Dokapon Kingdom

Dokapon Kingdom has all the trappings of a bad party game. Its characters are sparkly but shallow; the voice acting is retarded and unnecessary; its RPG-lite implementation of stats and levels is more inconvenient than helpful; and success is driven almost entirely by luck. Playing this game solo places just above stabbing myself on my list of Things I'd Enjoy Doing. Yet, there is one thing this game got right, and in a multiplayer setting it makes the game unexpectedly great.

You can fuck with your friends.

For all the things you can do in the game, the most ridiculous and unbalanced ones are abilities (or random events) you can target against other players. These range from the silly, like changing a player's name, to the game-breaking, like stealing a player's weapon (making him impotent in combat). The gameplay is basically misfortune-driven, so you'll have plenty of fun laughing at your opponents at the same time as you yourself get thrashed.

Last night, one of our players - who was dead last in any terms of ranking - randomly met a demon NPC who gave him an item called Contract. When he used it, he lost all his assets (which was not much), then turned into a fucking demon for two weeks of game time, gaining the ability to slaughter any of us instantly, throwing away our items or money. Needless to say, he loved it.

What's cool about this kind of destructive competition is that it's completely at odds with the game's light-hearted atmosphere. The whole affair comes across as utterly ludicrous. In other words, it's a great drinking activity.

Progress: Chapter 3