Editor’s note: Hello! Over the next few days we’re running a “Games That Got Away” series, where we finally get round to reviewing games that released at some point in 2021 but, for various reasons, we couldn’t quite manage to cover at the time.
We’ve gone back to a few real gems, so for more catch-up reviews like this one head to the Games That Got Away hub, where all our pieces from the series will be rounded up in one convenient place. Enjoy!
I had heard going in that The Forgotten City was a sort of first-person adventure game concerned with morality and the dense questions of right and wrong. And probably free will and the social contract and a bunch of other stuff I am generally too thick to understand.
The Forgotten City review
- Publisher: Dear Villagers, Ubitus K.K.
- Developer: Modern Storyteller
- Platform: Played on Xbox
- Availability: Out on PC and Xbox (Game Pass), PS4, PS5 and Switch
And it is about those things! But it manages to bring them alive in a way that is fascinating and generous, a way that invites everybody in. And it’s also spooky and weird and thrilling and audacious.
Oh, to begin you are lost in the woods, dragged from a river and prompted to enter a strange ruin nearby. Someone else has gone in recently, a man called Al, and maybe you could find him and make sure he’s safe?
He’s not safe, of course, and neither are you. After a tumble straight out of Alice in Wonderland you land deep underground, in an ancient city that has been chiselled from the rock. No getting back the way you came – only forward.