Jusant

Jusant is more of an experience than anything else. It's a short game and it doesn't try to do too much, but I think it was well executed and enjoyable. The primary gameplay in Jusant consists of climbing. You have a rope and can place 3 pitons down. You'll mostly be trying to get from point A to point B (point B usually being up higher) by climbing on whatever you can in the environment, whether it be rocks, buildings, or even little stone creatures. The climbing gameplay itself is not super mechanically complex. It seems designed to be simple on purpose; the point of the game is not to be a hardcore climbing simulator. Nevertheless, it is usually a pretty smooth system. The environments and visuals are probably the best thing about Jusant. Each frame is a feast for the eyes. The tower is full of both vibrant and muted colors and it carries so many little nooks and crannies and buildings. Even if no notes were available to find, you would still be able to get a sense of how people lived there just from the world design. The main story itself is pretty short; I beat the game in about 5 hours and I was taking my time looking for collectibles. I didn't bother going back to get them all, even though I only had a few left, because although there is a chapter replay system that shows you what collectibles you missed, I didn't want to comb over the some of the long levels again. By far, the interesting of the collectibles are the notes you find. Not much is explained to you outright. You are a young adult who is trying to climb a large natural tower, accompanied by a cute little water creature. From the various notes and journal entries scattered around you can piece together that people used to live here, although they are long gone now. Reading about their daily lives was cool, it adds a lot of character to the world that otherwise is done with environmental storytelling. If you are a fan of these somewhat meditative experience type of games, I would recommend Jusant to you. It isn't entirely frictionless since you have to make one or two climbs that are tough, but the game is forgiving and it wants you to see the artistry on display. I think it's worth a try, although perhaps wait for a sale.