Hello everyone~
How was your week? Mine was full of adventures,
but thankfully nothing like what we're gonna see today here!
The game in question is Bramble: The Mountain King the one game everybody's been talking about how sweet and innocent is...NOT. The game is based on dark, Nordic folklore and - in my opinion - is a masterpiece and has the most beautiful grim landscapes that we've never seen before.
Bramble was created by Dimfrost Studios and was published on Steam on 27 April 2023 by Merge Games. The Steam community has given 932 exceptionally positive reviews within the first month of the game's release.
Bramble: The Mountain King is available to play on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 & 4, Xbox One and Series X/S and Microsoft Windows.
Notable to say that Merge Games has also created and published another - again, in my opinion - masterpiece, Smalland: Giant's Fall which we may talk about later this month.
You take on the role of Olle, a blond boy who lives with his mother and beloved sister in a house deep in the woods. One sweet and peaceful night, Olle wakes up frightened, affected by his mother's stories, and seeks his sister, Lillemor, for comfort. She, however, is not in her bed and the half-open window that bathes the room in moonlight suggests that Olle will break his mother's inviolable rule. He goes out into the woods alone to look for her.
The sight, as soon as you set foot in the forest, is enchanting. Dark and eerie, with gorgeous lighting, distant whispers and subtle noises all around, it exerts an attraction as if it is looking for its next victim.
Along the way Olle meets all kinds of different creatures, some friendly and some not and the narration (in words but also with images through gameplay) manages to give depth to the world and its inhabitants.
The gameplay, however, while not a deterrent by any means, is the weakest element of the experience. For the most part, Bramble is just moving from one point to another, in completely linear locations, with no interesting activities.
Especially in the beginning where you have to play hide and seek with the gnomes, it feels like pixel hunting. But as the game continues, the environments and the activities need to be done are taking on another level.
Along the way, instead of walking from cutscene to cutscene, we are asked to solve simple puzzles, explore dark huts, hide from monsters and fight bosses. There is also platforming, which is somewhat clunky and imprecise.
But the platforming or the overall gameplay isn't so much of a problem and I'm sure everyone likes it by now. However, the most interesting part of the experience are the bosses, both visually and in terms of how to deal with them. In this part, Bramble presents unique mechanics and breaks away from the simple and "on rails" gameplay.
The bosses are very interesting in terms of their design; they are straight out of a folk horror movie, they scream, they attack furiously. One of the highlights of Bramble is the battle with a nymph in the forest. In this duel we have to learn to recognize sounds, listen to the words our opponent whispers to understand what attack it is going to make and block it in the appropriate way.
Bramble has quite a few such ideas, and when it sets aside its completely simple structure and tries to do something more interesting it is at its best.
It was a magical experience and the aftertaste is kind of bittersweet to me, as I didn't want it to end, since - like I've said in the beginning - we haven't seen anything similar and as spectacular as Bramble before.
If you haven't played it yet, I strongly suggest you do or you can always watch walkthroughs on YouTube and leave a comment down below!
What was your most memorable part of the game?
Did Dimfrost Studios and Merge Games resulted a good team?
What else would you like to see from these two?
Leave a comment and I'll be sure to follow in a conversation!
Until then~
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