I recently moved to an area surrounded by forest, or at least strips of green that look like forests when you're far enough away, even if they don't meet the quantifiable definition currently in vogue. My dreams flare with scenes of sunlight seeping through the shifting layers of beech and oak, with visions of dirt roads winding through the brambles. Now here is Engraving to turn all those dreams into nightmares.
In this first-person occult mystery-horror, you explore a forest that is also a graveyard and, what's more, filled to every corner with ancient curses and restless specters, some of which are distressing although not entirely original arachnid. Your main means of overcoming these dangers is your ability to draw cards. The problem is that when you sleep, all your cards become obsolete. Catch the trailer at the bottom of the page, poking his rugged face out of the undergrowth like a skeleton spider-man who wants to eat your ankles.
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The work of Raffaele Picca, who also works on this game about the giant planetary defense cannonEngraving (Steam link here) introduces you to Silas, “a man once driven by greed, now entangled in a complex web of ancient curses and haunting spirits.” The game involves traveling through distinct named regions, including a few catacombs, in order to learn more about the specters that inhabit this stretch of forest clearly removed from National Trust approval. As you go along, you can draw portions of the forest on paper, but be careful, Silas needs to sleep from time to time, and each time, the forest changes shape.
Yes, there is procgen, and I'm aware that a lot of people are fed up with procgen, but the mood seems promising. While Silas appears to lack a weapon or other means of defending himself, Picca's tweets suggest that he can connect to a parallel dimension, the Nether, to avoid certain bad guys, with the strong caveat that the Nether is home to a few villains of its own.
Presented by Screenshot Saturday Monday back in February, but only discovered by me today, Gravure has the makings of a cool conceptual horror game. I don't find this as alarming as Silk bulb test but I find it scarier than what I played of Still Wakes The Deep, although admittedly I only played about 30 minutes of it. Seems like a good time to dust off old Adam Smith (RPS in peace). hymn to video game cartography.
