The Forgotten City

Good game, The story is fascinating and intriguing.

Really good!

好玩

very good, all my homies love Galerius

[b]A well-written, time-loop-based narrative where your choices are everything[/b] I went in almost entirely blind, thinking this would be a first-person puzzle adventure, but it's really more of a first-person mystery. It's a time loop game about a lost civilization, with 4 different endings. Bulk of the gameplay is talking to NPCs to learn what they know and try to influence their choices, exploring, observing, and that Groundhog Day thing where you can experiment without permanent consequences and quickly/optimally resolve all situations because you already know exactly what's going to happen and what does/doesn't work. It's got shades of Majora's Mask, in the way your interaction with different NPCs has ripple effects that either unlocks or locks you out of different choices in that loop. I only have a couple minor complaints, which both relate to the action elements of the game. Each time the loop is coming to an end, (spoilers for loop mechanics only) [spoiler]you have to race back to a specific spot in town where the portal back in time always appears, while angels of death stationed all over town use you for target practice. For the player-character background I chose, as well as one of the two other options I could have chosen, you have no weapon or defense that's effective against them, and you can only take about 3 hits before dying. If you die without making it back to the reset location, you'll lose any physical items you have collected on that loop (which you'd have been able to carry through the portal with you if you had made it back).[/spoiler] There's also an optional side quest that's in a survival horror style, and the reward is an item that lets you access locked areas without needing keys, by granting you the ability to use your environment in platform-y ways. I'm just going to say it: [b]Games that control the way this game does should not have action or platforming sequences.[/b] Nobody expects a Myst-like to have super-smooth, responsive controls - you just need to be able to accomplish basic movement in 3D space without getting stuck on or falling through the scenery, and it's fine. That bar is significantly higher for action and platforming, and while the sequences here don't rise to the level of being outright frustrating, they also don't feel [i]good[/i] - especially the platform-y bits in the side quest mission. Luckily it's a very small part of the game, even if you do the optional mission. As a whole, the game was so much deeper and more engaging and well-written than I was expecting. The characters, the world-building, the weaving of real historical fact and moral philosophy 101 so seamlessly with the actual game mechanics. [b]It's one of those games like Stardew Valley or Outer Wilds where you can [i]feel[/i] how much care and passion went into making it.[/b] You can tell it was someone's baby, a labor of love they were glad to perform, not a commercial product that employees punched a clock to deliver to client specifications. I saw two of the endings, including the "canonical" or "best" ending. The canon ending was [b]very[/b] satisfying. A lot of mystery games build up a lot of intrigue and mystery during the game, and then deliver these sort of anti-climactic endings that feel like they just hand-waved away all that mystery for the sake of rushing things to a too-tidy conclusion that just makes you think, "Okay." When you had been expecting or hoping for an ending that was going to make you think, "Whooaa. No way!" The ending of The Forgotten City was the opposite of that. It felt logical, it felt earned, and most importantly, it felt like an appropriate reward for the investment I made in pursuing it. --- Played on a Windows 11 PC with an RTX 5070, Ryzen 7 9700X, and 32GB RAM. No crashes or noticeable performance issues.

Incredible

[h3]Story (1/5)[/h3] A story created by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, for ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I will now swiftly spoil the whole story for you so that you don't have to waste your time. Karen (Charon) drops you off in front of the entrance to a city of modern day Rome. No, not Ancient Rome like the Steam description says, but the modern, gayer, fake version of Ancient Rome. The type you could see being described on r/History. Anyway, you find out that there is a Golden Rule in this place and that no one can leave. The Golden Rule is that if one person commits a crime, everyone turns to gold. You have the ability to time travel, so you try to figure out a way to stop ♥♥♥♥♥♥ from committing crimes and get everyone out of this California. Skip the boring ass 7 hours of doing fetch quests and going back and forth to solve every minor ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ inconvenience for everyone with a pulse, and you finally uncover the truth behind this entire system and place. Aliens. That's right. Aliens made a wager over whether humanity can go without sin for a year in this hellhole. So they tossed around a thousand silver coins onto Earth, and whoever possessed one at the moment of death would get transported into this experiment chamber known as *The Forgotten City*. This ♥♥♥♥ clearly doesn't work, so you and another ♥♥♥♥♥ named Al are the last two coin holders. If you both ♥♥♥♥ up, humanity is ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Oh, and Al killed himself at the start of the game, so now it's up to you to persuade this alien that he is wrong. I persuade him by threatening to kill his wife using the power of his wife (time travel), and instead of frying my soul to dust right then and there, he decides to let all of us go back to Earth. Like, I don't know how Pluto is this retarded. You have the technology to pull souls out of people into a fake afterlife. Surely you can zap my ass right then and there before I run a kilometer back to the starting point of the fast travel. So the basic message of the game is that God is a retarded alien and that there is no such thing as a single true moral system. Wonderful. This "game" is clearly made by people who think they have the whole world figured out and are very proud of themselves, and definitely not by retarded atheists. [b][i]Now imma drop a truth nuke on every atheist reading this. You are an atheist because you have done wrong in your life. You have, in fact, sinned, and instead of repenting and asking for forgiveness, you have decided to double down and make up ♥♥♥♥ about morality and sin not existing. This doubling down is rewarded with the praise of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ on Reddit, Discord, X, etc. However, this is all cope, because eventually you will pass on, but not into Heaven. You will go to Hell. What type of Hell is dependent on the religion your parents practiced and tried to pass on to you. But since you have a gigantic ego and think you are right all the time, you have decided to forsake not only your parents but your future kin and community. You are like Saint Peter, except you have forsaken your God at every opportunity you had, without thinking twice about it. The eternal reward for that retarded behavior is simply Hell. So no amount of coping and validation whoring online will help you. Your fate is already sealed. I can only hope that your future kin won't join you in your eternal suffering.[/i][/b] Anyway, my main problem with the story is that it's lame and gay. It takes a good premise, smashes it over the head with r/atheism, r/history, and every other morally wrong idea while trying to present them as correct. In this mortal world, you have committed one true wrong that every normal adult across the world, from every religion, can agree on. You wasted the time and money of everyone who tried to give your game a chance. [h3]Gameplay (1/5)[/h3] If you watch the game on YouTube, you've basically played the game. But don't even watch it, because there is nothing worthwhile to see. There are no major choices until the end, and even those choices are retarded. It is simply not a game, but the sad cries of someone who is to be damned. Very sad to see. [h3]Difficulty (1/5)[/h3] Walking sim. [h3]Game Time (1/5)[/h3] Wasted. [h3]Graphics (1/5)[/h3] Historically accurate California, not Rome. [h3]Music and Sound Design (1/5)[/h3] Why do they talk like that? Ah, that's right. Californians are inhuman. [h3]Performance (2/5)[/h3] Laggy-ass game. [h3]Price (1/5)[/h3] 24,99€? If you give even 1€ to this game, then you are willingly paying someone to waste the next 6-10 hours of your life. Just get a friend to keep choking you out if you want to waste that time. [h1][b]Final Verdict ([u]1/5[/u])[/b][/h1] Atheist made ♥♥♥♥. Not even a game, just ♥♥♥♥. As are all things that self proclaimed atheists make. Very sad behavior, and I pray that they improve in every aspect of their lives.