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Another fascinating walking simulator from the creator of Remnants

  • Gretgor
  • 09/25/2020 10:10 PM
  • 796 views
The two games this author has posted to his RMN account play pretty much the same. They're walking simulators revolving around exploring a bizarre surreal place. In both games, there's very little challenge, and a very thin amount of things to do. Surprisingly, though, both of them work. They're enjoyable to "walk" through from start to finish due to their fascinating and mesmerizing aesthetic.

They're not the first games to make the "walk around and explore with little else to do" thing enjoyable, obviously. I mean, I believe I've cited Yume Nikki and the entire subculture of fangames it's spawned on my review of Remnants, and I feel like both games draw a lot from that particular subculture. The environments are fun to explore because they are interesting, atmospheric, varied, and rich in symbology and hidden meaning.

Given the obvious similarities between this game and its predecessor, one would assume this game is just retreading old ground, deviating very little from the formula that made the first one good, but that's not entirely true. There are a ton of very significant differences between this game and Remnants.

For starters, the art seems more detailed. It's hard to explain what exactly gives me that impression, but they look like the author has improved a lot from the first game.

Also, while Remnants gets darker the deeper you delve into the ruins, this game is dark right from the get go, setting us up for a significant difference in tone. Say, where Remnants went for "psychedelic", this one goes for "surreal horror", and I actually prefer this style. I don't know, something about the gruesomeness of it all makes it a lot more tantalizing to my exploration senses.

This more somber tone makes sense in the third difference between this game and Remnants: the story. In Remnants, you're just a person with a deathwish exploring some ruins in the middle of a forest, and in Labyrinth, you're some sort of supernatural entity that is summoned by some unspecific deity to "do what you must," which seems to involve collecting tons of these symbolic "relics" all over the place.

Another significant difference between this game and Remnants is the overall structure. While in Remnants, you progress by going down, and every "level" of the ruins is a concise and interconnected series of rooms, in Labyrinth, as the name implies, the world is a lot more labyrinthine, being shaped like sort of a large maze without a no-return "level" structure. I, for one, appreciate this format. In a game with samey rooms and environments, a maze would be a tedious and angering pace killer, but with the awesome presentation this game has, the maze-like form works wonders, because no two rooms look even remotely the same, so it's never too hard to figure out whether you've already been in a place or not.

As you progress through the deep entrails of this bizarre twisty world, you stumble upon some really crazy stuff. I don't want to spoil much, but some of them caught me off guard big time. Not that they ever put me in any danger, since this game is just a walking simulator, but they did surprise me. I can't even begin to imagine the thought process that went on inside the creator's mind, nor the hours upon hours of work that went into making every single room in the labyrinth unique, but I must say, it paid off.

Every relic you collect contains a small bit of dialog. They never talk about the labyrinth in full detail, instead going for more cryptic and indirect descriptions of what goes on in it, so it's up to the player to piece everything together. The lack of any real danger does undermine the somberness of it all somewhat, but not enough to make the game boring. I mean, a sense of danger could have made the game scarier, sure, but that might not have been what the author was going for, and I respect that.

In general, this game is a delight to play through. The environments are fascinating and full of bizarre subliminal messages, and the sheer craziness of it all is a sight to behold even ignoring all the symbolism. This mesmerizing little walking simulator is a really cool piece of art, and I definitely recommend it to everyone. The biggest complaint I have about this game is that there isn't more of it. I'd have preferred it to be longer, but given how much work goes into every single room, that would probably take ages, so I'm okay with what little we have here.

Posts

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Thank you so much for the review! It made my day to read it.
My very first though when starting this was to make pretty much the opposite of Remnants while still being a rpg maker walking simulator with no fail state, I'm glad to see you noticed all the differences in design.

As for the art, the impression of "having more detail" compared to Remnants is likely because the color palette is very different (Remnants had only bright, saturated hues agains pitch black while this one has 5 different tone for each color, going from almost black to very saturated).

It's a secret, but I may or may not have already started writing down ideas for my next game... only hint I can give is that it will have the same top down perspective but it won't be made with rpg maker.

Thank you for playing the game and again for the review!
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