The environment art of The Forgotten City is stunning, depicting life in Roman times, and the detail of the characters is very well done, as is the voice acting.
The Forgotten City is a mystery adventure game of exploration and deduction. It is a reimagining of the critically acclaimed Skyrim mod that won a national Writers’ Guild award and has since racked up over 3 million downloads. It’s set for release on all major platforms on July 28, 2021 with a Nintendo Switch release later in the year. We have been afforded a preview of the game by developers Modern Storyteller and publisher Dear Villagers.
Travel 2,000 years into the past and relive the final days of a cursed Roman city, where if one person sins, everyone dies. Unravel the mystery at the city’s heart by exploiting its deadly time loop, questioning locals, exploring, and solving puzzles. The fate of the city is in your hands. Moral dilemmas are ever present, and if you annoy one person, it may lock you off from other story options later. But, as there’s the time loop mechanic, you can learn from mistakes and make better choices for different outcomes.
It’s an interesting premise where there is only one law, the Golden Rule, where if just one person sins, it turns everyone in the Forgotten City to gold. So when you go in search of a missing person and end up travelling back in time to these Roman times, you are tasked with getting to the bottom of the cities mysteries. But to get to the truth, you may need to sin in order to sway an opinion or obtain an item, or other things that may seem impassable. Do you risk it all and sin anyway for the greater good? That is the big question as I was playing the game preview.
The graphics are amazing, depicting life in Roman times extremely well. The lighting was a bit too bright, but we were warned this may occur in this gameplay demo. Other than that though, the environment art is stunning and the detail of the characters is very well done, as is the voice acting. I was in no rush to get through the quest dialogue and it was a pleasure to go through all talking points with everyone I met so far, often getting information or updates for side quests I had collected. There are four different endings to the game, so it will be great to play through each of them to experience the game to it’s fullest.
I’m really looking forward to diving deep into this mysterious story when the game releases at the end of July. For now though, here’s my adventures into the first hour of the game.
This gameplay preview utilised a Steam key provided by Future Friends Games. The Forgotten City will release on July 28, 2021 on Steam, PlayStation and Xbox, and later in the year on Nintendo Switch.
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Written by: @ChrisJInglis
