Iji

By: Derek Yu

On: September 2nd, 2008

Daniel Remar’s Iji is undoubtedly his most ambitious game. It’s also his best by far. No small feat from the guy who brought us Castle of Elite!

In the game you play the titular heroine – a human-turned-cyborg equipped with alien nanotechnology. Waking in a space station in the midst of an alien invasion, she must use her new-found powers to save what’s left of mankind. Somewhere else in the station is her brother, Dan, who guides her via the speaker system.

Iji is broken up into a number of very large sectors, most of which have multiple paths. Depending on what weapons and upgrades you have, you can brute force your way through each sector, or take a more pacifist approach by sneaking around and cracking systems (via a simple minigame). Or anything in between! These choices have the potential to alter the game’s narrative and affect new outcomes.

Combat is visceral and feels good, especially with the game’s excellent soundtrack pumped up. Once again, you have a variety of attacks at your disposal – you can, of course, take on enemies head-on, blasting them with your Nanogun or kicking them to death (if your Strength stat is high enough). Alternately, you can crack an opponent’s defense systems and sabotage their weapons, or perhaps defeat them in other, even less direct ways.

Overall, I’m just really impressed with how much there is to do in this game, and how much choice the player has in each situation. It’s a testament to Daniel’s strength as a designer that very little of it feels forced. And considering that there are also four different difficulty levels and a wealth of unlockable bonus features (some hidden in remote areas of the game), you can bet that you’ll be (happily) spending some quality time with this one. It’s destined to be a classic of some sort.

TIGdb: Entry for Iji

Posted in Freeware, Highly Recommended, Platformers, Windows | Tags: DanielRemar

WNF

How do you get to the blast door in Sector X on the way to the poster? I got past the low ceiling, past the window, and am stuck on getting past the gap.
Pnx

Comment 100!

So for some weird reason I’ve managed to kill the tasen girlfriend this time round…. Even though I have killed nobody except bosses according to statistics…
Maybe she got blown up by one of the other tasen along the way and I just didn’t realise it.
Anyway I’ve still yet to figure out how you don’t kill any of those bosses.

Also I just figured out that all three of those tasen that may or may not have escaped were female… Good luck with the survival of the tasen species girls, maybe there’s some kind of technological… Yeah that makes more sense.
Valkyrie

@ WNF: If you look at your map, you’ll see that that shaft above you runs all the way to the tunnel leading outside. If you go through that tunnel and head towards that shaft, you’ll see that the way is blocked by crates. Look past the crates.
Ultim8p00

300+ kills: One Woman Army
400+ damage: Hopeless

Lol, I played this game like a tank. So awesome. The last boss was amazing! He saved the best for the last.
Lorne

Who doesn’t play that way they’re first play through, Ultim8? ;P

Pnx: Maybe all Tasen are girl? At the very least there’s lesbianism goin’ on.
shockedfrog

Second Asha on Ultimortal = pain. Twice. Anyone completed it yet?
Nic

I could barely beat her even on Extreme; does she get harder beyond lack of health refills?
shockedfrog

Doesn’t become tougher as such, afaik, but on Extreme I also had the luxury of having Attack maxed out, and could have had the Buster Gun if I hadn’t been rushing through.
Bubbinska

Just beat it again, this time going for as few kills as possible. Ended up with 25 or so, mostly because I killed guys in my efforts to get the supercharges.

Still can’t get the poster from Sector 9, but I’ve got all the ribbons. Also, last boss + charged mode = crazy. On normal difficulty the only reason I survived was because I had maxed out Assimilate and health.
Pnx

I beat the game with 2 kills, that was fun, you can bypass Asha if you have the right weapon.

Now I’ve seen 3 of the endings.
Ultim8p00

I hadn’t even maxed my health (lvl8) or my assimilate (lvl2) and I found the last boss to be a cakewalk. I never shot him even once. I just reflected his stuff back to him and focused on dodging all his attacks.
LLCoolDave

Yeah, beating Asha on Ultimortal looks almost impossible. For most of his attacks you have time to either shoot OR dodge and through all of this you even got a time limit ticking down on you. Attack 1 Shotgun doesn’t seem to deal any notable damage, too.

I’m having some issues with the posters, too. For Sector 4 I figured out how to get to it, the only thing left to do is to get up the shaft to the shreddars. I can bring one down from the top but that doesn’t seem to help. I’ve tried kicking a Commander to the bottom levels so he can grab me and throw me up but that seems kind of too complicated to be the solution.

For Sector 6 I can’t seem to blow up the left crates blocking me from jumping up without destroying the ones to the right I still need. I thought the Nuke was the way to go but even standing at the far left I still destroy both sets.

For Sector 9 I can’t seem to figure out how to get accross to the other side. Neither Rockets nor the Nuke offer enough knockback. I guess I’ll have to get hit by the Assassin in midair somehow?
Oddity

Note that one weapon can shoot through walls, and one weapon can send you flying even farther than rockets can. Also, given a slope and enough speed, Shredders can get airborne, and you can still jump off while in the air.
Pretzelking

@GeneralValter: What does the Scrambler do?
Chuck Norris

This game is great! I just did a quick play through being super aggressive and killing anything that moved. I need to go back and try stealth and look for all the secret stuff.
http://koigames.com/ Koi Games

One of the best indie games!
popopopo

So there’s only two of us that can’t play the game because of our graphics card? : (
Magallanes

Pretty impressible.

There are a eastern eggs: in one stage there are many computers (5-8), one of them is defective (may be the first defective console that you can find it), just follow the mission and later turn back and try it again. I don’t want to spoil but think in a 3d perspective on it, in the background there are a “lighthouse”, just keep hidden from the light.

One of the best things about this game is the PERSISTENT WORLD, i hate those games where you must kill a unlimited number of enemies x level.
Pnx

Ok I completed the game on Ultimortal, wasn’t bad, turbomode just makes the game go really fast. Asha was a lot of fun to fight on Ultimortal, not actually much harder than on extreme but I did have to use the respawn this time. It kinda feels like how it should feel to fight a the galaxy’s best teleporting assassin.

But one thing, I’m seeing three features I haven’t unlocked in the records, but I see only two that I haven’t in the extras, does that mean there’s an extra feature I haven’t unlocked? I haven’t beaten the game with nanomaster or immortal ranking but that seemed a little dumb.
Pnx

Alright so I also tried fighting the general when he’s charged up… INSANELY HARD!!! I don’t think I could beat him easily and it seems to heavily depend on luck, I could beat him as long as he didn’t put me into too many situations I couldn’t escape from, but it seems to happen frequently.
shockedfrog

Pnx – the Scrambler counts as a feature for the Records page total.
Nic

It felt kinda disappointing that beyond your stat limitations, the battle with maximum charge Tor doesn’t change between difficulty levels :/
Melly

Sector Z is le creepy!
Ultim8p00

Just beat Ultimortal. OUCH. Damn that was frustrating. Then again, I do play Ninja Gaiden 2 religiously so I’ve been trained in the art of self-restraint. Asha wasn’t that bad. Still a pretty tough fight though.

Also, I just now noticed it, but the music in this game kicks some serious bass.
The WatGob

Ah this game is amazing! Very interesting, although I have quite some points of failure in this game.

Well, with the trapmine, I used it near the elevator and didn’t use it before Asha threatens Dan… meaning I get the… ‘Bad’ ending I guess.

Honestly, I didn’t realize that, I thought that Dan getting killed was the only ending… until I realized that on my second, more ‘Pacifist’ Play through.

Good game, although Pacifist Play through was… ended in the 10 kill range, which… isn’t pacifist, but Hero 3D, interesting but I probably don’t have the patience to do it.
Jamiri

What other weapon than the shotgun/buster gun does damage to Asha?

And how can you completely avoid him? Someone above mentioned that given the right weapon you can bypass the battle against him.
Nyerguds

“waking up in a space station”? Huh? Besides a small trip into a Komato cruiser, the whole thing plays in a military complex on Earth.