Review copied from backloggd.com, rating 7/10.
A Trip to the Mall at Night is, on a technical level, a pretty rough experience. It's riddled with spelling errors, janky collision and even the occasional game-breaking bug. The art style, while visually striking, is indisputably simplistic and kinda ugly, to the extent that there were quite a few times I wasn't really sure what I was looking at. And the combat system, while perfectly functional and fine, really doesn't do too much to elevate itself above the default RPGMaker battle system it's clearly based upon. In the nicest possible way, this feels like a very amateurly made game at times, and it could definitely do with a fair bit more bug testing and polish. But if you can look past all that, this is one of the most heart-filled games I have played in recent times; every moment here is packed full of personality, the characters are some of the most lovable I've seen in gaming and, while this game takes some pretty clear influence from certain other games in the genre, it doesn't wallow in homage, and builds upon its inspirations to create something truly unique. This is exactly the kind of experience I want from small indie games, this is clearly the heart and soul of a single creator poured directly onto the screen and, even with its numerous rough edges, I'd take this any day over whatever hyper-polished-but-soulless guff that the major studios are putting out these days.
At it's core, Trip to the Mall is definitely a 'rylirk-bait', the term some friends of mine use to describe games I love such as Earthbound, Yume Nikki, Off and the many many games inspired by those three. This is probably my favourite genre of game; I love the quirky atmospheric worlds, the charming characters, the emotion-driven plots and the thick vibes that good examples of the genre pull off, and Trip to the Mall ticks all of those boxes fantastically well. I feel like OneShot and Omori are probably the biggest influences here, the former for its world design and the latter for its surrealism, but Trip to the Mall is definitively not a clone of either of those. The titular mall is a great and pretty unique setting, with a thick uncanny atmosphere helped by the consistently great music, and an unexpectedly diverse set of sublocations to explore which get surprisingly thematically dark. That's not to say this is a particularly bleak or heavy experience though; sure it has its moments, but for most of its runtime this game is much more charming and joyful than it is depressing, in a way which plays beautifully into its overall messaging, while never straying so far into absurdism that it loses its impact as in games like Hylics. I did find the section of the game before you enter the mall to be perhaps just a little grating; it felt like the game was trying a bit too hard to be quirky and random before it had really earned it, but the characters and their relationships develop beautifully once you enter the mall, and I love every single one of them. Once I got over that initial minor hurdle, I got so sucked into the world that I ended up playing most of it through in a single sitting... and at an ~11 hour runtime, this is definitely not a short game.
The plot is a highlight here for me too. It's absolutely full of twists and turns that I couldn't have predicted, there are plenty of satisfying character arcs, and the emotional highs and lows are both done very well indeed, helped by some consistently strong writing. The more bombastic moments and the overall grander picture of the plot are all pretty great, but my favourite elements of it are definitely its quieter moments and how character react to the world around them. I absolutely adore the 'camp' sections here; whenever you find a checkpoint (campfires in this game), your party all takes a moment to relax around the safe space in a manner reminiscent of Omori's picnic blankets. But here, your main character is free to walk around the room and interact with all the other members of the party. Not only do you get a great feeling of what each character likes to do with their spare time, but you can also talk to them to get their feelings on the plot so far and the location you're currently exploring, and it's such a fantastic way of fleshing out these deep and lovable characters in a way far more effective than the vast majority of JRPGs I've played. Like I said in the intro, I love all of the characters here (yes, even Raymond), to the extent that I was genuinely sad to say goodbye to them once the game was over. This isn't the first game to make me care this much about its characters, but it certainly gets to join a fairly distinguished little clique.
I do wonder if, overall, Trip to the Mall is a bit longer than it needs to be... although if it is, its not over by much, because its length gives great room for its characters to blossom. But there are definitely some chunky sections of this game which feel like padding. There's an extended Yume Nikki homage at one point which, while atmospheric, just doesn't really have the strong art you'd need to pull something like that off. And then there are sections like the planetarium where you just spend quite a lot of time crossing pretty empty environments with just a few more random encounters than I'd've liked. But for every one of these less interesting sections, there's a charming town, a harrowing forgotten place or a fun new character with a full story and sidequest to chase... and it's definitely a case of the good outweighing the bad when it comes to the structure and pacing.
I write a lot of reviews on Backloggd. I don't write them for attention; I write them because I like writing, and I like having a place to crystallize my thoughts on a game. But if I was able to choose a review to push to more people, it would definitely be this one, because I just wish more people knew about Trip to the Mall. At time of writing, I am the only person on the site to have even played this, let alone reviewed it, and this game deserves so much better than that. Yes it's technically rough, yes it's very janky and amateur in a lot of places, and my score does reflect this too. But in terms of sheer heart, soul and charm, this game is up there with the best. If you got anything out Undertale or OneShot or anything like that, then I'd urge you to give this a try. Perhaps the jankiness will be too much for you, or you won't be able to get over the ugliness of the art style no matter how deliberate it is, either would be totally understandable. But perhaps you'll get as much out of this as I did. And for how much love has clearly gone into making this, I think it deserves more people to give it a chance.
