It seems we keep coming up with brief free games I could finish in a single sitting to review as of late on this site. That is not a complaint, by the way. The past few of these have hit the idea right out of the park (pun intended in one of their cases). This, however, would not be one of those games. It was a passion project sure, but sometimes, that isn't enough to make it something great.
Story: I am honestly not entirely sure what the story in this game is. It starts with you as an old man freshly diagnosed with dementia. For the moment it seems to be making him forgetful, but not much else is happening yet. If anything he takes a sense of calm in understanding why his memory isn't what it used to be... and then it all shifts and suddenly you are a fox in the wilderness. This is where you will play most of the time, but the field you frolic around isn't a normal one. Rather, the things you dig up seem to be made of memories of the old man, tying the two together in a way the game never defines but assumes you know. But maybe that's the point. This game claims to be about having dementia and could be making intentional disconnects to reflect this.
In addition there is a subplot made of the memories the fox digs up around the old man's childhood which will try to strike at you before it's done. However it is done in the disjointed style that will leave you more focused on that over the traumatic event no one should ever know as a kid. It's a shame since a little more care could have brough this to the front brilliantly.
5/10
Graphics: Forgotten is a user's pet project and it shows right from the starting screen. You will be greeted with a low-polygon clearing near woods. Every single surface looks like it was cut out of wooden blocks to show every angle of the cut, then colored to be what it should be after. Finally the scene was placed so the sunset could light it lovingly... and over it all, a simple basic and default text of the game title over a similar menu. It is rather blatantly different how much time the developer spend on the game itself over the interface it needs to get started, which does work for the game's advantage to be honest, since you will likely never visit the menu again once you start up.
And that game will see the same blocky arts style depicting a few scenes before the game is up. Most of the time, you will play the roll of a fox running around and digging things up in either a wooded coast, a snowy tundra, or a desert, all detailed the same way and with a clear hand of loving care over it all.
And then things start breaking down... distortions of various sorts and corrupted images of static begin to take over the screen as you play and during cutscenes, creating a rather disturbing and disjointed effect that only gets worse as the game goes on, and this is where it shines... as that creepy feel seems to be exactly what this game is going for, and going for it it does! Outside that title screen, this game looks absolutely great.
8/10
Sound: Sound is not going to fair quite so well as the graphics do. There is music, which will be the majority of what you hear, but it is very forgettable, really only suiting to add to the uneasy tone with some of the cutscenes and last level of the game. Nor are there really any sound effects to speak of. Most of the time you will pad around and dig silently, leaving any sound effect work in the cutscenes.
Still these effects definitely add to those scenes as the distortions are used to make them more and more distorted and unnerving to great effect. This will be the detail in the audio that sticks with you after the game is over.
As for voices, well there is some work there, but as the game gets more unhinged and the sounds above take over, they do so for any voice over the game uses. If fades out for the far better effect.
7/10
Gameplay: This is a walking simulator, if one that is a little different then most. Where most walking sims are first person affairs, Forgotten will do this as a 3rd person view as you walk around the three maps that make up the game as a fox. You can walk, run, jump, and dig, and that is about all you will need to do as your goal in each level is find and dig up memories of the old man in the opening of the game. Sadly, however, you do not have the freedom looking around any given map suggests you should have as the devs hem you into where they want you to go with invisible walls. There is plenty to see, but you are not really allowed to forget it's an exhibit.
Still, the game is over in a little over half an hour, so I can't imagine it boring you before you walk away. It just really isn't much at all in this category.
5/10
Bugs: While the game ran very well, it did not run without issues. In the last chapter of the game, the fox you play as distorts pretty hard, enough so that when it was suddenly running sideways, I thought it was just how it was supposed to work, but this was a bug... and it made "digging" up the last items to complete the game that much more difficult.
Digital Rights Management: Outside of Steam linking to the launcher you run it from, this game is DRM free.
Score: I have to be completely honest with you when I talk about Forgotten, it is not a good game. It's an interesting and it certainly does not live up to it's name (you will remember this one), but it is not good. It is simple with very little to do before the credits roll, and it really doesn't give you a lot of room to play with what little it offers, and the events you uncover make next to no sense.
However, it is also a game someone made as a passion project. It wears that passion on it's sleeve, and is a game about a horrible disease which makes the world make no sense to those who fall to it. I still won't call it good. Hell I can't even tell you if it's accurate to what it depicts (thank God for that). But what I can call it is interesting and something I won't forget anytime soon. And for a free game that is over in about half an hour, it doesn't even ask much of your time. You can do far worse then this between the games you really want to play.
5/10
System Requirements:
- AMD Ryzen 3 1200
- 4 GB RAM
- NVidia GT 1030 with 2GB RAM
- Windows 10
- 4 GB of Hard Drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
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