Asmik-Kun is many things; all of them simple. He’s a child, a creature, a cipher through which the player accesses the game. Most of all, he’s a character defined entirely through his animal desires. Whatever he looks upon, he interprets through the lens of his childlike naivete. Assuming his mind hasn’t wandered toward the crayon doodles one would find in the margins of a notebook, his fixation on eating transforms the landscape into a delicious meal: fried egg sunsets, tomato clouds, salmon bushes, etc.

What’s especially interesting is how play makes the player complicit in this transformation, as a significant feature of play is turning monsters into eggs that you then collect. In theory, there is a larger motivation for this – something about waking the Dragon God – but it’s implied the joy of performing the act itself takes greater precedence. In the end, Asmik-Kun remains a flat, very basic character.

Still, I remain intrigued about how strongly the protagonist’s wants define both Asmik-Kun Land as a creative work and the game’s relationship with the world of commercial video games around it. Like Asmik-Kun Land, desire is central to how we understand commercial video games. I believe I’ve alluded to as much in some of my previous writing, and I would recommend reading “The Abject Emptiness of Everything” and the final chapter of Ways of Seeing to gain an understanding of the general mechanics. For our purposes, I wish to focus on a certain strain of games that deal with this thematically through their main characters. Kirby, Pac Man, Penta, Rocky Rodent: each of these characters is defined by their constant consumption and their quest to sate a desire they can never completely satisfy. It’s very likely these characters are the result rather than the cause of their game’s play style, considering how strongly the player-character’s behavior mirrors what is expected from the player: collect more trinkets and devote all of yourself to the activity presented to you.

Presented along these lines, these games should fail in the goals they set for themselves. In fact, they should appear downright satirical given how well they illustrate the futility of playing them. How, then, do players find genuine enjoyment in self-defeating games like these? I doubt they would be as popular as they are if players were always made aware of the struggle to survive that these games end up depicting. And unlike survival sims, relaxing the play experience isn’t an option; the player must always be aware of the protagonist’s appetites. So instead, these games aestheticize their activities to hid that bleak nature. By focusing our attention away from the wider goals we’re working toward and onto something inherently pleasant about the act of collecting, we forget everything that would stand between us and appreciating the game we’re playing.

What distinguishes Asmik-Kun Land from its obvious peers is how much more vigorously it commits to that logic. Where for them aestheticization is limited to the activity itself (and maybe not even that), Asmik-Kun Land goes so far with its own aestheticization that it defines the game’s entire perspective. We don’t even see anything like a primal drive toward survival in the eponymous dragon. All we see is the happy-go-lucky child who can only think about his immediate base desires: play, food, etc.

In this regard, Asmik-Kun Land is somewhat analogous to Paper Mario: Color Splash; the major difference being that the artistry is more strongly grounded in the main character’s psychology. Here we find one of the game’s most noteworthy accomplishments. By grounding the action entirely in Asmik-Kun, the game must present the world to us through the lens of his desires, thus making the world itself desirable. We’re encouraged to step into his shoes and play along with him.

Should we accept this, we immediately understand the benefits of such a perspective: wants are almost always fulfilled as soon as they’re made apparent, lending the game an innate enjoyability. Asmik-Kun Land’s commitment to the aesthetic only further solidifies this motif. The soft pastels and the crayon-texture look in the levels lend the game an interest materiality that reinforces Asmik-Kun’s imaginative perspective. Likewise, his small stature, combined with the relative lack of danger in the world, suggest something like a play-pen.

However, if Asmik-Kun’s perspective represents the game’s greatest strength, then it also represents one of its greatest limitations. That perspective is also directly responsible for Asmik-Kun Land’s lack of cohesive structure, and for as interesting as it may be visually, the game struggles to match that ludically. Levels will either frequently jump from idea to idea with the childish fervor of Asmik-Kun, or repeat a single idea just for the novelty of doing so. One might compare the result to Lost Word of Jenny, but Asmik-Kun Land is too obsessive, too simple-minded for this chaotic sprawl to affect it in the same way. Instead of confusion, what ends up dominating the game is the bare fact of its world’s existence. Play vanishes, but work never takes its place. Carefree wonder can only give way to a lifeless march from activity to activity, each one performed only because they’re available to be performed.

Interpreted solely on the game’s level, we might see this as an argument against Asmik-Kun’s lifestyle. A life devoted only to carnal desire will leave greater wants that that life can never fulfill. In addition, the fact that such a life presents no other possibility beyond satiating one’s immediate desires means it constricts more than it opens up. In this regard, Asmik-Kun Land is ironically self-defeating. In limiting itself solely to the boundless freedom of childhood it so wishes to admire, it undoes the very grounds on which that admiration must exist and prevents itself from ever finding that alleged freedom.

Yet we need not limit ourselves just to this level of interpretation. We might also consider the level where game and player meet, and it’s at this level where we see how extensive Asmik-Kun Land’s self-defeating nature really is. Before we proceed any further, though, I want to clarify that Asmik-Kun Land was made primarily to promote the Asmik brand. We need not know what that brand was specifically; the fact of its being promoted is enough. As with all other things, Asmik-Kun Land embraces the task given to it with enthusiasm. Between the title screen’s soft yet off kilter text (sitting atop an egg-shaped spotlight) and its slow yet bouncy music, the game starts on an almost sitcom-esque note.

This alone tells us much about the game to follow. Because Asmik-Kun is a mascot, he must be made relatable to a wide swathe of people. To accomplish this, he must be emptied of meaning so that others can fill him with their own. This ends up defining the game, as well: it operates only on those terms it needs and leaves it to the player to fill in the rest. What makes this self-defeating are the two terms the game deems necessary: instilling desire in the player and positing itself as being able to fulfill that desire. Because Asmik-Kun Land doesn’t specify any further, it invites the player to project whatever they wish onto the game based on what it has already presented them.

Unfortunately, Asmik-Kun Land finds itself unable to fulfill those expectations and thus ensures its own demise. This is most obviously seen during play. It’s the same problem that plagued Color Splash: as heavily as the game may connote play, it only concerns itself with fulfilling its own creative desire, all without ever speaking to those it has instilled in the player. The boss battles may suggest schoolyard antics with their combination of rock-paper-scissors and red light/green light, but the mundane nature of playing through these battles (press forward, play a game of rock-paper-scissors, repeat) cuts us off from wherever that suggestion might have led us. Another person’s desires can only carry me so far. They may lead me through Asmik-Kun Land’s imaginative moments, but they also lead me toward its most hollow ones, too.

Perhaps it is this ambiguity that makes me hesitant to dismiss the game as I would RUN=DIM. For all its insufficiencies, Asmik-Kun Land speaks to a potential games have to make immediate another’s perspective. The fact that this game’s perspective may not have a clean counterpart in the real world should not distract us from that potential. Instead, it should encourage us to more closely study how games like these represent that perspective and how to best avoid the failures inhibiting it. This may not benefit Asmik-Kun Land directly – its play experience is still what it is – but it confers upon the game a certain value, however esoteric that may be.