KOCHI: Apart from the occasional first-person shooters that gave me a headache, 2021 was an excellent year for videogames. I now have a standard to which I hold games accountable, and that standard is that they must have a gripping story. I played one such game to start off the new year – the theme, a hangover from 2021’s timeloop onslaught. It is called “The Forgotten City”. Barely 15 minutes into the game, and I couldn’t wait to tell anyone who would listen, that they must all play it.
In TFC, I am a self-proclaimed archaeologist, who finds herself lost in an old city. The city is small, with only a few dozen residents. The big secret of the city were its numerous golden statues, scattered as scarcely as garbage on the beach. The statues are shiny relics of people who looked as though they were frozen mid-action. I soon learn that the city suffers from the curse of ancient gods. The residents are trapped there in perpetuity, stuck in a land of the past – around the time of the Roman empire. Obviously, my goal is to escape this place. It’s not just because there is no internet, or because the women had no voting rights at the time. It’s because the gods had enforced this ludicrous judgement known as the “Golden Rule”.
Simply explained, the “Golden Rule” is a philosophical idea of only doing the right thing - the good thing. Even if one person in the city commits a sin, the whole city pays for it. I am a really nice person, so I found it fairly easy to do the right thing in the game. However, morality is not strictly defined. As I talk to the residents, I find that the dialogues are written well, and also - not all wrongful activities are condemned. The game forces us to ask deeper questions: How do humans identify what bad deeds are? How do we distinguish between a boo-boo and a misguided judgement? Does it deserve punishment if rationalized? The moment I gained this unwanted enlightenment, I stopped holding myself back. I did everything wrong that I could do to get out of this hellish utopia.
Thankfully, or sadly, I was stuck in a time-loop. Whenever I made a mistake, or made someone slip-up, the day restarted (for everyone but me). But with each re-entry, I had added information – eventually helping me uncover the mystery. I won’t say more. You must play it – it’s a great game for beginners and seasoned gamers alike. A full 10/10 from me. It’s available across consoles – PS, Xbox, and PC.