Jusant

On the surface, Jusant is a game about climbing, and while the vast majority of the game consists of it, it is everything outside of climbing that actually makes it stand out to me. Because outside of the fairly straightforward gameplay is a story hidden away in notes, letters and logbooks left by those that once inhabited the mysterious structure you are climbing. A story about economic decline, existence in a world without a future and the ways these things can influence people's relationships. As previously mentioned, the gameplay itself consists mainly of climbing. The climbing itself is kept relatively simple, to the point that you will likely never really lose any major progress to a fall or mistake. After a while, the climbing feels fairly natural, and while it is repetitive, it didn't get to a point where it felt irritating to me over the length of the game. I would definitely recommend using a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse, as the controls are noticeably more optimized for it. Jusant looks very beautiful graphically and does a great job at representing different environments that are different enough from each other to feel new but still clearly belong to the same world. Storytelling and interaction with the world is generally constricted to reading notes and letters that people left behind. These short written notes were honestly a highlight of the game for me, as they were very well written and tied back to one another in interesting ways. Aside from the notes, there were clam shells that allowed you to listen to the past ambience of the place you found them, but while I find the idea very endearing, I didn't really find them all that engaging or interesting in practice. Overall, I think Jusant is a very endearing and enjoyable game that I would wholeheartedly recommend to people that are into these more „artsy“ games. It didn't quite resonate with me to the same extent I've seen it resonate with others, but the fact that it's almost unanimously recommended by people who have played it should be reason enough to give it a try.