Here am I again indulging in my fondness for quirky indie games. This one is effectively an adventure game with the added twist being that it has some RPG mechanics. Originally released in an episodic format, the complete game offers a substantial amount of gameplay and the conspiracy-themed story is full of shocking twists and turns. Unfortunately as happens all too often in these narrative-based games, no matter your choices the story manages to arrive at the same very limited set of outcomes and the final episode is particularly disappointing.

I bought this some time back thinking that it was a relatively small, action-oriented stealth game. I was wrong as this is a fairly big game that and a fully fledged action RPG with a single character. It has a huge world, a substantial main quest and plenty of side quests, crafting, character advancement, items, NPCs, the works really. In fact, it’s so good and so well made that I consider it criminal how underrated and underplayed it is. This really is an indie gem that deserves much greater success and acclaim that it seems to have had.

I bought this purely because of its premise: instead of being the traditional do-gooder, you play as a minion of an evil overlord who has already won. Plus I suppose that Obsidian has a good reputation when it comes to RPGs. Unfortunately I found this to be a middling game, too small and short for the scope of the story it wants to tell and bizarrely packed with features that feel rushed, out of place and ultimately pointless.

As usual, I heard about this from Broken Forum and decided to give it a shot, thinking it’s one of those small, indie puzzle games. It turned out while this is indeed an indie game that was basically made by just one person and it has the rudimentary graphics to prove it, this may actually be the most time consuming game ever made if you want to complete it. However I could seriously question the mental health of anyone who would want to.

I bought this purely because of word of mouth on Broken Forum and apparently it is commonly considered to be an underappreciated gem. It wasn’t so successful upon first release outside of Japan but it seems that sales have slowly picked up as more people grew to understand what it’s about. One thing I didn’t realize how old the original game was. This means that although the PC release wasn’t all that long ago, the graphics still look very dated by modern standards.

For a while I kept seeding advertisements about the text-based games from the company called Choice of Games and I was intrigued. I was a big fan of both the Choose Your Own Adventure types books with no game mechanics and well as proper game books with rules and mechanics growing up, and I still love the idea of using text to tell stories in video games. Then there’s the incredible diversity of titles they have so far and how they advertise the limitless possibilities of the options available. Harness the power of your imagination indeed!

I doubt that I would ever have bought this on my own but it had really good word of mouth on Broken Forum and just fantastic worldbuilding. It’s honestly more than a bit anachronistic since we’re currently worried about global warming yet this game is all about the world freezing to death. Yet it’s undeniably a great idea for a premise and all of the game’s mechanics are built around it.