Tainted Art: Furi Demake - The Chain
In adapting *Furi*'s first boss fight from a 3D-action battle to a 2D one, Sylph and The Game Bakers trade its original philosophical focus, which explores whether ruthlessness is justice, for a simplified scenario that gets straight to the point of killing the main character's first captor. Killing him still entails engaging with hack-and-slash and bullet-hell phases of the fight, albeit this time around they flow together smoothly, rather than cleanly splitting into separate segments. This increased dynamism comes at the cost of visual clarity and responsiveness no longer having a consistent presence, causing mental fatigue and unfair in-game damage, respectively. *Furi Demake - The Chain* would be a passionate, decent reimagining of the opening from a favorite piece of art of mine if that were the end of its problems. Sadly, it's not.
The Game Bakers, who are also the publishers of this game, announced on 05/07 of this year that *Furi Demake - The Chain* would become a paid title after being free since 11/30/2023. They stated that this decision was made to increase its then-limited discoverability as a free title, gauge the amount of interest in it, and then, hopefully, help Sylph develop more boss battles*. I sympathize with a small studio wanting to bring attention to their game in a way that skirts Steam's crappy policies. Nonetheless, making it a priced title after so long is an uncharacteristically capitalistic choice when taking into account that its predecessor had, for example, a piece of paid DLC called *One More Fight* that was eventually made free for all players. *The Chain* could have been managed just as fairly by being made into a demo for a paid version of *Furi Demake*. Instead, it's now a tainted adaptation of a more reputable experience's introduction.
*The Game Bakers' announcement regarding *Furi Demake - The Chain*'s change in price can be found on Steam, an announncement that, I should warn, **has a GIF with flashing lights**.