Melon Journey 2
PC
Melon Journey 2’s standout marketing line is a phrase of such arcane power and influence that it has not left our brain since we first heard it during a recent Asobu showcase. “Travel to Hog Town, where melons are illegal”, we are told. Immediately we have several questions, all of them grammatically incorrect. Hog Town? Melons?
Illegal? We are going to have to book a ticket.
Joining us for the ride are Froach Club’s director, writer and artist Karolina Asadova (aka Minipete) and her co-writer Mario Russeau, who also handles programming and composition. And they’ve been on this train for a while, now: eight years ago, they released the first Melon Journey, a short RPG Maker game inspired by Animal Crossing and
Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak. The goal was simple: to track down a lost friend in Hog Town, a place filled with hedgehogs, hamsters, cats and dogs. “At the time, we were eating a lot of melon candy,” Asadova recalls. “There was this one brand called ‘Melon In Love’, which is absolutely impossible to find now, but I swear it was the most delicious treat ever created. So of course we created a world where every living creature was just as obsessed with melons as we were.”
It was a week-long project, and the then18-year-old developers’ first game. “We threw so many things we loved and joked about in the game it feels like a time capsule of 2012,” Russeau says. Asadova adds: “At the time, neither me nor Mario ever imagined we would try to make a job out of game development. I don’t think we even realized that was an option back then.” They threw Melon Journey up on Dropbox, shared the link on Tumblr, and went about their days. “Somehow, it exploded. So many people played it and deeply connected with it. They’d send encouraging messages and fan art and beg us to make more games – it was really unexpected.” Still, few of us look back at our 18-year-old selves’ handiwork and feel especially proud. “It’s still kind of funny to me that we even decided to make this sequel in the first place,” Asadova says, “especially because for years after releasing Melon Journey, we were both pretty ashamed of its existence. We were embarrassed by the unpolished dialogue and art and superficial story.”
A sequel would be a chance to build out what is quite a special little world. We begin in Ham Town, at a shudder-inducingly accurate rendition of a corporate workplace (though here they make melon-flavoured products, not magazines). But soon enough Honeydew returns to Hog Town to search for her missing friend, Cantaloupe, this time with
Despite its cutesy stylings, there’s real depth and an odd familiarity to this place
the help of a mysterious, bumbling crime syndicate. Despite its cutesy stylings, there’s real depth and an odd familiarity to this place. A gorgeous café and plaza sits on the right side of town, but wander – and later, rollerskate – past Hog Mart and over to the left, and we see the run-down homes of the much less affluent residents (and a shady character cramming an illicit melony substance into their face in an alley). There’s an election van making the rounds, blaring out policy over a loudspeaker.
The inclusion of these heavier themes is no accident. “I think the main overarching theme would be the feeling you get as you age and start realising how complex and confusing the world around you really is,” Asadova says. “When Mario and I developed the first game, we were both only 18 years old and very naïve, so we created something that was genuine to us but very thematically simple. Now at age 26 we’re a bit wiser, and a bit more aware of our roles in society and how the United States operates. Our real-life world expanded, and so did the world of Melon Journey 2.” Indeed, while several one-liners have us laughing aloud, there’s a bittersweet nostalgia to the whole affair, a sense of seeing an old haunt and grown friends through fresh eyes. We leave knowing that we’ll return here in our head for a long time to come.