Gloomwood

Amazeballs!

(Thoughts after finishing the version after the Cartographers Update) I'm often less likely to get excited by a game when it excels in all areas than I am when it hits all the specific areas I'm weak to. This game wears its influences on its sleeve, and I like just about all those influences. The moment I realized the game was basically Bloodborne atmosphere with Dishonored mechanics I was helpless to resist it. I'm generally a hard sell with pure stealth. It feels like most stealth games handle failure by punishing your time. Immersive Sims, by contrast, tend to punish stealth failure by taxing your resources or your combat skill. Every time I'm impatient I waste bullets and health, and the more I'm missing, the more tense it gets. I imagine for some people this game feels like Thief, but for me it often has the tension of a Resident Evil game. If I enjoy the atmosphere of a game, the job is already half done, and Gloomwood is drenched in that. The sound design and the visuals combine to really make the player feel trapped in a desperate world, and in some ways the low-poly retro visuals actually intensify this feeling, letting the imagination fill in some things. If I have gripes, they're minor ones. The game's few stabs at humor don't really do much for me. Some of the lines the merchant says feel like they'd be more at home in a Borderlands game. There aren't a ton of these moments, but they definitely take me out of it. I also don't know if the Early Access model does this any favors, but I also acknowledge that at the rate these levels appear to be coming out, I'm not sure if it would have been economically viable for these creators to wait until it's done. But I do find myself wondering how much I'll remember by the time the bank level actually comes out. Though who am I kidding, if that happens I'll just use it as an excuse to replay the whole thing.