Virtual Villagers 6: Dark Rebellion

Hello. My name is Ryan, and I want to tell a story about what happened between me and a game that was made in honor of an anniversary. This game, known as Virtual Villagers, was a simulation game made by Last Day of Work, released back in 2006. I played that a lot as a kid, including the 4 sequels so far. You know, the one with the masks, which would be New Believers for example? That was the stuff. I was their number one fan at Last Day of Work Forums and their fansite, I was "FalconKing88" there, where I would post fanart, comedy, screenshots, and all that cool stuff? Anyways, let's move on to my story, because I think that's enough of my introduction.

Now, this story I'm going to tell you right now, was a present by a friend named David. He, for my birthday in 2016 presented me with a game that came in a Blu-ray disc called "Virtual Villagers Anniversary". On the box, it was the logo in gold, alongside the text reading "Anniversary" below. Simple as that, I looked at the back of the cover, and it even talked about celebrating the 10th anniversary of the game's success!

Ever since 2010, I have been always waiting for a Virtual Villagers 6. The last Virtual Villagers game Last Day of Work has ever made was back in 2012, as Virtual Villagers Origins, which was a remake of the first game; A New Home. So, I wanted to find out what he did for the anniversary, so I loaded the Blu-ray disc onto my Razer Blade. That plastic-comfort feeling when you hold the disc felt much more better than how DVD and HD DVD was made. You know, HD DVD, that competitor that tried to stand up against Blu-ray, but lacked in terms of power and faded away? The Razer Blade had successfully read the Blu-ray disc, so I got my usual experience with it, the installer with the golden Virtual Villagers logo, and the ability to choose any of the 5 episodes to play. Unexpectedly, there was a mysterious tiny button when I looked closely behind the golden logo. Interestingly, I clicked it, and I got a message that said;

"Welcome to Virtual Villagers 6: Dark Rebellion installer"

As usual, the logo for this was the exact same style as 4: The Tree of Life and 5: New Believers, that 3D revolving position? It felt like it was something new. This time, the logo for this was purple, compared to yellow in New Believers and Green in Tree of Life. Anyways, I started up the installation, simple as that. After all that, the installer was done and I went forth to start up the game.

The game started up with the Last Day of Work logo CGI, and the loading screen with a hint on the lower part of the screen. Interestingly, this game managed to fit the 16:9 aspect ratio, which the older games ran by 4:3 aspect ratio because 16:9 wasn't that common in the past. Normally it would've caused black bars on my laptop if it was 4:3, but this game had no problem with it adapting to 16:9 aspect ratio. Going into the main menu, it had a CG menu art that represented a goddess that held balances on scales. You see, in New Believers, you had god powers and you were aiming to make your tribe believe in you from the heathens with the masks that were against you. I checked the settings. You could set it from 2x speed to pause, set sound and music, or even change the resolution. It was at 1920x1080 for me, all was good for me.

I started up a new game, as I expected the narrator from the previous games to voice it out. As I started it up, I got an HD CG of the island Isola, which was where the games took place, and a female narration that said;

"There once was a island called Isola, a island full of mysteries."

As I expected, the voice sounded the same as the previous games! You know, the Carla Humphrey narrator? I went forth to continue the story, and see what was going on. A CG that represented a tribe with discarded masks from the previous game, and more narration came in;

"After freeing the new believers from power, the tribes have decided to bow for their own needs, and felt that they would live on for prosperity."

This told about what was going on with the people at Isola. This likely took place immediately after New Believers, where you would free heathens with masks that oppose with you. Moving on again, another CG represented that it is power that everyone wants, which would cause a rebellion over Isola.

"But then, the believers felt that they wanted the power to represent others in need. They wanted to reform the tribes' powers and master out for the heir of Isola."

This told that the believers revolted and wanted to reform the tribes for building off their own land. You see, Virtual Villagers always revolved around a group of people ending up in Isola. I went on to the next CG to see what they would do.

"In order to battle against the reformation, the tribe has to stand up for what they believe for, and hold off their powers to avoid being part of the reformation. Would you like HELP getting started?"

As I was an expert at this game, I clicked on "No" for the tutorial and I started off the game. As usual, after that I got to choose my group of 5 villagers. I chose 1 woman with a baby, 3 adults who had good skills such as science, farming, and devoting, and a child, allegedly children in those games are faster than adults. I was on my way now and I got myself into the gameplay;

"Welcome to Virtual Villagers: Dark Rebellion! Having been fought over in a reformation, the villagers have to do what it takes to understand each other's faith and represent kindness to everyone. In order to protect themselves, they have to fight against the rebellion against them."

As usual, each of these games told an intro exposition of what is going on. This area I was in, was completely similar to the environment from A New Home. You know, that long house nicknamed the school, and that cave that was blocked by a boulder? Quite a throwback if you ask me.

What was new in this game is that that the menu is grouped into icons to make it more compact and more smoother. The population, tech points, and food totals could now be hidden and unhidden via the mouse. You were also capable of hiding the menu if you want if you want to take a screenshot of the game.

Alright, so where are we going. I checked the puzzles, and now we have 25 puzzles. Puzzles are those main missions and accomplishments you had to do in the game in order to progress further in the story, and there were those collectibles that appear randomly on the location and could be picked up.

As usual, you could drag your villagers around to do work starting around research, building housing, or harvesting food. What was new in this game is that there's a faith meter, and once that meter enters good or bad, they can rebel against you or always support you. Normally this was also a feature in New Believers on whether or not they give you energy for your powers or something like that, but that is not the case here because we don't have an energy gauge in this game. I went forth to send my farmer villager to harvest for some food at the berry bush. What I noticed after the villager failed and shook his head; his faith meter went down, and sometimes if he were to succeed, his faith meter went up! I didn't have any god powers such as butterflies or lightning from New Believers either.

I started out progressing as normal, all was good for a while, except I checked all of my villagers, and one of the villagers, which was the scientist, was low on the faith meter. I called my devotee, who was trained quite good, and was soon entering the adapt level. He only raised his faith level by a bit though, but I hoped it would work. Back in New Believers, you could only take off masked heathens using a devotee, and that relied on a cooldown so you couldn't just run around taking everyone's masks off.

I managed to clear some of the puzzles, such as the writings and the clues of the heathens. Things were going straight until I realized that the faith meter was often times schizophrenic, like there were times where the villager was successful, it only went up but there were more times if the villager was unsuccessful, it often times went down, and that meant bad news to me if that went down because I knew they would turn against me and I would lose complete control over them. Eventually, I messed up by doing the wrong moves and this happened; everything froze, the game faded out to black, the music stopped, and a few seconds later, I was granted a CG with a bunch of people in heathen masks and red eyes, and another message;

"Your tribe has rebelled against you and your motives have surrendered. May the fate of Isola remind corrupted by them..."

Notably, there was no female narrator for this message. After that, below the message indicated "Bad Ending". Interestingly, this is the first time I've ever seen an bad ending to this game series. Usually, if your tribe died by either by starvation or by your own powers, it was game over and you could not progress, which meant you had to start over. I was taken back to the main menu screen, which meant the only thing I could do is start over. I closed the game and tried the other 5 games that came onto the Blu-ray disc. They were all good, refined in high-definition 16:9 with better graphics and remastered gameplay, kind of what you would expect in the 2012 mobile remake called Origins, which was based on a New Home if you've forgotten. I never even told anyone or even the forums about this known game, because I am pretty sure that this is a fan game representing what if human nature revolted in these games. The installer also had the instructional manuals that told how to play the games. They were all colorful, detailed, pleasant, not too long or vague, but at the credits in the end I saw that there were a few off-track words on the lower right corner. On New Home's manual it said "it is important", I looked at the combined words from each of the games' introduction manuals, they all spelled out;

"It is important to be able to represent kindness to each other. If people are not able to represent kindness, it's going to be unpleasant for human nature." Back when I played New Believers, David always wondered on the concept of "what if they were to turn on you for being a ill god", and Virtual Villagers 6, I realized was a concept that talked about revolting against you, which was a idea that David had in mind for the concept of being a leader to a bunch of people that ended up on somewhere with no clue of even what to do.