Editor’s note: Hello! Over the next few days, we’re running an “Escape Game” series, and we’re finally starting to look back at games that release sometime in 2021, but for various reasons we couldn’t fully cover them at the time.
We’ve returned to some real gems, so for more catch-up reviews like this, head over to the Games That Got Away hub, where all of our work in the series will be gathered in one convenient place. enjoy!
I’ve heard that Forgotten Cities is a first-person adventure game that deals with morality and dense issues of right and wrong. There may also be free will and the social contract and some other stuff that I usually struggle to understand.
It’s about those things! But it manages to keep them alive in a charming and generous way, one that invites everyone to participate. It’s also creepy, weird, thrilling, and daring.
Oh, and at first you’re lost in the woods, dragged out of a river, and prompted into a strange ruin nearby. Someone came in recently, a man named Al, maybe you can find him and keep him safe?
Of course, he is not safe, and neither are you. After tumbling straight from Alice in Wonderland, you land deep underground, in an ancient city hewn out of the rock. There is no going back to the way you came – only going forward.
Except for the striker it’s not that simple. Because you quickly realize that you’re in a time loop, doomed to live the same day over and over again, for reasons too good to spoil. Get to know a few townspeople and you’ll find out that this is also a very special day. Someone is missing. Others are running. Someone is threatened. Someone is in love. Oh yes, and the general conditions under which this town works: the golden rule. If someone sins, everyone dies.
A bit harsh. Sure enough, Forgotten Cities spent a lot of runtime worrying about this knot. If you all just play to survive, what’s the moral? Who can first decide what sin is? Is the crime in one situation the same as the crime in another situation? Does it have the same weight?
What keeps this thing from sailing over my head and into bright skies is that the forgotten city always puts these issues on the people you meet. You meet these people as you try to solve some central mysteries and a bunch of orbital mysteries. What kind of city is Central or something like that? Why are all these people stuck here? Can they escape? Like, who is missing and why? Who’s been putting up all these ziplines? What’s behind this or that locked door?
Playing a game with lots of threads is a joy because it means the chances of getting seriously stuck are small: in Forgotten City you can always progress something. The game is great at keeping track of everything and pointing you in the right direction, and strikes a good balance between exploring the surprisingly intricate spaces you’re stuck in, chatting with the people you meet, and trying to get their point of view. their needs, and take some action – I honestly didn’t expect it, but it solved the problem nicely.
There are unforgettable moments here, most of which shouldn’t be spoiled. However, there is something wonderful about the time loop itself, which connects itself to the puzzles in clever ways and begins with each trigger, accompanied by true fantasy horror.
I gather that Forgotten Cities was originally a Skyrim mod and you can still see a little bit in the way you move, the way the camera zooms in on the face of the person you’re currently talking to, the way the rocks and the trees are drawn , the light falls. It also feels like a mod in the best possible way – something clever and free-flowing that bursts out of a private obsession and interacts with the player until it forms this lovely, unique thing. I don’t know which ending you’re going to get, or what you’re going to get out of it – to me the whole thing is less about morality than the way successive eras struggled with moral contradictions until the whole thing was like The pousse-café piles up like that – but I know you should play it. It’s charming and generous. It’s creepy, weird, thrilling and daring.
