#oneaday Day 305: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

I think my favourite games to write about are those that people have, for one reason or another, made assumptions about and decided not to explore in further depth. I'm not just talking about fanservicey games that make people go "oh no, boobs", but also games that people choose not to engage with because they believe them to be "bad" or suchlike.

Gun Gun Pixies is shaping up to be one of those games. I recognise and understand completely why some people will bounce off this one, because it's a really, really odd hybrid of different genres and its most mechanics-centric aspects are probably its weakest sections… but goddamn if it isn't a fascinating piece of experimental nonsense.

I've long taken the belief that there are very few truly irredeemably bad games in the world. There are games that a lot of people don't "get", games that a lot of people don't enjoy… but for the most part, I like to take the approach that if something exists, someone out there who played a role in its creation is probably proud of it, and, moreover, there is someone else out there who bought it and is very happy with it. With that in mind, it always feels a bit disrespectful to call something "bad"; by extension, you're calling both the work of the person who was proud of the thing "bad", and the tastes of the person who bought it and enjoyed it "bad", too.

Gun Gun Pixies isn't bad. It's bold, it's creative, it has rough edges and there are definitely things it could do better. But I am really, really, really looking forward to picking this apart and writing about it, because it's a goddamn fascinating experiment. And I'm delighted that Shade and Compile Heart got a chance to make it in the first place… and that PQube took a chance in localising it and bringing it West.

Coming up in the next week will be the Senran Kagura Peach Ball writeup to finish off that Cover Game feature, then we'll be launching into a Shade double-bill with Gun Gun Pixies and Bullet Girls Phantasia. The games aren't related directly at all, but they do have the developer in common — and that developer has an interesting history. I can't wait to dive in.