THE EDGELANDS
Yes, I will totally play a game which describes a bathtub as “yawning” and “crouching”, especially in a supernatural/ horror setting where it seems any creature, or suspicious object, could suddenly devour me. The Edgelands is beautifully written and immediately reminiscent of games like Fallen London and Sunless Sea. I later remembered that this is a Fundbetter game; one that Failbetter Games has invested money in. If nothing else, this recommends the strength of the storytelling much better than me blithely repeating its many evocative adjectives.
If the art weren’t so lovely, I’d say this actually feels more like a text adventure than a graphic adventure. Sure, the player’s direction is pre-filled, so that you don’t type “look”, you select it from a few choices styled to look like a command line interface, but the action largely flows between passages of text, rather than from physical exploration. Actually, probably my one criticism of the game is that the character’s movement is very slow, so you’re forced into a lengthy wait for basic progression, with your finger resting on W,A, So rD.
Of course, this enforced slowness may be part of the designer’s intent. It’d be a weird game to speedrun. Certainly, I’ve never been as enchanted by a cat licking itself, or a plastic bag rolling past like dystopian tumbleweed, as while trying to cross a screen, left to right. There is time to note graffiti and trash fires, as well as high class people dining next to a polluted river by the light of their phones. But, again, this feels perhaps more like the ambient detail you’d imagine alongside your text, rather than the game itself.
As with Rakuen, solving puzzles relies on simply having objects in your possession as you approach the place they are used. This means that touching things in the right order often becomes how to progress, rather than through thoughtfulness. Some choices, like between whether to use a key on a door or to walk away, don’t even seem worth making. Others, like whether to drown or save a spider, feel important even if there is no immediate, obvious consequence. As the game opens out into larger locations, puzzling gets more complex.
The more I read, the more I want to understand this place. Somehow, both industry and nature are powerful, and your way can be blocked as easily by a barbed wire fence or the barbed tendrils of a plant. Similarly, the music combines electronic sounds, chiptune references and detuned, metal, collision instruments, suggesting both the breakdown of a technological society as well as some other, ancient force. One of the most telling things, to my mind, is how aloofly the protagonist travels through quite dark and unusual places.
The Edgelands is a compelling and beautifully written near-text-adventure that explores how additional aspects of its presentation can function. At least, that’s what it was to me. It was also clearly structured as narrative vignettes in an unusual place, but I wouldn’t say I entirely understood the story. It didn’t really matter. I wouldn’t recommend the game to everyone, but if you have time and the inclination to read words, it’s for you. It’s the kind of game where the difference between a ritual and an obscure shopping list may not be immediately obvious.
if the art weren’t so lovely, I’d say this actually feels more like a text adventure