moon: Remix RPG Adventure: its lineage, descendants, and standing in Japan
01What this origin is
moon: Remix RPG Adventure, released in Japan in 1997 by Love-de-Lic and remastered by its original creators as an Onion Games release, names itself 'the anti-RPG' on its own Steam listing: a boy falls into a world where a mighty hero is slaughtering animals for experience, and instead of fighting alongside that hero, the player levels up by saving the souls of the animals he kills and gathering the love left behind. It is the origin of the lineage of Japanese RPGs that find their real substance in refusing the genre's own default violence, in paying attention to the lives a traditional hero would simply mow through.
02Sources
03Buried gems that carry this root
Dig Night Buried gem
Per Steam's own listing, this is a dark comedy RPG made in RPG Maker VXAce: in a society where a body-splitting disease nicknamed 'Ghosting' has become an everyday occurrence, Ricardo, a washed-up temp worker, takes a part-time job as a ghost cleaner, scraping ghost flesh off the streets for daily pay, solving puzzles and diving into each ghost's inner world to uncover its past along the way. Steam reviewers independently describe it as sharing a mood and system with OMORI and LISA while being 'completely different,' and repeatedly note the specific, lived-in detail of Ricardo's world, a run-down cigarette-smoking, movie-theater-visiting, arcade-haunting middle-aged man rather than a hero. Developer and publisher are both credited simply as INUSHIT, and Steam's own developer search turns up only this one title, nothing else. Released December 19, 2024, it is Very Positive at 99 percent across 110 reviews (109 positive, 1 negative), a paid title at $3.99, not free, fully launched and not in Early Access, with no AI-generated-content disclosure and Steam's content descriptors completely empty. Japanese, English, and Simplified Chinese are all supported, so nothing is stopping you. Of those 110 reviews, 68 are in Japanese against just 40 combined across every other language, and no Western outlet, AUTOMATON WEST included, has written about it yet; the only hits online are the developer's own social posts and aggregator listings.
Ichima-san Buried gem
Per Steam's own listing, this is a stealth action-adventure where you've had your human body stolen and been turned into an Ichimatsu doll, exploring a traditional Japanese house to get it back: you must not be seen by the living, freezing into a doll's stillness when someone draws near, and while you cannot fight back directly, items you find can trigger poltergeist phenomena to stun or lure people away instead. The developer's own store text states the game exists because Ichimatsu dolls, originally toys girls loved, have come to be typecast as a scary motif, and this is meant as a return to their actual cuteness. Developer and publisher are both credited simply as sewohayami; Steam's own developer search turns up 6 titles under this name, small self-published and small-publisher work throughout, not a single-title solo debut but nothing tied to a large or Western-facing publisher either. Released August 8, 2024, it is Very Positive at 100 percent across 70 reviews (70 positive, 0 negative), a paid title at $10.99, not free, fully launched and not in Early Access, with no AI-generated-content disclosure and Steam's content descriptors completely empty. One honest note: a Nintendo Switch port exists (through Waku Waku Games, a general indie label rather than a large publisher), and the game was an official selection at Kyoto's BitSummit Drift, so this one has a bit more real-world exposure than most finds here, even though its Western reach on Steam specifically stays thin: of 70 reviews, 52 are in Japanese against 18 combined across every other language, and no Western outlet, AUTOMATON WEST included, has covered it, only two brief news blurbs on 4Gamer announcing the Switch release.