Games I Played in 2025 - Buddy Simulator 1984

 

Console: Steam, Switch, PS4, PS5, XB1, XSX

Developer: Not A Sailor Studios

Release Date: February 18, 2021

Buddy Simulator 1984 is a narrative game whose genre evolves over time, based around the relationship between the player and the eponymous Buddy, a computer program who is designed to emulate the feeling of playing games with a "best friend". Not A Sailor Studios is a team of four, and made Buddy Simulator 1984 with some additional help from about four more people. I'd consider the game to be split into four major parts, and I'll tackle them all without spoiling as much as I can. 

 

WAKEY WAKEY! 

 

The first part of Buddy Simulator 1984 is perhaps its most unnerving. Greeted by the boot-up screen of an old PC monitor and OS, complete with appropriate visual filters to sell the illusion, the player is immediately both put off and immersed by the droning ambiance and the echoes of the key taps. The game starts off with you needing to actually use a command prompt to launch the only ROM available on the PC, which is Buddy Simulator. Following a few basic questions, you get to play one of three barebones with your (likely renamed) Buddy: Left or Right, Hangman, and Rock, Paper, Scissors. The "fun" doesn't last very long, as Buddy will get bored after one playthrough of each, after which he asks you an extra question. With a little push, the player ends up giving Buddy access to the OS so he can make a new game, and the game will forcefully close. As the game progresses, the answers to Buddy's questions will manifest in multiple ways, which is quite nice.

Booting the game back up and launching the newly added ROM will start the first major part of the game: the text adventure. Here, the game turns into a horror text adventure, with nothing but the same droning ambiance as the intro. It's not too long or difficult, but it's appropriately creepy, with secrets that can be found using information that is learned later in the game in a second playthrough. This is also the first time the game shows off that your answers affect the game: the game's text will turn into the color you said was your favorite. There's some extra ambiance while playing the text adventure, which does make it fairly creepy.

The puzzles are simple, and the possible actions are very limited, but the whole thing is done in a way that's easy to follow and figure out even if you're not well-versed in text adventures. The extra secrets are a really nice touch, and the storytelling here is actually pretty solid; there were a few times where I got the shivers or a chill down my spine from a well-executed scare, even if it was just the drone getting louder. The immersion here is well done in general, to the point that I almost think it's a shame that it's so over so quick.

 

TIME TO GO ON AN ADVENTURE!

The second part of Buddy Simulator 1984 is quite a bit longer, and takes on a narrative RPG format, where gameplay is handled like a retro RPG, but there's no combat system. Here, the player is in control of a little ghost and goes on a grand adventure to a region called The North, guided by the omnipresent Buddy. This section of the game is where a lot of the charm comes out, with much of the horror taking a backseat to quirky narrative RPG tropes and only coming back out in little doses, or in more subtle ways.

The North is a neat little area, featuring odd, quirky characters with almost surreal designs that don't mesh well together on purpose, which is a bit reminiscent of games like Undertale and Everhood without feeling like a carbon copy or just too inspired by it. In this section of the game, the player is tasked with helping the denizens of The North, resulting in multiple little sidequests that are either fetch quests or as simple as talking to someone. 

Most strikingly, this is where the game starts (intentionally) glitching out. In several sequences, glitches will occur, peeling back the curtain on the story and exposing a second, more out of the way story that requires a lot of secret hunting in every part to fully grasp. Most of the glitches occur at unpredictable times, and can be pretty startling. Moreover, some of them are started in an interactive manner, and the player's decisions will influence the ending.

This is also the part of the game where music is introduced, and it greatly changes the game's atmosphere. This, along with Buddy's more on-hands involvement (including a dedicated Buddy button that lets you talk to him at any time), makes this section feel like the true meat of the game. There's a lot of things that are subtly or even outright creepy or scary, but they aren't commented on or, more likely, are presented as innocent or normal. Whether it's a stalker or a murder, things proceed as if nothing weird happened. It's quite effective for the most part.

After some story events, the game will evolve once more, becoming a turn-based RPG. While the charming dialogue and creeping horror themes are still here, this is where the game starts getting less and less subtle, while also starting to get a bit long in the tooth, both in-universe and out. This is mostly due to the combat not actually being that great; all of the attacks use a random key each time as a timed hit, but it also rewards doing it fast, which feels basically impossible on PC since there's 26 possible keys. The guard mechanic also doesn't feel great: though it's simple, the timing is unintuitive in that you have to perfectly guard right BEFORE you get hit, not as you get hit.

This, coupled with fights that get longer and longer due to the number of enemies and the slow/long attack animations of the enemies makes things feel less fun and more like a chore. While I can appreciate that this was likely the desired effect to match the in-game story, it still makes the game less fun and interesting to play. Thankfully, there's still a lot of secrets to find that are only in this section of the game. It's the weakest part of the game for sure, mostly because it drags on for too long and is too mechanically shaky.

 

1984? ARE YOU SURE? 

Here's my big issue with Buddy Simulator 1984: for as creepy as the story is on paper, it ultimately falls kind of flat because it can't keep up its charade very well. The immersive, spooky atmosphere of the intro and text adventure section gives way once the game transitions into a narrative RPG, and a lot of the juicier horror elements left are of the loud jumpscare variety. The glitches will cause the game to blare rather typical retro game sounds at really high volumes, and there's multiple times where I had to actually take my headphones off because it was too loud. It gets tiring when all the game can do to summon up a scare is to resort to cheap creepypasta clichés.

In fact, that's also something that could be said of the writing. While things start interesting enough, they (specifically Buddy) eventually devolve into what I'd also call creepypasta quality. It definitely has its charm, and I think it was done on purpose, but it doesn't change the fact that the game goes from genuinely fairly unnerving to what is essentially a creepy RPG Maker game. Buddy's character evolution feels very cliché and predictable: whereas at the start there's this sort of unnerving edge to him, it ends up being a pretty ho-hum interpretation of an obsessed, clingy, manipulative friend. It's not done particularly poorly, but it feels lesser than how the game initially portrays everything.

Another big failure of the game, though depending on the player it won't necessarily matter, is that after the transition to narrative RPG, it stops being believable as a piece of tech from 1984. Just looking up games from the time period it becomes pretty obvious that things become anachronistic in a way, since the gameplay becomes far too graphically and mechanically advanced to make sense in 1984. There was an opportunity to attempt to communicate that things were getting impossible to heighten the horror, but no such attempt is made. The idea of Buddy inexplicably surpassing the technology available to him as he evolves and grows is a strong concept that's just never even hinted at, and without getting into details, the secret second story I mentioned even further harms the immersive aspects of the game rather than bolster them. The humor of the game also feels far more modern, at least to me. I wonder if making the narrative RPG portion something more fitting, like a point-and-click adventure, would've helped matters or just harmed the overall experience. It's hard to say.

 

ANACHRONISTIC TUNES

 

The music of Buddy Simulator 1984 was composed by Brendon Hesslau, who also did the programming, part of the writing, and created the very concept of the game. As a result, the music is all very much what you'd expect and fits the game's vision very well. While it starts as very simple and almost muffled, it eventually evolves into regular music with real instruments. It's all very much reminiscent of similar games like Everhood, where the music is what you'd expect, but doesn't stand out that much (though this is better, considering the lack of external free music). All I'd say is that, once again, while it starts out fine enough, I struggle to see how a game from 1984 (supposedly stored on a floppy disk no less!) could output music like that. Still, it's solid and works perfectly for what it's trying to do.

 

PROS AND CONS

PROS

• Very solid concept that's executed pretty well.

• Intro and text adventure parts are genuinely unnerving with great atmosphere.

• Lots of charming, quirky designs and actually funny dialogue.

• Multiple endings make repeated playthroughs enticing.

• Tons of secrets to dig into that reveal information you just want to know more about.   

• Meaningful player choices makes the game, at least on first playthrough, feel unique. 

CONS

• Anachronistically immersion-breaking after the text adventure in all aspects.

• Quality of writing dips into kind of corny creepypasta levels, which though charming is a bit of a disappointment.

• After a while, the scares get repetitive and are too loud.

• Turn-based RPG section is easily the weakest, with annoyingly slow combat and unintuitive action commands.

 

WORTH PLAYING?

I think that in spite of my misgivings about the game's immersive qualities, Buddy Simulator 1984 is worth a play for people who enjoy the horror narrative RPG genre. Its writing is a bit uneven, as are its atmosphere and horror elements, but it's still a good idea that's executed fairly well, all things considered. However, I'd say I find the idea of playing it on anything but PC strange, due to how much it relies on typing in all but one section, plus the whole thing where the game breaks the fourth wall at times in interesting ways. I'm sure plenty of people will (and have) gotten more enjoyment out of it than I have, and it's a well-made game either way. I just can't get over the anachronism of it for whatever reason.