Alright. The Nameless City is done and dusted. This is true Lovecraftian horror rather than a game that simply has the tag slapped on because it touches upon madness of psych horror in general. It is very much a walking simulator, takes about an hour to complete, give or take a few minutes, and was in my opinion a really cool game thick with those Lovecraft vibes.

You play as a researcher who has decided to try to unveil the mystery of the Nameless City. A place whose memory was lost to time, sitting in anonymity somewhere in the Middle East. A place that predates Babylon, Sumeria, etc…As you explore, you begin to realize that this was potentially not a place that had been inhabited by humans. The implications of this are enough to literally drive our intrepid researcher mad, although in typical human fashion, his mind attempts to partition the reality he witnessed in these ruins from the reality we mostly all live and breather in. Without diving too far in and getting into spoiler territory, this is pretty much the story as it is presented.

As mentioned, this is a walking simulator, albeit one with adventure game sensibilities. You will walk and crawl through these ruins, triggering a couple lite puzzles, interacting with objects by walking into them, and learning to use specific runes to form spells. This latter system was particularly fascinating to me. It’s not enough to simply want to, say, create or destroy a barrier. You need to know the rune that represents creation or destruction, and the rune that represents a wall or barrier. In combining said runes by utilizing their corresponding words in Ancient Cthulhu (as I’m calling it), you are able to cast a spell whose effect corresponds to the verb and noun you used. Not only is this a super cool way to represent spellcasting and its limitations, but the effort that goes into finding even one rune guarantees that people aren’t just wandering around casting spells willy nilly. Each casting really means something as does the effort that went into finding the means to do so.

You do have a madness meter in this game, represented by how much of your spine you have left, lol. And casting spells has an impact on your meter, positive or negative depending on the spell being cast. Additionally, the amount of light available in an area also factors into your madness or lack thereof. Which makes sense when the implications of investigating remotes and ancient ruins of being likely of eldritch origin are factored in.

The graphics are PS1 era, and actually, in the credits, they do credit a PSX program that allowed them to do this. And yet, despite the very granular and simple nature of the graphics, they were super evocative and creepy. This game did a great job of making you feel every bit of trepidation, uncertainty, and fear your protagonist felt. If anything, I think the use of fifth gen graphics was the ideal choice for this game. If the devs had chosen something more modern, I’m not sure the emotions it evokes would be the same. Audio-wise, there are creepy background tracks, and there is a fully voice acted script, and I really enjoyed the way that was handled. The dude who voiced the protagonist really sounded like an explorer/researcher. It was very effective in building some attachment to what he was experiencing.

This is a short game and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I’m not really seeing any replay value, but it is pretty memorable. Releases on July 12 btw (tomorrow). No idea how it will be priced, but give it a look.