and go, ‘What narratively can make sense? How do we even make sock puppets make sense?’ It's not hard to come up with jokes in the moment but make sure that you actually write them to the game.”

Though the game’s core cast is made up of children, it doesn’t shy away from unpleasant situations and the complex, often uncomfortable feelings that can result. “I wanted to write from a very honest place about having lost a loved one and discussing those emotions,” says Spencer, “like the part where Jae drowns in his dream. That’s what it felt like when I lost my great-grandmother, like the world was closing in on me. I felt alone, like I was suffocating. I wanted to communicate that to people. I feel like anyone who's been through this will see that.”

Another example is Twila, a member of the group who is half-human, half-Demi (a race of elf-like creatures), who faces discrimination for being part of two different races, yet she’s accepted by neither. Her struggles reflect Spencer’s own from growing up half-Korean. “Where I'm from, we were the only Korean people in town,” he recalls. “That was something I went through a lot as a kid. No matter what group I went into, I was the outlier. I felt like this is something that needs to be talked about, and with Gen Alpha and Gen Z being more mixed race than previous generations, I think that's a message that's more important than ever for kids to become comfortable in their identity.”

With such vividly contrasting elements at play, striking a balance between the humorous and heavy is no easy task. Spencer’s solution? “I think it’s just feeling it out with the pacing and making sure you don't dwell on anything too long,” he says. “It was a lot of play testing, a lot of reading the scripts, playing the game, and making sure I didn't ever hit that point where it's like, yeah, I get it, move on already.”

One technique Spencer and crew used is a Japanese concept called "ma", wherein the narrative is given moments to breathe and let the viewers process previous events. For example, nestled between two particularly heavy scenes toward the end of the game is a vast, open area devoid of enemies, granting the characters—and players—a brief reprieve to peacefully wander around and decompress before the climax.

Spencer admits that Cricket wasn’t necessarily designed for mass market appeal, and he’s content with that. “One person said, ‘If you've been through any sort of loss like I have, then you will really enjoy Cricket. I know I'm better off having played it,’” Spencer says. “In that vein, I consider the game a success. It did what I wanted it to do. Mission accomplished.”

Of course, relatability is just one of many of the game’s aspects Spencer hopes gamers find appealing. “If you like games that have emotional stories that might make you cry and laugh, if you like JRPGs but want something a little quirky and different, focused on keeping things fun and engaging, if you think JRPGs overstay their welcome [and] you want a game that doesn’t waste your time,” he says, “Cricket is that game.”

Cricket: Jae’s Really Peculiar Game is out now on Epic Games Store.