Forsaken Denizen

Forsaken Denizen is a survival horror game taking place in a far-future space monarchy. An extradimensional investment group has corrupted everyone’s cybernetic implants, and now most people are trapped in the roots of a giant golden tree, while monstrous figures roam the city. Left to stand against the Accretion Group are Doris (the PC), a member of the noncitizen underclass who’s clawed her way up to being a regular working stiff, and her girlfriend, Princess Cathabel X (the narrator). (They met when Dor tried to rob Cath at gunpoint. It’s a long story.)

The gameplay is simple: you shoot at enemies; mostly you hit, sometimes you miss, even more rarely you crit. They attack you; mostly they hit, sometimes they miss (I don’t think they can crit, which is good because you only have three HP). On a first playthrough, at least, you don’t really get any meaningful upgrades or additional options or anything that would change the formula. There’s some strategy involved, but it’s mostly “do I have enough bullets that I feel OK expending them on this enemy or should I move one room over and hit Z until said enemy leaves?” (Of course, this is more or less typical of survival horror, but I think the thing that gets me here is that it’s all RNG-based and there’s no way for the player’s skill to come into the equation the way it usually does in graphical examples of the genre.)

I have to admit that I wished there were a little more dimension to it, but you know what, it doesn’t matter that much, because I loved the vividly weird setting, loved scouring the map for missable tidbits of lore, and, most of all, loved Dor and Cath and the relationship between them. Dor is scrappy and wary and already well accustomed to doing what it takes to survive at all costs, but she still manages a surprising degree of compassion for others. Cath is spoiled and naive and not really used to thinking of the masses as people, but she genuinely loves Dor and that ultimately enables her growth.

And this growth is, really, the core of the story. There’s a lot of sci-fi worldbuilding and some very straightforward sociopolitical allegory (to the tune of “you can’t fix an unjust system by playing by its rules, and you especially cannot do this in a top-down way as someone highly privileged by this system”), but the real meat of the thing is the emotional journey of a young woman who has her general worldview (and the power dynamics of her romantic relationship) first unsettled and eventually upended entirely and has to cope with that.

(And if you tilt your head at a weird angle to try to see outside of Cath’s point of view, it might also be a story about a woman who’s gotten a little complacent about letting her girlfriend take care of things, perhaps because that was a pleasant novelty after years of having no one but herself to rely on, and has to regain a little of that self-reliance and find a better balance in the relationship as well. Since we don’t get to peek at Dor’s thoughts, it’s a lot more ambiguous—it’s entirely possible that she just spends most of the game in shock and eventually snaps out of it—but I do like to think that she has her own arc going on.)

So although I didn’t find the gameplay especially engaging on its own, I quickly became invested enough in the characters and their relationship that I never considered giving up, and I was absolutely satisfied with where their story went and on the whole felt like my time was well spent.

This is a long exploration game involving picking up and using various tools and ammunition in a surreal technomagical future.

Many Pacian games are in such an environment; Gun Mute and Weird City Interloper come to mind. This game, though, seems to be directly set in the same universe as the game he released last year, Killing Machine Loves Slime Prince. Both involve solar royalty (the Third Prince in the previous game and the Second Princess in this one) and many of the other characters and concepts pop up in both games.

In this game specifically, the princess (your girlfriend) has defaulted on a big debt, and the debtors have come to collect. Golden roots have invaded the city and are sucking the life out of all the office workers while Mad Max-style Junkers (I've never seen Mad Max, just going off vibes here) roam the city attacking anyone they see. Your goal is to save and/or chastise the princess while rescuing the citizens.

A variety of survivors can be found throughout the city, each unique, with widely varying personalities and amounts of helpfulness. Conversation is menu-based, and can change depending on your progression.

The gameplay features simple randomized combat using rolls for attack and defence, both of which can be modified by equipping special clothing. Your only weapon is a gun which comes unloaded. You have three inventory slots (including the gun) and this is filled over time with items like lockpicks and money.

I had a bad experience at first. Combat is random, you can't UNDO, and I didn't find any ammo in the first area. There is an enemy at a bridge right away, and to use the bridge you need several actions, so I was just getting hurt with no way to fight back and the monster wouldn't go away. It felt frustrating, like the game had set up a complex system and wasn't letting me interact with any of it. I had to use all my healing items and didn't find any more for a long time, and I was resigned to not really enjoying the game.

Fortunately, past the ammo-less opening (I hope I'm wrong and someone points out that I missed some really helpful early ammo so others don't suffer my same fate--Edit: someone did find early ammo, so it's just my fault!), the game is a lot more fun. Combat can either take place through violence or through escape and patience, and I chose the latter the most often. It got really intense in one late area with tons of monsters, but I was satisfied when I was able to (Spoiler - click to show)summon an assassin to kill 3 monsters in one turn.

I was invested in the story, and the exploration was smooth and satisfying. I found no bugs. Like many of C.E.J. Pacian's games, there is a great romance element between the leads that is much rarer in parser games than in choice-based games. He's able to turn combat and parser look/take/drop gameplay and make them into acts of love, which is nice.

Great game, lots of fun!

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

There is nothing new in the world, and all art is built on art before it. We know this about the world. Yet year on year, things are still produced that surprise and delight us with novelty. How is this possible? It’s like music. There’s only 7 (12 if generous) notes but look at all the songs! It’s the ordering, pacing, orchestrated tonal qualities, volume, all these variations that bring uniqueness out of sameness. Man does FD deliver a symphony.

It’s like if you took every single decision an author might make – plot, character, background lore – and said “I want each of these things constructed of no fewer than 3 contradictory parts, and each of those parts should be BANANAS.” The protagonist/player is a third person space marine of some kind, but the game is narrated by a first person NPC of royal lineage. The world is under threat from an investment gone wrong(!) that is also apocalyptic and also challenged by ANOTHER apocalypse of some undetermined quality. Antagonists and bosses are simultaneously samey but each with unique details. It would be easy to mix all these things together and get only a muddy mess. FD proves itself an amazing conductor though - pacing things out really well (mostly) so that bonkers builds on bonkers and is not just dumped on you all at once. The fact that EVERY dimension of the story is so bananas helps here, I think. You never really have time to dwell on, say, some outlandish character reveal because HEY LOOK OVER THERE! now the plot has taken a turn! Ok, but would… HEY, SHINY BACKGROUND LORE!! I used orchestration earlier somewhat tongue in cheek, but its details are dispensed so regularly yet diversely it hits the exact sweet spot of increasing-engagement and no-time-to-poke-holes. Eventually, you just surrender and trust the wild ride you are on. I can’t say enough about the pacing of this thing, it is supremely well constructed to lob curves at you any time familiarity starts to settle in, right up to the end.

I haven’t spent much time specifically lauding the background lore here, so let me correct that oversight now. Like a fractal mirror of the entire work, its background is a chunky gazpacho of crazy - a Chex Mix where each part is satisfying to crunch, but whose saltiness begs for more, only instead of more corn chex, you now get a pretzel or cheese cracker or whatever. Ok, now I want more of that! Nossir, here come the peanuts! If you had nothing but peanuts, you would quickly start wondering “wait, some of these peanuts are undersalted or half-roasted.” Not here! It’s the variety that sums to more than its parts by so completely hiding its parts’ gaps. If you’re the type that picks MnMs out of Gorp, this is not your narrative. Grab a handful and start gulping, you get what you get.

If there is an anchoring aspect to the work, it is its gameplay. This is a well-established paradigm of explore, unlock areas, find and use items with light random-based combat. And save points! Yes, you are managing combat resources (bullets), but like video games, they seem to be stashed in a large variety of decreasingly likely places. In other works, this might rub against engagement, but here it is just a fine detail lost in the sauce, a nod to its inspirations more than mimesis defeating. This underpinning mechanical infrastructure ultimately acts as the player’s guide to the game, its familiarity a much needed asset to navigate the wild stuff happening in the world. It is a nifty trick, crucial to the game’s success.

I gotta say, this was a heady brew. Gameplay that elsewhere might leave me cold and unimpressed was so well seasoned with story and chaos, I bounded from one encounter to another fully Engaged. The puzzle was never really too difficult, the text cued the next beats clearly enough, and the ever-present antagonists were the perfect balance of not overwhelming, but too impactful to ignore. Their presence augmented what might otherwise be mechanical ‘find key use key explore new area’ gameplay.

Yeah, this one really worked for me.

Played: 10/8/24
Playtime: 2hr, finished, died many times
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaged/Mostly Seamless
Would Play Again: I could see coming back to it in a few years

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless