It feels almost absurd to praise Jusant, for its physicality. You are, after all doing no more strenous exercise than pressing and holding a few buttons but its mechanics bring that act as close as it possibly can to the feeling of climbing. Just from the demo I played of it I was instantly sold. Press and Hold LT to grab a ledge with your left hand, use the analogue stick to direct your right hand forward, Press and Hold RT to grab the next ledge with your right hand, let go of LT, rinse repeat.
Jusant uses these ideas as a base which it expands as the game goes along but its so solid as a base, its honestly hard to communicate without barging into your house and handing you the controller to try it out for yourself (incidentally the PC version has a free demo unsubtle hint). I have only ever climbed in indoor rock climbing places or bouldering or whatever its called but it so perfectly recreates the emotional experience of it, a constant tactical and physical question, where do I put my hand next, can I make it from here without losing perch etc.
Added to that the rope mechanics allowing you to set your own pseudo checkpoints, rope swinging physics, momentum, these are all great. Even though the game is really not very hard and the illusion could be broken if you ever honestly tried hard to fuck yourself up, this didnt really bother me. The familiar "Oh is that how you were supposed to do that?" and giddy laughter at pulling off some complicated maneuver as simple as letting a rock bug carry you left so you can place a piton (thing you use to attach the rope to the wall to make sure you dont fall all the way down) to then rappel a bit and use left to right momentum to jump on to a previously unreachable ledge, well, it's pretty goddamned great.
The structure works so well, the constant climb weaves in and out of the rock wall like a sewing needle, after a few subsections in the dark underside of the mountain being greeted by our old friend the sun feels so novel you forget you already saw a similar view 10 minutes ago. The ever vertical climb works narratively and spectacle wise, constantly recontextualising the scale of it all by seeing familiar landmarks grow smaller and smaller until they are but a speck in the distance. And if you pay attention to the changing environments (and admittedly rather weak random documents/journal entries that every videogame and their dog needs to have which rather overexplains things) they tell a story too, of the society which lived on the mountain but which slowly saw the tide and water recede away...
On that note, I share the game's fascination with seeing previously underwater areas dry. I grew up near a beach filled with banks of sandstone and other such structures which made the bay a natural pond when the tide receded. Everything that was unearthed temporarily just made child me fascinated. The game is thankfully, gorgeous, its nice to see a game use Unreal Engine's fancy new tricks to make a nice stylised game which goes for a sort of moebius by way of claymation and pixar movie? I could almost feel the rock and clay surfaces from its smooth gradients of grey, yellow, red and brown.
My only real complaint is the vertical charged jump seems temperamental, and especially when the "sparks" ability is introduced in chapter 4 which is not entirely unrelatedly my least favourite section of the game. It replaces your double jump with a sort of vertical glide but I was just constantly being flung diagonally by my first jump, meaning the upwards thrust left me too far to reach the ledge. With decreasing max stamina from each jump this got quite annoying, let me tell you. Eventually I overcame that section through what seemed to me to be luck, essentially. If there is something Im missing here or a mechanic I misunderstood Id genuinely love to hear it.
I played the Demo for jusant back in June and was dismayed to realize it wasnt coming out until october (almost november, really) but I think it was worth the wait. Loved the soundtrack and the finale is a great little send off for the game as a whole, I would recommend Jusant to anyone who would read this whole thing to the end, have a good one.
Edit : I am the dumbest person alive. On a second playthrough, I realize that I read the tutorial wrong, the charged jump works by pointing towards the thing you want to jump, not inverted. I went through the entire game not realizing that somehow. In my very weak defense, when charge jumping horizontally you point away from the direction youre going (logically, thats how momentum works) but when jumping up/down seemingly the animation is the same i.e pointing down. Anyways I havent finished my replay but as an apology and because it was my only real complaint, Im awarding an extra half star to Jusant, godspeed.
Jusant uses these ideas as a base which it expands as the game goes along but its so solid as a base, its honestly hard to communicate without barging into your house and handing you the controller to try it out for yourself (incidentally the PC version has a free demo unsubtle hint). I have only ever climbed in indoor rock climbing places or bouldering or whatever its called but it so perfectly recreates the emotional experience of it, a constant tactical and physical question, where do I put my hand next, can I make it from here without losing perch etc.
Added to that the rope mechanics allowing you to set your own pseudo checkpoints, rope swinging physics, momentum, these are all great. Even though the game is really not very hard and the illusion could be broken if you ever honestly tried hard to fuck yourself up, this didnt really bother me. The familiar "Oh is that how you were supposed to do that?" and giddy laughter at pulling off some complicated maneuver as simple as letting a rock bug carry you left so you can place a piton (thing you use to attach the rope to the wall to make sure you dont fall all the way down) to then rappel a bit and use left to right momentum to jump on to a previously unreachable ledge, well, it's pretty goddamned great.
The structure works so well, the constant climb weaves in and out of the rock wall like a sewing needle, after a few subsections in the dark underside of the mountain being greeted by our old friend the sun feels so novel you forget you already saw a similar view 10 minutes ago. The ever vertical climb works narratively and spectacle wise, constantly recontextualising the scale of it all by seeing familiar landmarks grow smaller and smaller until they are but a speck in the distance. And if you pay attention to the changing environments (and admittedly rather weak random documents/journal entries that every videogame and their dog needs to have which rather overexplains things) they tell a story too, of the society which lived on the mountain but which slowly saw the tide and water recede away...
On that note, I share the game's fascination with seeing previously underwater areas dry. I grew up near a beach filled with banks of sandstone and other such structures which made the bay a natural pond when the tide receded. Everything that was unearthed temporarily just made child me fascinated. The game is thankfully, gorgeous, its nice to see a game use Unreal Engine's fancy new tricks to make a nice stylised game which goes for a sort of moebius by way of claymation and pixar movie? I could almost feel the rock and clay surfaces from its smooth gradients of grey, yellow, red and brown.
My only real complaint is the vertical charged jump seems temperamental, and especially when the "sparks" ability is introduced in chapter 4 which is not entirely unrelatedly my least favourite section of the game. It replaces your double jump with a sort of vertical glide but I was just constantly being flung diagonally by my first jump, meaning the upwards thrust left me too far to reach the ledge. With decreasing max stamina from each jump this got quite annoying, let me tell you. Eventually I overcame that section through what seemed to me to be luck, essentially. If there is something Im missing here or a mechanic I misunderstood Id genuinely love to hear it.
I played the Demo for jusant back in June and was dismayed to realize it wasnt coming out until october (almost november, really) but I think it was worth the wait. Loved the soundtrack and the finale is a great little send off for the game as a whole, I would recommend Jusant to anyone who would read this whole thing to the end, have a good one.
Edit : I am the dumbest person alive. On a second playthrough, I realize that I read the tutorial wrong, the charged jump works by pointing towards the thing you want to jump, not inverted. I went through the entire game not realizing that somehow. In my very weak defense, when charge jumping horizontally you point away from the direction youre going (logically, thats how momentum works) but when jumping up/down seemingly the animation is the same i.e pointing down. Anyways I havent finished my replay but as an apology and because it was my only real complaint, Im awarding an extra half star to Jusant, godspeed.