A narrative adventure in which conversations are the central axis of a mystery in which you must make use of a time loop. Add the Roman era as a theme and the result is The Forgotten City, a more than interesting video game that is born from a Skyrim mod that already convinced millions of players a few years ago.

Afew years ago, a legal advisor named Nick Pearce came up with the brilliant idea of ​​creating a Skyrim mod that would focus its action on conversations and solving an elaborate mystery in an ancient Roman city. What was born as a personal bet, became a success that garnered millions of downloads and a Writers Guild award, the first in history that a mod received. Something had the narrative of that creation, and it was not long before Pearce decided to take the next step: why not create a standalone video game from said modification?

Three developers and four years later we have The Forgotten City . And yes, it is already another of the great video games of this 2021. It is surprising how such a small team has achieved something so great. The developers claim that, compared to that mod, they have added twice as many lines of script, with more than 80,000 words in total. Twists and various endings have also been included, apart from the fact that the voice of professional actors has been hired and a soundtrack has been added. In short, it is a completely new game, but always under the original idea: go back in time to live a conversational mystery adventure in the first person .

That is the best definition I can give you. Here you will not find large doses of action, a great world to discover or infinite characters to chat with. Everything takes place in a rather small city and with very few characters. But that means nothing. The key is in the plot, in following what the locals have to tell us, drawing conclusions and unraveling the secret that this place lost in space and time hides . If you like what I tell you, keep reading, because it is a good indication that you may be interested.

Groundhog Day in Roman Version: Analysis of The Forgotten City. A fantastic narrative journey to ancient times that you will not want to return to

Imagine that one fine day you are walking through some ruins and suddenly you find yourself in an unknown city 2,000 years ago in time . This is what happens to our protagonist, who by the way we give a name and appearance to get even more in the situation. What we see amazes us: a city of ancient times! We have gone back several centuries in time and now the next question we ask ourselves is how to get out of there . But doing so will not be easy. We are locked in a time loop that seems like it can only be undone when we give rise to a paradox. The mystery has just begun.

The mechanics of The Forgotten City are as simple as they are effective. We must speak with the 23 inhabitants of this forgotten city and unravel the secret it hides. We will meet politicians, merchants, artisans, health workers and a good cast of personalities (among which there are also good elements). And I like that, because each character has a very well defined personality , precisely because there are few of them and great attention has been paid to them when building the script. In a sense, while you play you know that they are there and for some reason they feel alive. There will be some that you love and others that you hate a little bit, as if they were your particular virtual neighbors.

Sooner rather than later you will realize a terrible reality: all these inhabitants are doomed to never leave the city walls. You too. All you can do is try to find your way out by listening to their conversations and solving their problems while using the time loop to get back to the city day after day. And you will say to me: is that any good? Of course. Although they do not remember you, you will remember everything they have told you. In addition, you will keep all the objects you collected, something that will give you a great advantage when it comes to eliciting information and solving certain situations.

And now comes the best: the golden rule . It is a playable narrative idea that articulates the entire story. Basically, the city is governed by a simple rule: do not enrage the gods. If you kill, steal, lie or commit any sinful act, the golden statues of the city will come to life and begin to kill everyone. It may seem like a terrible thing, right? It is, but this will loop in time for you to come back. So that you understand, I will give you an example. Imagine that an inhabitant is poisoned and needs a medicine to survive. Well, let’s say that your only option is to steal it … and finally you do it because you know that you will be able to go back in time, that no one will remember what you have done and that you will keep the possession of the longed-for elixir.

The game contains very eye-catching scenes to take advantage of with the Photo Mode, also available.

That is the key that sustains the dynamics of the game. You have to talk a lot and at the same time know how to live with the golden rule and the time loop. As I say, do not expect action , although there is, it is very circumstantial. Exploration is much more frequent, but there is no big open world. Rather, it is a small city, which even seems big for the twenty citizens that inhabit it. Of course, there are some actions such as the zip line to move faster. You can also interact with a small number of objects and read not a few documents that help to get more into the plot.

The setting is sensational and you really end up being part of this particular citySo during the about 10 hours that the game lasts, most of the time you will spend going from one place to another to talk with its inhabitants. You must take it into account. The narrative is very good and has a good handful of surprising moments. But you must definitely like this kind of approach. Luckily, the dialogues are perfectly translated into Spanish and the voices have an English dub that looks really good. Maybe not so much the body and facial animations, which are not bad but not outstanding either, although it is something you can get used to.

In general, the setting is sensational and you really end up being part of this particular city. There are times when music imitates Roman movies and the effects, although a step behind, do their job. The architecture of Ancient Rome is perfectly recreated (there are also Egyptian and Greek influences) and you will even find various objects that the most put on the subject will know how to recognize. It is a very effective trip to the past: another of the incentives for enjoying a conversational adventure that does not have state-of-the-art graphics, but one that fulfills this immersive task very well .

The game has a good handful of configuration options and its requirements are quite affordable . You can control antialiasing, post-processing effects, shadows, textures, foliage… With my test rig (i7-3770 with Radeon RX 470) I have experienced some slowdowns with the highest level of quality. By taking the settings down a notch (to “high”), stability improved a lot and it became my preferred choice for the rest of the game. In this regard, the technical finish, the game suffers from some problems and errors, although perfectly understandable if we consider the scale of the project.

I should also tell you that the game has several endings , and that obtaining the best one involves following a series of steps. In reality, it is a game that varies depending on how you play it, the decisions you make, and therein lies the magic too. It is difficult to explain, but just know that if you want to read a lot, investigate and unravel the mystery behind an apparently inexplicable fact, here you have a great option. Of course, you don’t see games this daring and smart every day, so if you don’t want to break the golden rule, maybe you should consider trying it.