User reviews

My oldest daughter has been attending a film festival in Philadelphia and she phoned me with a list of films she recommends I see for myself. One of these is "Rpg Okc"--a highly creative and unusual short animated film.

The story is told using 8-bit style graphics. Both characters look like they were generated for an old Nintendo-style game system. A knight is corresponding with an online friend. She is a cat (though I sure thought she looked like a mouse--the film said cat). However, such things are NOT insurmountable in the computer world. Eventually the two decide to meet--a task not as easy as it sounds.

While I was NOT as captivated by this film as my daughter was, I was wowed by its style. Because of this, I hope to see more stuff from Emily Carmichael. Worth seeing.

Although I was never a massive fan of role-playing games (apart from what my hundreds of hours in Skyrim would suggest), I do fondly remember the Zelda games and things like Faxanadu from the NES 8-bit days and I have enough familiarity with them to instantly love this short film. Set in two different worlds of 8bit RPGs, the plot sees an online relationship growing into something with potential – although of course events in both their worlds are conspiring against them – even though he is a soldier and she is fair.

Although the convincing and affectionate animation is much to write about, it would really just be a reference point to better things if it were not for the content of the short. The dialogue is funny and engaging throughout, with good jobs with work well in the context of the setting. On top of this the world does play out like a convincing RPG world – for example with the soldier describing his day (guard duty) and other aspects making me chuckle. It delivers nicely as a plot and is added to immensely but how well Carmichael knows this video game world and understands its little quirks and the like. The animation compliments this greatly because it looks for all the world like one of these games – right down to the speech boxes and the way the characters move and of course the way the story behind their relationship unfolds.

Maybe it would not work as well for you if you do not know much about the gaming period and genre being referenced, but I suspect there is more than enough here so that it will work for the majority of viewers. I found it very clever, very funny and very well animated – well worth a look.