Lord, can you believe it? The ruin is already 35 years old! It came out before I was born, but even I feel the passage of time. In connection with such a significant event, we present a special edition of the legendary book dedicated to the 35th anniversary. RPG was released by its developer, Official Electric, and was split into just four floppy disks… except, as you've probably already noticed, Ruin isn't exactly real. At least not in the form in which it was presented.
The actual game in question here is Ruin: Chapter 0, an interactive fantasy game designed in the style of something you might have seen on the ZX Spectrum, albeit with much more flair. And perhaps many more glitches – this requires a large flashing image. In Ruin, when playing in the browser, it's hard to describe what you're doing or even what you're doing in Ruin. As far as I can tell, you are a knight, a hero of the runes, tasked by the king to retrieve the sword and defeat evil forever. But no matter what, this evil keeps kicking my ass, and every time I die, it just tells me, “Get a grip!” Rude!
And then the game becomes something else… a sci-fi game on different planets where you run through the forest, clicking on apples at the right moment as they come towards you, and where you make pit stops for smoke breaks. In those moments when you take the devil's wands out of their luxurious boxes, you have to actually do it: take them out, flick the lighter to light it, pull it to your lips. In some ways it's such a strange game, and in some ways it's hands-off.
It switches between a typical RPG screenplay, a first-person adventure game, and, frankly, an animated movie of sorts. There's something inscrutable about it that makes me want to take it apart, uncover its secrets, dive deep into Wikipedia, and then watch some “Ruin EXPLAINED” videos on YouTube. And yet I won't find them, because Ruin is not the legendary IP celebrating its 35th anniversary as it claims. But it does a good job of helping you believe it.
You can watch Ruin: Chapter 0 at itch.io.
