Indie Rock: Space Cowboy Jam

Cowboy Bebop is highly recommended by unrepentant anime dorks like me, but almost in spite of its plot, pacing or dialogue. Much like Blade Runner before it Cowboy Bebop is an important footnote in our culture mostly because of the world building. A tale of interplanetary outlaws getting their just desserts felt fleshed out and authentic despite its fantastical elements.

It’s a near-future with technological advancements in medicine and space travel, but the issues of rampant inequality have only been exacerbated as humanity’s reach extends out into the galaxy. There’s still poverty, there’s still crime, and in between both there are bounty hunters trying to make a quick buck. There’s also a cute dog and a kickin’ soundtrack.

The Space Cowboy Jam was a recent effort over at itch.io to create fan-games of Cowboy Bebop. I’ll support any attempt to not only display an overwhelming appreciation for a cool thing people are way into, but taking that fandom into their own hands and not being restrained by foolish shit like “copyright” or whatever. Make your thing. Don’t let the man tell you otherwise. That’s the Cowboy Bebop way, I guess?

So. Here’s three games from the jam you should absolutely play:

Corgi Simulator 2071

Corgi Simulator is entirely FMV. It’s the story of a corgi onboard a spaceship trying to hack a computer but two d-bags are getting in their way. This is pretty much analogous to the events of the TV show, with the tribulations of the main characters distracting from the more important check-in with the aforementioned dog.. This corgi acts at your behest, performing tricks to get the attention of the humans and being cute as all goddamn heck and you just want to fluff them up and tell them they’re good. The dog barks! It goes to sleep! It has a little doggy snack! When you eventually get around to hacking the computer the dog taps the screen with their doggy paw! Aaaaaaaaaa! Dog!

You can play it here.

Expat

Brendon Chung’s put together a Far Cry 2-like systemic bounty hunting sim, where you take on outlaw collecting jobs, gather information about the target and try to hunt them down, dealing with the consequences of failure, making friends to try and aid you in the future and spending your take on medical bills and spaceship repairs.

It feels, despite being based on Cowboy Bebop, like it’s in the same universe as Flotilla. It’s got a lot of DNA shared with Brendan’s other games, the overhead perspective and sparse visual style reminding me a lot of the excellent Atom Zombie Smasher. Brendon’s talked before about how his games all exist in the same universe. Perhaps this is just the next branch of the long canonical Blendoverse. If so, where are the sentient toucans?

You can download it here.

Space Dad

Space Dad’s the least explicitly tied to the show. It’s a quick little glimpse at what a young girl hopes her father does when he’s not at home. He’s a trucker. She imagines that his life is, let’s say, some what more glamorous and exciting that it is likely to be. My favourite part is that, for some reason, there’s pokémon in here too. That’s the crossover I’ve been waiting my entire life to see.

You can play it here.