High water analysis. The end of the world strategy

Highwater teaches us that the strategy for survival can be to fight to move forward or to stay and learn to be happy.

Stud Démagog!o continues its post-apocalyptic tradition with Rogue Games. Highwater shows a world flooded with unsafe, polluted water, poisoned fish, and small islets covered in rubble to live on. Either we adapt or we get by.

In times of apocalypse, resilience wins. Adapt to the new life and find daily pleasures in obligatory normality. Highwater plays with this position in which a small society lives around dilapidated apartment towers. A Tower of Babel built out of necessity and where everyone brings their own wisdom to their people for the common good. The first stages of the game take place in these relationships, in the bonds created by this neighborhood. The characters are well constructed with few lines. The environment and its attitude reflect the result of a very hard life but with moments of fulfillment.

This entire universe is presented and contrasted with Nikos. The orphaned teenager does not give up on a better life in Alphaville. The only city that survived the disaster, where the most powerful live within impregnable walls. Nikos wants to live in Alphaville or, according to recent reports, take a rocket to Mars to escape the hell of this planet.

Nikos is the one who navigates the story, but the protagonist is society. Apart from the villagers of High~~tower~~waterwe have a group of insurgents who want to overthrow the despotism of Alphaville and implement their own, the Vikings who chose the path Mad Max and the rank and file Alphavilians, who are in the shadows of power, are just simple workers who do what they are asked, but who are also not convinced of their position. It sounds cliché, but there are no sides good or bad, but the attitudes of the most powerful.

Nikos and the Argonauts

At first glance, it seems that on board the Argos, our canvas boat, we can go wherever we want, but we have a fairly marked path with very few moorings. Moving with the boat, although relaxing, is still a way to get from point A to point B with the sound of the engine accompanying you.

Engine noise and RHP. The pirate radio which provides information on Alphaville

and plays music. A section that greatly highlights Demagog’s game. Always from an independent point of view, both on the radio and in concerts throughout history. Feeds on your multicultural world to create songs that immerse you in its waters.

The languorous songs move the boat repeatedly towards nothingness until we begin to see on the horizon the remains of a civilization that reached the summit at the expense of the planet until it grew tired. tall buildings, giant monuments and lots of trash. We find newspapers, posters and books with many references to reality. Warnings to the world we are heading into.

The forest does not allow the grid to be seen.

When we leave Argos and find enemies, things get tactical. Highwater features grid-based turn-based combat in which the environment is very determining. It has elements that can be used as weapons like carts or trash to throw. There are also traps that activate at the end of each turn and it is best not to be near them.

Characters have different fighting styles and their weapons can be changed, although There is very little variety. There is no real growth as the adventure progresses. It’s realistic, everything happens in a few days. You can’t grow much.

Démagog wants to tell you his story and the fight doesn’t confuse it. It’s a very simple system, not a challenge. There are several very unbalanced characters and the game has its own success. But thanks to the use of the environment and a few other mechanics, it’s neither boring nor challenging either.

Conclusions.

Demagog makes us reconsider where we are going as humanity. The importance of communication intertwined with cultural conservation As a survival mechanism in the face of technological growth, they constitute control. A survival which can translate into the acceptance of living “happily” with those we have or by the struggle to escape the system. It shows all the faces of a lost world and even though it shows an escape, it clearly shows that neither option is entirely correct.