Deep underground in an ancient Roman city, twenty-six trapped explorers lay dead because one of them broke a mysterious law. Reliving that fateful day over and over again, you’ll need to cleverly exploit the time loop, Groundhog Day-style, to avert disaster! Face tough moral choices while interrogating diverse characters, gathering their secrets, and putting together the pieces of a giant interpersonal puzzle.
It’s a very good mod and quite interesting he’s going all-in on a standalone game. I could understand just given how frustrating Skyrim’s engine can be, and I’m curious to see what more has been added.
This comes out July 28th.
Finished this up this weekend. It’s a little rough around the edges–looks like a last-gen game, but it’s also relentlessly compelling with engaging characters, really good voice acting, interesting puzzles, and a good central mystery. I totally recommend it, particularly if you’re a fan of time loop games.
I see lots of people talking about this game, but not posting here!
:P
The name of the thread makes it sound like it could be a board game or something. No one knows!
It’s available now on XBox Game Pass. Worth checking out!
Well, this is a very good game. It asks a lot of its character models, and a small team isn’t going to be able to do a whole lot better when it comes to facial animations (which is to say, they’re not so great), but the consistently solid voice acting really helps you forgive that, and to some extent so does the rather elaborate (again, for a small team) character behaviors.
But obviously the concept and the story design are the stars here. I went into it assuming that being set in an underground city and subject to a time loop were clever ways to compact the actual amount of content the team had to make–and they are!–but there are also a couple of spots where the game goes bigger and deeper than you have any reason to expect.
The biggest misstep for me was that they decided to put some combat into a game that’s decidedly not about combat. And for a small stretch in the middle, there’s WAY more combat than there needs to be. They make it clearly skippable, but then you presumably miss seeing a big chunk of the world and really feeling a certain major plot gut punch.
You also aren’t given enough information to control your final outcome completely. I was mostly okay with this, but because I went into the end game thinking I knew what mattered and what didn’t (and was wrong) I didn’t get to see the absolute perfect ending. There’s a surprising amount of adaptability to the final results. I’m going to go read about the other endings now.
Recommended! No reason not to give it a try on Game Pass!
I finished this tonight. It’s really quite well done, I highly recommend it if you have gamepass.
I was into it until I read this part. I was kind of hoping this would be kind of like Eastshade, with the feel and exploration of an Elder Scrolls but without the combat.
The combat is super light, and not really necessary at all.
There’s only one part that involves any combat at all, and it’s optional, and even that part’s combat is trivial compared to a game like elder scrolls.
It is amazing how much more interesting a videogame experience can be when the main way of interacting with its characters it through tongue (Forgotten City) and not a gun (Deathloop) - assuming the writing is good, of course.
This is a masterpiece of a game and I can’t wait to see what these australians do next.
Can you go into more detail? I think I had a pretty perfect and incredibly satisfying ending (to the point where its egoboosting was perhaps a tad bit too much) and I am curious what other possibilities were there.
When I was ready to go and confront Pluto, I didn’t bother to stop to talk to Galerius (or whatever the guy’s name was that you could send to do all the necessary “fixes” you discovered in people’s stories). I kinda assumed that whatever would happen with Pluto, it would reset everything. But actually, the best ending requires fixing everyone’s situation and getting Galerius to lead them all to the aqueduct exit. That’s the only way that they all end up in the museum at the end. So for me, only some characters were there. Also, I assume that how they talk to you changes based on whether you had Galerius do all the work or whether you helped them yourself. For me, they talked about me as “The Oracle,” not by my name, and spoke as if they didn’t know me but only knew OF me. Which makes sense! And it’s cool that there are all these different nuanced endings! But since the game didn’t give me a sense of what the consequences were of going to speak to Pluto, and since it was not trivial to set everything right in the city and then go and work through the Pluto conversation, I ended up watching all the different endings on YouTube.
I…don’t think this is the case…or maybe it is? Damn, now I do not remember if I sent Galerius to do that or not on my final run. I did have everyone in the museum (except Rufius for some reason) including the crowd of ex-golden statues. I did have about 50:50 people addressing me as Oracle and hearing of me versus people who knew me, which was accurate to whether I spoke to them during the last loop (yep I loved that detail and it made me wanna go back and talk to everyone…).
No, it’s not the case. Getting him to lead then there is only part of one of the “lesser” endings. You don’t need that for the “good” ending.
However, you DO need to make sure that the people who die very soon after the loop starts, survive. You can either do that by getting
Galerius to do it, or by doing it yourself before taking to the big guy.
Ah, yeah I was confused about the aqueduct part.
Finished twice (ending 2 and 4). It was pretty neat how they solved (avoiding) doing the same thing over and over each loop. A lot more guided experience then say Outer Wilds, made for a much more chill game to just play through, and it didn’t outstay it’s welcome. Also funny how no one knew me because I just beelined to the baddie last loop - great detail indeed!