Behind The Scenes – LOL: Lack Of Love

Nishi’s main intention was to communicate the game’s themes without using text, a feature that was doubly important for those importing the game from outside Japan. This was achieved in two ways: to set the scene, Nishi directed a lengthy opening animation showing the robotic antagonist character searching for an inhabitable planet and then landing on the player’s home planet and marching several digging machines across the land in order to transform it. For the actual gameplay sections, Nishi needed to create several puzzles for the player to solve. Much like a point-and-click adventure, this all had to be communicated without dialogue. “It was not easy at all,” he says. “Without text or voice, the NPC creatures have to communicate by their movements, expressions or sounds. And Dreamcast’s graphic performance was not high enough to make them communicate by their facial expressions so we had to choose a sound-communication system. But the communication with sound alone is much more vague than language.”

Despite such difficulties, Lovedelic did a great job of constructing puzzles that force the player to observe their surroundings. One early example sees a group of tiny aliens desperately reaching up to feed on a fruit plant they can’t reach. Once you realise what they’re after, you can charge into the plants to knock the fruit down from the branches and the tiny creatures will reward you with their DNA.

Acquire enough genetic code and you can locate a safe spot to turn into an egg and re-hatch as a new creature, slightly bigger and with new powers. One evolutionary stage fits light-emitting antennae to the player’s head while an earlier mutation awards the ability to urinate at the touch of a button. “That was my idea,” beams Nishi. “Eating and excreting are a part of energy circulation, and making the creature urinate is essential to that process. Also I thought it was very cute.”

As the game progresses, the creature gradually morphs and mutates from a single-celled organism to a huge mammal resembling an anteater. Along the way it takes on many unusual forms as well as a few recognisable ones. A certain form in particular almost looks like a small black-and-white puppy, a lot like Tao the dog who appears in Moon, Chibi-Robo! and Captain Rainbow, and is based on Nishi’s real-life pet. “I did that on purpose,” he admits, “because I think Tao’s black-and-white colour is very simple and universal. I hope someday he will be popular enough to make merchandise of his character.”

Released on 2 November 2000, LOL: Lack Of Love emerged into the world to exactly the same response as all of Nishi’s other games before: a minority adored it while the mainstream ignored it. “LOL was enthusiastically supported by some fans, but the sales were not great,” remembers Nishi. “I think it was not one of those mainstream games that everybody likes.” LOL’s theme and setting certainly separate it from the bankable generic titles that clog up most of the top ten in any given year, which may explain why it was never picked up for a European or US release – a decision that concerns Nishi to this day.

That’s not to say that Lack Of Love had no effect on anyone. Those who did manage to play it found themselves moved by the game’s conservational message, particularly at the point when the player must consider denying the continued survival of the human race or the protection of its own planet’s inhabitants, represented in-game by a choice between a human baby and a friendly creature that follows the player through most of the adventure. Without spoiling the ending, we can’t say which of the two survives and which faces extinction, but the conclusion of the game is suitably powerful and one of the most emotional of the time. The message was not lost on the game-playing public. “One of the players emailed me and told me that he stopped killing mosquitoes after playing LOL,” recalls Nishi. “I was glad to know my game could affect someone’s life.”

Considering the effect Lack Of Love had on its small audience, we wonder how gamers would react to it now given the fact that games like Shadow Of The Colossus and Braid have legitimised the use of games as social metaphor. Such a re-release, we are told, would be tricky to greenlight since the rights are currently split between ASCII Entertainment and Ryuichi Sakamoto, but Nishi remains enthusiastic about the prospect. “If I have a chance, I would like to remake LOL for another console and release it again. I believe Lack Of Love would be accepted more widely now because we are more seriously dealing with climate change and global warming. I wish someone would show an interest in releasing it and give me a chance to create a remake.” Funnily enough, so do we.

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