The Faraway King

Something a bit different to anything else I've played, which is mainly what I want from indie games. In various places it occasionally reminded me of Sunless Sea, or Kentucky Route Zero, or a Japanese visual novel, but ultimately it's its own thing. In fact, the setting, with light magical realist elements in the background of a fictional modern world, felt quite Japanese too. It blends light humour with a philosophical undercurrent, touching on themes such as war, identity, magic/science, nature, consciousness, but doesn't really tie them together, at least in this section. The biggest problem is that the EA version doesn't start at the start of the story. It does its best to catch you up in a fun way, but it does mean there's a lot of information to take in. In summary, worth keeping an eye on, whether you get the EA version or wait.

It takes a while to grasp what kind of thing this is, and I imagine this stage would feel better if we started from the start, but I like where it's going. Ultimately, this is a fairly narratively-based game, about story, setting, characters above challenging gameplay. But it does often have quite a bit of freedom for exploration, and the gameplay becomes more involved towards the end, as you search for certain items across large woodland areas. I liked that the art style is quite varied, as I looked forward to what the next section would look like. In some respects it has a Twin Peaks feel, in that it's set in the everyday world (with roughly a 1950s feel), yet there is always a much grander, mystical, or inter-dimensional world lurking under the surface. The ending was a pleasantly weird surprise. Overall I'd rate my Early Access experience at 7.5 out of 10, but I can imagine a world where the full game is a 9+, with the right improvements. No bugs for me.

I wasn't sure whether to try this, as the store page made it sound like it might not be there yet, but I'm glad I did. Currently there are times where it feels a bit muddled, and you're having to deal with a lot of information, but by the end I felt that this is potentially the most exciting upcoming indie game I can recall playing. For me at least, as someone who's into story-heavy games. Something about the blend of philosophical elements with bizarre silliness reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut. There's a lot that unique here, so even if I occasionally felt lost with the main story, there was always something interesting going on. In fact, I tended to get more into the less essential parts (e.g. chats with Zxtabela, poncho collecting, exploring random places) than the main goals. There's something about it that leads you to want to imagine the parts of this world you're not seeing. If this can be improved further it could be really special. Ran smoothly and looked great.