“After I was younger,” the villager washing clothes within the river says, “I assumed it was sufficient to wash the soiled laundry as soon as and be calm. Not that it’s going to get soiled ceaselessly.” I’m unsure I’ve ever felt the crushing weight of common entropic decay so keenly as in that RPG maker textbox, nested upon Felvidek’s nicotine-stain hues. I’ll want to wash my keyboard quickly. I preserve taking screenshots of Felvidek. I can’t take sufficient. I wish to make a scrapbook of each character and each line. Neither my laundry nor keyboard will ever be clear ceaselessly both, but when I hate Felvidek for emphasising that, I adore it for reminding me that each one the perfect artwork is buttressed by an irremovable layer of deep, thick grime.
Felvidek, set in fifteenth century Slovakia, is all about honeyed phrases and grubby deeds. Pavol is an alcoholic knight with marriage woes. Matej is a seemingly religious although typically hilariously versatile priest. They’re a farcical if dedicated double-act who typically alternate between curbing and inspiring one another’s worst instincts. Jozef, an area lord that consistently pesters everybody in earshot to play board video games he’s imported from yonder lands, sends them each off to research some strangeness at a fort. Cue a story of secret cults and cursed beans, dysentery and infidelity, and the significance of at all times rocking a shit-eating grin, even if you’ve simply been shanked within the stomach by a beloved one.
It’s a small map and the sport is brief, though I don’t suppose it wanted to be any longer. You dash about on its overworld, discover, speak to of us. Journey would not take lengthy, so I preserve going again to the village to listen to the girl washing clothes within the river speak in regards to the garments that get soiled ceaselessly. About decay. The guitar tones that rating this village are alcohol-wipe clear, however now and again a cataclysmic screech of static bursts out from someplace deep beneath and engulfs them. All the pieces we predict is secure is piled on prime of chaos like sandcastles on fault strains. All the pieces we clear will get dusted in lifeless pores and skin once more quickly sufficient. Each time you come to Jozef, he helpfully reminds you the place to go subsequent. Construction. Chaos. Construction.
There’s a chaos buried underneath the villages and castles of Felvidek, and you’ll have to unearth and stab it later. However your first scrap will doubtless be the citadel armourer, who retains telling Pavol he stinks like a polecat till you’re compelled to beat him into promoting you gear. And it is gear you’ll need, because it’s the one strategy to get stronger. The sport describes itself as a JRPG, so fights towards such polecat-prejudiced armourers are turn-based and filled with standing results. There aren’t any character ranges, however consequently, no force-fed fights or random encounters: violence feels scripted within the theatrical sense, the place it is story beat-downs solely.
Fights additionally really feel lethal, even in the event you’ve received a list filled with heals and are by no means greater than two scraps and a brief dash away from a full get together heal at a church. However why pray to an absent god when you may as an alternative watch Pavol guzzle a bucket of bitter cream in first particular person mid-battle? Why shamefully prostrate your self in penance, when you may watch a drunk, bleeding knight quickly spoon porridge into his face so he has sufficient skill factors to mace-pulp a purple-gowned cultist?
It lends the sport a terse tone theatrically, baroque within the second however skimmed of fats as a complete. As does the prose, written with the kind of knowingly fashionable send-up of plummy medieval thrives meaning each line takes twice as lengthy to learn because it seems to be, however may be very a lot value the additional effort. Generally the writing is witty and crass and crested with pathos, and typically it’s simply humorous due to how convoluted it’s. Studying it’s like chewing large mouthfuls of fine bread: takes some jawing, however value it to observe Pavol and Matej talk about the theological nuances of a priest visiting a brothel. A few of it may be interval correct, however typically it’s a guard who you gave an nearly appropriate password to saying “thou knowest what? Come hither.” It’s a bit bit Shakespeare, some Stoppard, Cervantes. And sure, a bit Python.
I collect you’ll be able to end Felvidek in about two hours, however it took me about double that. Weird and loathsome people have coin, in the event you really feel like being a knight when you’re ready for the tavern to start out serving once more. A stray dialog with an NPC gathering pears for brandy takes on all of the twisting depth and presence of a lysergic parable, and a selection so simple as as to whether to steal a sip of that brandy may see Pavol awakening in darkness to a spot of mutants, static wails, and deep confusion. The story takes place in phases, locking out some quests and providing new ones at sure moments. Largely, you’re free to discover, however typically you’re locked in for some time, like when Pavol, hardy nutter that he’s, remains to be afraid to return into his grasp’s citadel in his underwear after having his garments stolen.
I needed to make Pavol my very own a bit greater than the sport let me. He’s an alcoholic in prose, however not often ever in deed. Various kinds of collectable spirits are plentiful, and I feel I anticipated him to get the shakes after some time, performing worse in fight if I didn’t preserve him topped up, however no such enjoyable. The grime and the loss of life and the RPG fight, and particularly an early encounter that killed me proper in the beginning, put me in thoughts of the Worry and Starvation video games. I feel Felvidek would have benefitted from a bit extra of this lethal choose-your-own-demise sadism, however on reflection, solely on the replay. What you get as an alternative is a superbly fashioned and paced single viewing, advised by a black humoured, bawdy bard who weeps in secret at evening over the inevitable decay of all the pieces, however by no means drops the shit-eating grin for a second.
This overview is predicated on a overview construct of the sport offered by the developer.
