NINTH FAVORITE GAME OF 2021
A cool idea that, like a lot of these time loop games wind up doing, introduces a sort of social playground with seemingly infinite possibilities that are quickly reduced to an A -> B -> C progression structure towards the one true ending.
To Forgotten City's credit it carries four endings that are all credible in their own way, and that discovery portion of the game (which, for me, was roughly 6 of the 7 hours I spent with it) can often feel quite exhilarating. This is a game that, probably due to how much time the team spent thinking about it, really knows how to keep the player on a string between thinking they have it all figured out and throwing curveballs to upend it all.
I just found myself a little underwhelmed by how low some of the stakes actually were, like most every game with optional dialogue there's not really any downside to exploring every line of inquiry immediately. It can be fun to roleplay a bit and be withholding with certain characters you do or don't trust, but it doesn't actually matter in the end.
Unfortunately, that makes the final hour or so, when you're exploring the different ways you can manipulate these NPCs into the four endings, feel weirdly robotic, like manipulating an animatronic theme park. Likewise, for a game that so often asks some interesting questions about human nature, it winds up providing some pretty harrowing and strange answers: namely, the "best" ending seems pretty tragic, yeah?
A cool idea that, like a lot of these time loop games wind up doing, introduces a sort of social playground with seemingly infinite possibilities that are quickly reduced to an A -> B -> C progression structure towards the one true ending.
To Forgotten City's credit it carries four endings that are all credible in their own way, and that discovery portion of the game (which, for me, was roughly 6 of the 7 hours I spent with it) can often feel quite exhilarating. This is a game that, probably due to how much time the team spent thinking about it, really knows how to keep the player on a string between thinking they have it all figured out and throwing curveballs to upend it all.
I just found myself a little underwhelmed by how low some of the stakes actually were, like most every game with optional dialogue there's not really any downside to exploring every line of inquiry immediately. It can be fun to roleplay a bit and be withholding with certain characters you do or don't trust, but it doesn't actually matter in the end.
Unfortunately, that makes the final hour or so, when you're exploring the different ways you can manipulate these NPCs into the four endings, feel weirdly robotic, like manipulating an animatronic theme park. Likewise, for a game that so often asks some interesting questions about human nature, it winds up providing some pretty harrowing and strange answers: namely, the "best" ending seems pretty tragic, yeah?