The Forgotten City

The most immersive game I've played since Quern. It's hard to find excellent adventure games any more. This one delivers big. Thank you Modern Storyteller!

I have played very few games that moved and hooked me as this one did. The story and the writing are great. There lots of really interesting and various characters with a complex and interesting background and great English voice actors. I could not wait to learn more about all the characters, their backgrounds, problems and in some cases their secrets. The story has several really good turns that work extremely well without seeming forced. The environment is rich and I find it really beautiful and fairly big for a game of this type. Some people complained about frame drops but on my laptop with 6 procesor cores (12 threads) and a GTX1050ti the game ran extremely smoothly with highest quality. Some people mentioned the facial animations. While those are not always perfect, I find that most of the time they are pretty good. And more importantly to me the faces themselves have a lot of character, expressiveness and variety. Overall this is really an outstanding game. It is really beyond me how a core team of three people was able to make this. A lot of work, thought and refinement has gone into this on all levels: story, playability, environment and character modelling, stability. I am utterly impressed and I am still quite moved by the whole game and the premise behind its story which only gets uncovered over t ime. If you like story-driven detective games, then I very much recommend this. Please make sure that you avoid any spoilers. The story is really good and you will lose a lot if you know ahead of time what will happen. It took me about 13 hours of play time to get all four endings and for what it offers the game is well worth its price. Luckily there is no significant repetition involved to get additional endings and if one lays the foundation for one ending then this will also often help with getting part of the things done that are needed for other endings. I hope that the team gets the success and recognition for this that they deserve.

I'm not exaggerating, this is one of the best plots I had ever played in a game! I just finished it on ending 2 in 8h gameplay. Time loop stories are always fun, and here we have the interactivity to look around on the city and talk to ppl to find clues. There's the main quest of trying to break the loop and get back home, and also side quests to help ppl and solve mysteries. Ending 2 isn't the shortest and I still left leaving many mysteries behind! This is clearly an indie game. Having the game fully voiced adds a lot to immersion and allows us to feel characters emotions, but it also shows how it limits on game size. Specially on a game like this, where dialogs are most important, it's tough to have all the dialogs and responses planned before voices start being recorded. I had played a couple time loop games and the most troubling part is not letting the game become repetitive and boring. This was handled nicely here, because the game is long so we do a lot of stuff and don't keep restarting, and we also don't need to keep repeating the same actions. Plot flows nicely and I just kept wanting to play to learn more! I hope they profit from this game and are able to create the next one, I'll for sure buy it to have another great experience! This is the type of game we just have to give us the pleasure to experience! The only down is on the badly optimized graph. It's visually good, better than most games and impressive for a game created by 3 core guys, but it has huge frame drops. The last 3h I played were almost unplayable, and if the game had battle it'd be for sure impossible.

An excellent time travelling puzzle / mystery experience with a dash of adventure. Has well-written dialogue and an amazing cast of VAs to breathe life into the characters. I love detective styled games like this and to have it set in an ancient Roman city was such a refreshing environment to be in! The Forgotten City is filled with tons of beautiful artistry and cultural mythos strewn about. Between the context of dialogue and exploring the city, the game rewarded my curiosity with new theories as to what was happening or could be happening. The one major downside I had experienced was framerate dropping. Although infrequent and not too drastic of a drop, it mostly happened when I was in certain areas and more noticably when I was in conversation with characters. That said, I really enjoyed the time I had with this game and look forward to seeing the next endeavor from Modern Storyteller!

What you have here, is a passion project by three indie developers. The game shines through its premise and story telling. The lore was very thought out. Every NPC has a story, and every nook and cranny of the compact city has a purpose. There's plenty of lore (historical and fictional), which I enjoyed. It's rough around the edges. The NPCs look a bit dated. The water was fake. Sometimes there would be "invisible roadblocks" and hangups, that require some work to get around. The controls can be finicky. It's a little optimized, having stuttering in some areas, as long as hefty load times when going from one section to another. It's what's to be expected from an indie studio. But it was an absolute, phenomenal experience.