“Once I was younger,” the villager washing clothes within the river says, “I believed it was sufficient to scrub the soiled laundry as soon as and be calm. Not that it’ll get soiled endlessly.” I’m undecided 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 scrub my keyboard quickly. I maintain 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 endlessly both, but when I hate Felvidek for emphasising that, I adore it for reminding me that each one the most effective 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, a neighborhood lord that always pesters everybody in earshot to play board video games he’s imported from yonder lands, sends them each off to analyze some strangeness at a fort. Cue a story of secret cults and cursed beans, dysentery and infidelity, and the significance of all the time rocking a shit-eating grin, even whenever you’ve simply been shanked within the stomach by a cherished one.
It’s a small map and the sport is brief, though I don’t assume it wanted to be any longer. You dash about on its overworld, discover, speak to of us. Journey does not take lengthy, so I maintain going again to the village to listen to the girl washing clothes within the river speak in regards to the garments that get soiled endlessly. About decay. The guitar tones that rating this village are alcohol-wipe clear, however every now and then a cataclysmic screech of static bursts out from someplace deep beneath and engulfs them. Every part we expect is secure is piled on high of chaos like sandcastles on fault traces. Every part we clear will get dusted in lifeless pores and skin once more quickly sufficient. Each time you come back to Jozef, he helpfully reminds you the place to go subsequent. Construction. Chaos. Construction.
There’s a chaos buried below the villages and castles of Felvidek, and you’ll have to unearth and stab it later. However your first scrap will probably be the fortress 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 option to get stronger. The sport describes itself as a JRPG, so fights towards such polecat-prejudiced armourers are turn-based and full of standing results. There are not 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 case you’ve acquired a listing full of heals and are by no means greater than two scraps and a brief dash away from a full social gathering 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 individual 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 potential 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 form of knowingly fashionable send-up of plummy medieval prospers meaning each line takes twice as lengthy to learn because it appears to be like, however could be very a lot value the additional effort. Typically the writing is witty and crass and crested with pathos, and generally it’s simply humorous due to how convoluted it’s. Studying it’s like chewing huge mouthfuls of excellent bread: takes some jawing, however value it to look at Pavol and Matej focus on the theological nuances of a priest visiting a brothel. A few of it may be interval correct, however generally it’s a guard who you gave an nearly right password to saying “thou knowest what? Come hither.” It’s a bit of bit Shakespeare, some Stoppard, Cervantes. And sure, a bit Python.
I collect you may end Felvidek in about two hours, nevertheless it took me about double that. Weird and loathsome people have coin, in case you really feel like being a knight whilst 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 if 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. Principally, you’re free to discover, however generally you’re locked in for some time, like when Pavol, hardy nutter that he’s, continues to be afraid to return into his grasp’s fortress in his underwear after having his garments stolen.
I needed to make Pavol my very own a bit of 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 maintain 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 at the start, put me in thoughts of the Concern 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 wonderfully fashioned and paced single viewing, advised by a black humoured, bawdy bard who weeps in secret at evening over the inevitable decay of every thing, however by no means drops the shit-eating grin for a second.
This overview relies on a overview construct of the sport supplied by the developer.
