OFF: Forgotten Dreams
A downloadable translation for Windows
HEY!! GO PLAY THE FIRST [FREE] EPISODE FOR MY LATEST [ORIGINAL] GAME: CATJAM HSK!! OKAY HAVE A GOOD DAY!
"Off is an RPG with a highly original atmosphere and artstyle. You control the batter, who, with the help of a cat with a deformed head and flying circles, purifies the world of the evil that lurks within. The gameplay is standard, but it serves an original universe. With violence and bright colours."
Boring backstory
Off was created in 2008 by Mortis Ghost and Alias Conrad Coldwood. In 2011, the user Quinn K. (known at the time as Reconstructed Dragon) translated the game into English. They revised their translation in 2013 with a 2.0 version, and a final 3.0 version in 2018.
These translations carry an important legacy, being the gateway for the English speaking audience. However, if you're looking for an accurate and faithful translation, you may come away dissatisfied...
The translation takes multiple creative liberties in 2.0 and 3.0, being more of a localisation. There are also technical problems introduced during the translation process that weren't present in the original. Most noticeable is the degraded audio quality.
In Summer of 2025, the game has been re-released as retail software. Now sporting a completely different soundtrack and an official translation. The soundtrack is a subjective matter, but the translation remains inaccurate due to using 3.0 as a base.
Forgotten Dreams aims to be an alternative that redresses the above technical issues, and provide a way for fans, new and old, to experience the original text.
Goals of "Forgotten Dreams"
- An accurate and faithful translation.
- Rebalanced battles. Mr. Mortis has expressed his woes on the game being too easy, and has given his blessing to try and rectify this problem.
- High quality soundtrack that loops properly (wherever possible, anyway)!
- Various bug and oddity fixes (the soulful quirks were kept).
- Cleanup of various graphics (monsters, characters, etc), as well as visually faithful translations of large graphics.
- CREDITS -
Four Eyes - Graphics, testing Antiévêque (Lempereur) - Main translation Ivy Nivek - Design, programming, music RAL - Promo art
- Downloads - Portable - Game is contained in a zip folder. Installer - Install the game to your computer.
Disclaimer: this game uses the Maniacs Patch, while this game can potentially be ran on EasyRPG, we offer no guarantees that it will be playable. If you encounter any issues while using EasyRPG, please send them to the EasyRPG team instead of us, that's not our problem.
If you enjoy my work, consider throwing some spare change my way!
Download
Install instructions
Portable: Download, unzip and click on [OFF FD].
Development log
- Update 1.1 is now live! (HUGE!!)Aug 27, 2025
- Retranslation Progress Update (25/08/2025)Aug 24, 2025
- Working on Small Update [Announcement]Aug 18, 2025
- So Long 2024! The future and other projectsDec 30, 2024
- Version 1.0.3 UpdateOct 05, 2024
- Version 1.0.1 UpdateAug 07, 2024
- Minor Update to the InstallerMay 29, 2024
- Installer Implemented + Project Completion!Dec 12, 2023
Comments
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Hey, I'm at Zone 3 Area 2 and the password for the enemy doesn't seem to be working. I've checked the walkthrough that's been included and I'm still running into the same issue. Is there something bugged with my copy?
edit: figured it out. Was selecting the underscore instead of the empty space because I thought there was no space option.
the start of the Alma sections seems to be bugged? the correct answer to the sixth question does not work, even though I'm double checking with the walkthrough.
has a solution been found yet ? this still seems to happen
Totally forgot to update the walkthrough to have the correct answer (for some reason, we used the English translation’s answer in the walkthrough, where they completely change the question/answer).
Very sorry for the inconvenience, please use the latest update.
is this a demo of the game or is this like the full thing for free
The original OFF is freeware and can still be downloaded from here http://gaarabis.free.fr/index.php?catid=1
This project is a retranslation/Quality of Life.
Used this for my first playthrough of OFF. Besides the "elemer" cut off in the description of the Elemental Bats and a typo my group noticed... somewhere (I forgot where). It was overall a nice experience! I appreciate games with older translations getting re-translated.
Didn't really have any issues with anything. Though, my controller wasn't working so I assume there isn't controller support? Not that it was a deal-breaker but I figured I should bring that up.
Not sure if the "re-balanced battles" really changed much. The game still felt fairly easy, though maybe that was because I was using my party's abilities to their fullest, haha. Was never really in danger of dying besides
the extra boss (which killed me when I went to it too early) and during backtrackingbut maybe I was a bit under-prepared in those instances.But yeah I really recommend this version a lot! Really made me fall in love with this lovely game <3
Thank you for the kind words! I’m unsure as to the state of controller input (aside from like XInput/Xbox controllers probably working fine?). I should really fix the item descriptions but it’s such a low priority that I keep forgetting to do it.
The rebalanced battles are “rebalanced” in the sense that instead of it being completely braindead, it’s just engaging enough to keep your mind from drifting; I think that more than suffices in keeping the game’s battles interesting (since they were always an extreme low point with the original game).
I like this game
Thanks :)
I think there's a spelling mistake for one of the bats. Something about 'Elemer'?
Edit: I checked: It's nearly every bat, is this an inside joke?
That’s a visual bug, please pay it no mind.
Can I take the music files and plop them into the old V2 Translation to have the uncompressed tracks play ?
Sad that say, but that wouldn’t work because the normal version of 2k3 does not support OGG files. This game uses the Maniacs patch.
So I am having a slight issue when downloading the file. Apparently the up and left keys are held down right at the start and I can no longer use them, which makes getting pass zone 0 impossible to pass. Not sure what is causing this or if its a file thing.
This could be a potential phantom device issue? Try unplugging + plugging your devices.
Just unplugged and replugged my keyboard. Then I tried closing the game, with the keyboard unplugged, then opening it again and it was still happening, even with the keyboard unplugged. And it didn't work when I replugged it either. I am just confused cause the web browser version works just fine but the downloads ain't for some reason.
i seem to be getting a crash occasionally when ending battles while holding the shift key to skip text! it's happened 3 times so far, is this a known bug?
That’s odd… Seems like a bug specific to Maniacs Patch, I’ll see about reporting it to the developer of the patch, thanks for the notice!
looks like SOMEONE forgot to remove the god item from the inventory
Ahahaha, I KNEW things were too good to be true. That’s fine, I’ll stealthily patch it out lightning quick. (It is now obtainable only via cheat code, as intended)
I'd really like to experience this translation, but the lack of a gender-neutral way to refer to the player is stopping me. OFF is the only game that actually causes me dysphoria in this regard (that I've played so far, anyway) due to how the player is referred to in the game as part of the narrative. I would deeply appreciate it if you considered adding this in an update.
Also, I know that the description says that it's incompatible with EasyRPG, but I really don't think a jumpscare is warranted. It was very distressing to me. A simple incompatibility screen would be fine.
Hello, we’re currently working on an update which addresses much of people’s criticisms that we haven’t addressed for the above reason. This includes the lack of an option for players which do not identify as either male or female.
Believe it or not, this is actually fixed in the official remake of OFF. There's now a gender neutral option when selecting what to refer to you as.
Not in the french version though, which is odd (yes it is a thing in french too)
The reason for there being no gender neutral pronouns in French is because those do not exist in that language. This is consistent with the Official Steam version which does not include them either (though, on that topic, the Steam version doesn’t touch the original French whatsoever).
I don't speak french but I've come across some french speaker using those other pronouns, though I don't speak it so it's probably not legible
here
The skills are unlocked based on your level.
ah ok my apologies, haven't played off in years lol
In the judge option I'm missing Aneurysm Rupture in skills ?
as of last month, EasyRPG supports string variables now. is there anything else this uses from the Maniac Patch that would still make it incompatible with EasyRPG?
We are currently working on an update which addresses this, please stay tuned.
thanks! i can try and frig with it some more so i can get it working on my 3DS (which is why i asked, there's no other way to play rpg2003 games on there AFAIK)
I wish you luck! I have no idea how stable it’d be considering Maniacs Patch is a fickle thing.
not sure how difficult it would be, but do you think you might consider adding a gender neutral player option, a la the 2016 v2.0 update? i understand it wasn't included in the original game so perhaps it's out of the scope of this project, but it'd be a nice qol addition for myself and others i'm sure. :) apologies if this has been addressed elsewhere and i missed it.
The translation has been considered complete for a while now, so a change like that might not warrant an update by itself I'm afraid.
For what it's worth, that addition was under consideration early on but I had been insistent on not altering too much of the structure of internal project events since the goal was to be as faithful to the french text as possible, which I admit was perhaps too utilitarian a way to go about it in hindsight.
no worries, glad to hear it was considered. still excited to discover what this version has to offer. :) thanks for the quick response!
Greetings, FD team!
I have a question: Is it possible to modify in some way the .blc files?
If so, how can i?
No.
I see that a patch for RPG maker 2003 was used to make this. Which version was it? It likely does not matter if I just use the most recent, but I would like to see if there is any difference.
You don't need the patch to play the translation. In relation to the version though, I'm afraid I don't remember since we just grabbed the latest version from the patch maker's discord at the time. The only differences should be fixed bugs and newer features.
Understood, thank you.
Nice work on OFF: Forgotten Dreams!
Although an official remake is coming, I still really appreciate a lot of work that was put into this project!
By the way, I wanted to find a way to DM you some way but I couldn't find any socials attached and I'm not sure if you use twitter. There's something I wanted to talk about relating to RPGMaker.
Hello and thank you! All my socials are available on my main itch.io page.
Japhet's death cutscene has a missing sprite
This does not occur under normal circumstances. I cannot help you.
Understood. On another note, does this version of the game have save files?
Update: nevermind, I have located them
Hi, I'm at the final battle and as I chose the official ending option, it plays the dialogue, but then once the battle initiates, it loops back to the dialogue prior and keeps looping like that. I have to manually close the game. When I restart and choose the same option, it loops again.
Hi, I've tried recreating this bug on the current available version with no success. The only things I can suggest is running RPG_RT.exe in different compatibility modes (by right-clicking it, going to Properties, and found in the Compatibility tab), or downloading the game again (v1.0.3) and porting your save over. If neither of these work, then I'm sorry that I couldn't help. Older versions of RPG Maker have been found to be strangely buggy on modern systems.
Thank you, it seems downloading the v1.0.3 fixed the issue
i bet this is like a awesome mod though annoyingly my dad got this for my first playthrough. im just hoping the plot wasnt changed and i didnt just get a totally different game.i bet its a cool mod though.
Sadly I don't think that bug's recreatable on our end...
The best I can suggest is unplug any controllers you have plugged in your computer, or unplug and replug your keyboard. If all else fails, you can try running RPG_RT.exe in different Windows Compatibility modes (found in the Compatibility tab when right-clicking the exe file and selecting Properties).
yeah, umm, i kinda did all that already, im gonna try other translations and see if this happens on there too
just noticed this happens in any rpg maker game with me, just opened yume nikki and the same thing happened, strange... im suspecting it might be something i downloaded to play games with keyboard and mouse in xenia that has to do with this, although i dont think its still installed on my pc.. EDIT: fixed it, i was right about the xenia shit
Good afternoon, I am interested in doing exactly the same thing you did with the game, but instead of translating it into English, doing it into Spanish and Esperanto. However, I don’t know much about manipulating the game files. Would you be interested in explaining to me a bit how to do it? I’m really very interested in creating a faithful translation of the game into my native language. Thank you in advance for your effort.
Hi there!
There's actually not much manipulation going on with the actual files. RPG Maker 2003 projects don't have any way to be encrypted, so it's often as simple as having your own copy of the engine and opening the original project of OFF published by Mortis. From there, you can edit the written text directly through the events in the maps.
If you're wanting to know about the Maniacs Patch though, that's something that would take a bit longer to explain since it doesn't have a lot of english documentation. For brevity, I can only suggest you look it up, download, and install it yourself. The developer's twitter is BingShan1024, from there you can find a "getuploader" link in their bio that should take you to a repository with all the published patch versions.
I hope your translation efforts go well!
Thanks. :3
cant believe ive only heard of this just now! gonna be playing this to ready up for the official re-release
Hi there! Super excited to play this. I saw you mentioned that the game will not work with EasyRPG, and you were absolutely right. The jumpscare gave me a good laugh. I noticed the game also does not run on JoiPlay. Do you know if there is any way to play this version on android?
Thanks for your hard work!
I'm deeply sorry to say, but there's no way as of right now to play this game on Android. :(
Perhaps in the future, an update to the patch this game uses will allow it to function normally in EasyRPG or JoiPlay. Again, apologies for the inconvenience.
Okay, no worries at all. Thank you very much for the quick response!
I am completely unable to beat the new Batter fight in the ending. Is this supposed to be this insanely difficult or is it a skill issue?
The fight is designed to be beatable regardless of level.
If you are struggling, I recommend you abuse status effects (due to the fact that the new Batter's party is functionally identical to the player's, so they will work).I tried to abuse status effects but I guess I didn't abuse them hard enough. I assume Palsy will help me a lot there! Thanks for the advice!
You can do it!
If you can beat the Queen, you can beat this fight.Sweet game!
I've been thinking about attempting to make an OFF randomizer, and I may use this version to do that with (still not totally sure what version to go with). Thought I'd leave a comment to see if you would be okay with that.
Hi there, that's fine by me (I don't own the game lol). Please note that this game uses a patched version of RPG Maker 2003. Called the Maniacs patch, so you won't be able to properly edit the game with regular 2k3.
Why would you jumpscare easyrpg users....... so cruel...
shlerp
I would be interested to know what the 'oddity fixes' are, do you have an example?
Those inquiries are answered in the README's changelog.
Everytime I try to save in a block, i get an error.
I've seen this before; this is more than likely a permission error, allow files to be made in your Program Files (any help with that is outside my scope) or install the game to a different directory.
Sometimes you can't choose anythin in the X menu, it just closes upon selecting anything. This bug occured after obtaining Alpha until going out the one-room mine. Small bug, but still
There's no way for me to alter how the default menu works, so I'm afraid I can't help.