Posted on: May 2, 2024
Regenerator
Verified ownerGames: 1145 Reviews: 21
Playable experimental avant-garde film
A surprisingly thoughtful (and surreal) narrative-focused adventure that tackles the issues of faith (and crisis thereof), temptation, goodness, conformity, humility, shame, redemption, and all that jazz set in a semi-fictional 19th(ish) century Russia. A very NARRATIVE focused game, and gameplay is almost exclusively used to move the story. There are stretches where it is essentially a walking sim, where you move through set pieces, taking in the narrative. The same applies to puzzles, a lot of which are very simple, and involve nothing more than putting certain objects in certain places, but some are more engaging. Storytelling is VERY visual, and it does look great. The framing, the angles, the blocking, of the scenes works really well. It is by no means a full-on horror, but the combination of the dream-like visuals and audio cues is unsettling, where you can tell that SOMETHING is just ever so slightly off in, but can't always tell WHAT. The superb voice acting, ESPECIALLY by Silas Carson, also helps, although the subtitles could have been better. One thing that I am slightly sad about is that ultra-widescreen is supported during gameplay but the cutscenes are letterboxes, even if they are in-engine, though I kinda see why, given the extra deliberate camera placement. Other than that the game is surprisingly stable. I didn't encounter any crashes or major glitches, apart from animation hiccups, and had no problem hitting 60+ fps. It is also not a very long game. Without dawdling you can finish it in about 4.5 hours. But if you pause to take in the visuals, immerse yourself in the setting, and not rush, it can be anything from 6 to 10 hours. Although I might replay some sequences for certain "blink-and-you-miss-it" moments, it isn't a game that holds a huge amount of replay value. As a bonus a part of the sales revenue is donated to help children in Ukraine, if you had concerns over that (though I haven't seen any notice of that in the game itself).
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