Valiant Hearts – War Stories Told Right:

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Fun fact about me that a lot of you probably don’t know – I’m a forces brat. To those confused, a forces brat is a kid who has one or more guardians that are in the military. This includes the air force, military, navy, and marines. In my case, it’s air force. My childhood was spent on bases, waving at the guards on the gates through my window and staring in awe at the planes as they flew above my head. It also meant that by the time I turned twenty, I had moved house ten times, and my dad had traveled to dozens of different countries. To me, moving house and being away from my family felt normal. At the time of writing this, I’m sat in a university coffee shop in Cardiff, away from my family, but it feels just as much like my home as whichever base my dad’s currently stationed at. I’ve grown up independent and I very much subscribe to the idea that home is where those you love are. I have multiple homes – the one with my parents and sister, the university with my friends, Oxfordshire with my secondary school friends and online with those who I care about. These people are my home more than any military base or plane hangar could be.

Whenever I see games about the military and those who serve in it, I tend to get nervous as it’s portrayal in media can be … Less than ideal. People recently like to point to shooters and games set in warzones as the root problem of violence in current generations, yet completely ignore games that provide brilliant representation and learning opportunities because they don’t support their argument. Valiant Hearts is a game that manages to be emotional, educational and powerful, throughout the whole experience. You genuinely love each character that you play as, with their plights becoming yours and genuine emotional impact hitting you when things go wrong.

For those who have never heard of the game, I’m not that surprised. It is quite a niche little indie game that went mostly uncovered by the YouTube gaming community. At its core, it is an adventure, puzzle game that educates its players about the history of World War One (known as The Great War). It tells the story of several people, each fighting their own battles and telling their own story, as well as facing the horrors that have left their mark on the world. From Remembrance Day to the various documentaries that delve into the unknown secrets hidden in the remains of the trenches, we as a world have not forgotten The Great War. We strive not to repeat the mistakes of the past and to make our ancestors’ sacrifice worthwhile by contributing positively to the world. In order to do that, however, we must understand what they went through over a century ago. Valiant Hearts achieves this and more.

If any game can make you think, it’s this one.

Apart from the narrator of the story, the game doesn’t have any real voice acting – apart from the occasional grunt or mumbled noises in various languages, meaning that you as the player are left to interpret the game world as you see fit. There are four main characters, five if you count Walt aka the best good dog ever. Their stories weave together in quite a clever way, with events either happening simultaneously or sequentially. Sometimes you’ll come to an area that you’ll recognize, not because you’ve already played this section but because you approached it from the opposite side of the battlefield. Let me tell you a bit about the characters you can play as:

  1. Emile – A Frenchman recruited for the French Army to fight with fellow Allied troops against the enemy. Emile is a father to his daughter Marie and grandfather to little baby Victor. Marie’s husband, Karl is a German citizen that is deported when Germany declares war on Russia.
  2. Freddie – An American soldier who has voluntarily joined the French army after his wife was killed in a bombing raid by the infamous Baron Von Dorf. He forms a strong friendship with Emile quite quickly.
  3. Anna – A Belgian nurse treating wounding soldiers across various battlefields. Before the war began, she was training to be a veterinarian but after her father was kidnapped, she set out to rescue him whilst helping as many people as she can along the way.
  4. Karl – A young German, forced to leave his wife and son, to serve in the German army, forced to fight against those he loves. Upon finding out that his son has fallen ill, he escapes the German camp and makes his way across the country to reunite with them, despite the dangers of desertion.

The gameplay mostly consists of solving puzzles using items found in the world around you, various stealth sections that involve staying out of the line of sight of gunners and enemy soldiers, plus the occasional quick-time event minigame. The collectibles that you pick up, contain various facts about The Great War and those who lived and died in it. Each character has a series of letters that tell you a bit more about their backstory, as well as their thoughts on the situation they have found themselves in. You can really feel the emotion poured into every word, with clear care and dedication having been put in by the developers to make this game as impactful as possible.

From taking lives to saving lives, Valiant Hearts makes you look at war from all perspectives, whether you believe they are the right or wrong ones is up to you.

From the entire story of Valiant Hearts, there’s one scene that never fails to bring a tear to my eye. Emile, who is still an acting soldier in the French army, is ordered to participate in the Nivelle Offensive. For those who don’t know what that is, it was a Franco-British operation on the Western Front, aiming to break through the German defenses on the Aisne Front within 48 hours. When it came down to it, the strategy was to keep throwing soldiers at the German defenses until they broke down and allowed the Allies to regain the lost ground. Thousands and thousands of soldiers were butchered, forced to run at the enemy guns or face being shot in the back by their own troops for committing mutiny. It was a horrific, wasteful loss of life that sacrificed thousands of brave people who were fighting for their country’s freedom. Although they did regain some lost land, it was not worth all that death.

Emile, when he realizes what is happening and that he and his fellow soldiers are to follow in the footsteps of their deceased fellows, snaps. After watching his uncaring commander send group after group of soldiers straight to their death, with little to no remorse, he grabs his shovel and hits the commander over the back of the head to stop the madness. Although not his intention, the blow kills his commander and he is arrested on the spot. A few months afterward, he is sentenced to death by firing squad. The last we hear from him is in his letter to his daughter, talking about his hatred for war, his grief over the friends he has lost and his hope that she and little Victor can find happiness in his absence. You watch as Emile is marched out of his prison cell, past a collection of fellow soldiers – including Freddie, tied to a post and executed in a hail of gunfire. It’s a poignant and painful moment that I think is something people don’t think about as much when it comes to war stories.

Anyways, I think everyone should give this game a go. It is a well-crafted masterpiece that deserves all the love that can be bestowed upon it. Next time, we’ll go with a much more cheerful game, aka my favorite game at the moment, the Untitled Goose Game! HONK!

Till next time,

CaitlinRC 🙂

Little Nightmares – If you wear a yellow raincoat, you’re probably evil:

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Following a recent announcement that a sequel to the popular horror game, Little Nightmares, is in production, I thought I’d look back at the original. Tarsier Studios, the developers of the game, is most well known for their work on the LittleBigPlanet games, so Little Nightmares was their first venture into the horror genre. Although a quite short game, it is a remarkable experience that focuses on telling a compelling story that will draw you in with intrigue and then terrify you a moment later. Although the actual gameplay is a bit clunky in places and can be a tad frustrating, the artistic storytelling and powerful imagery are well worth dealing with those little annoyances. If you’ve not had the chance to play the game and it’s DLC’s, I’d highly recommend doing so – preferably in a dark room with a friend to throw the controller at when you get too startled.

The game kicks off with the main character, Six, waking up in a dark room in her signature yellow raincoat. It quickly becomes obvious that she is on a ship of some kind, made clear by the floors rocking and the various cargo boxes sliding around. As you attempt to escape this strange location, you come across other children, who have clearly imprisoned in this place. They curl in their beds, terrified of what stalks the hallways and stare longingly at you through the bars, wishing they could be free like you. Soon, you meet their jailor – a long-armed creature called the Janitor, who captures the children and drags them away or traps them in cages.

Get away from me you long-armed freak or I’ll get my baseball bat.

Once you escape the Janitor (by crushing his arms in an elevator door), you come across the Chefs. This duo seems to be cooking up an elaborate feast, containing some… interesting ingredients. Any time you enter their line of sight, they try to kill you on the spot – chasing after you and adding you to their menu if you are too slow. From there, you come across a series of guests attending a feast. This feast is overseen by the Lady – the leader of this place you have found yourself trapped in. She seems to have some form of mystical powers, forcing you to use a mirror to reflect her abilities back at her, until she is weakened. However, once weakened, Six bites into the Lady’s neck and seemingly absorbs her powers – able to kill the guests at the feast as she walks past them, ominous black particles hovering around her.

One of the main themes of the game is hunger. From the crippling starvation that Six battles throughout the game, to the huge feast the guests are tucking into, the game really delves into the impact of greed and consumption on the world around us. The game was originally supposed to be called Greed before they settled on Little Nightmares. Throughout history, greed has been a blight on humanity. Both greed and gluttony are included in the nine circles of hell as outlined by Dante’s inferno, considered to be a great sin that we all must overcome in our lifetimes. The enemies that Six faces throughout her journey are embodiments of this concept, where the greed has consumed them and transformed them into monsters beyond our comprehension.

Remind me to never have this kind of relationship with my sibling.

Six, too, becomes a monster. We are forced to witness this throughout the course of the game. Her hunger forces her to desperate measures, such as scavenging for food from the kidnapped child and eating a live rat. However, it doesn’t end there. The temptation only grows, each step taking her closer and closer to the abyss. We all fall victim to this. We’ve all faced down the devil that is a temptation, sometimes managing to fight him off and other times being forced to give into it. You can’t always win. Mental health is the same. It’s a war, not a battle. Each time you step onto that battleground, you know that victory is not guaranteed. However, victory is not the objective we seek. It’s survival.

Alien Isolation and Little Nightmares share two common features – the feelings of claustrophobia and isolation. Against the monsters and the darkness, we are alone. The game designers portray this perfectly. Six is a small, terrified girl stuck in a horrific world and the world makes you feel that. From creaking pipes to haunting shadows and the distant screams of some distant horror, you constantly feel on edge but there’s nobody to turn to. The music, the ambiance and the design of each of the monsters you come across, are continually lingering at the back of your mind. You genuinely feel horrified, especially when you realize what Six is becoming.

The DLC’s of the game go into the story of the Lady a bit more, if you’re curious about her whole spooky deal.

Near the end of the game, Six staggers into a room and nearly collapses from starvation. A little Nome, one of the few creatures that aren’t trying to kill you in the world of Little Nightmares, offers you a sausage. Basically, every player will, at this moment, feel grateful and thankful to the cute little creature and walk towards it. However, Six doesn’t go for the sausage. She takes the Nome, that cute little creature we’ve all grown to love, and eats him. It’s a horrific event, that genuinely stuns you. I had to put the controller down for a moment and process what I had just witnessed. The thing is though, you understand why she did it. That desperation, hunger, greed, and isolation has been building up inside her all this time.

Little Nightmares is very much a game that you should experience by yourself in a dark room. So, I hope you’ll give it a go. After all, we’ve all had our own nightmares. Whether they were big or little, they stay with us all. Till next time,

CaitlinRC

GRIS – So Beautiful It Should Be Illegal:

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So, a few days ago, I had hit a bit of a writer’s block. I wasn’t sure what game I wanted to talk about, so I reached out on Twitter to you guys (@OurMindGames) for any suggestions. Out of the many awesome suggestions I got from you guys, one really grabbed my attention. It was a game called GRIS, an artistic platformer that had been on my radar for a little while. People have spoken very highly of its visuals, soundtrack and powerful message – so needless to say, it seemed right up my alley. As I’m currently prepping to go back to university for my final year, I have some free time on my hands, so I decided to dedicate an afternoon to trying out GRIS. That afternoon quickly morphed into the rest of the day, until around 9 PM that evening when the credits rolled, and I sat back in my chair – stunned into silence.

The story of GRIS isn’t clearly laid out to the player. It’s told through imagery, visualization, and symbolism that will leave you pondering it’s meaning hours after you put it down. At its core, it’s a puzzle platformer. The further you progress through the game, the more abilities you unlock, which allows you to progress to new areas. It’s a fairly linear experience so you don’t worry too much about getting lost, however, the game does encourage you to explore each area to its fullest – with the key to moving on often being tucked away in a hidden cave or up a series of complex jumps. It’s a game that rewards you for taking your time and looking around, which as a completionist is a very satisfying experience.

This is your protagonist. Though you could argue, you are the real protagonist.

When the game starts, you see a young girl lying in the hand of a statue – seemingly asleep. She awakes and begins to sing, gradually rising into the air when suddenly her voice just stops. Without her voice, the statue crumbles and you are powerless to watch as she plummets to the ground, a seemingly desolate place devoid of the beautiful colours of the sky above. To start with, she can barely walk without crumpling to the ground, gradually regaining her strength and abilities as the game goes on. You collect tiny stars that form little constellations, allowing you to cross gaps and restore colour to the world around you. Each colour you restore opens another section – e.g. unlocking blue restores water to the world, enabling underwater exploration.

Honestly, you could fill an art museum with screenshots of this game, and nobody would question it, as this game is visually stunning. The artists behind this game manage to make even the simplest of colour schemes and landscapes beautiful. When you combine that with the haunting soundtrack, this game is best experienced in a room by yourself, on a big screen. I played it on my switch but honestly, it deserves a fully equipped cinema with surround sound and a ginormous screen to truly appreciate every titbit of detail and love that has gone into crafting this game. The game itself is not very long, it took me about 4 hours on and off to finish a playthrough, including a twenty-minute puzzle section that I was just too dumb to realize the simple solution to.

How is possible to be this gorgeous a game, I’m just saying!

What I really want to talk about though, is what I feel the story behind this game is. As there are only a few little cutscenes and the closest we get to any exposition from the character herself is through song, it’s mostly about how you choose to interpret it. The achievements list gives you a hint towards the game’s true meaning – specifically those related to each “Stage” or chapter of the game. I didn’t notice this until the final chapter when I popped an achievement called “Stage 5 – Acceptance”. This achievement and its counterparts all refer to stages from the Kubler-Ross model, which talks about the five stages we go through when we are grieving. Let me explain each stage and its corresponding achievement in GRIS:

Stage 1: Denial – Often our first reaction is to deny that anything is wrong as if pretending it doesn’t exist will reduce the pain later. In the first chapter of GRIS, you start out barely able to walk – collapsing to your knees frequently and struggling to stand up again. Most players will get GRIS to stand back up, but if you leave the controller and let her stand up again on her own – this stage of the model will be fulfilled, as she herself denies that anything is wrong.

Devoid of colour and life, the world seems to be crumbling around you.

Stage 2: Anger – When we are upset, often we internalize that pain and instead lash out at others. When you are hurting, sometimes you feel like that nobody understands the pain you are in and that the only way to lessen the pain you are in is to inflict it upon others. During the second chapter of GRIS, you gain the “heavy” ability which allows you to smash through unstable objects and destroy various statues/pots scattered around the world. This ability is a clear manifestation of that second stage of grief, which the achievement emphasizes as when you destroy three specific statues, you get the “anger” popup.

When the world tries to knock you down, keep pushing on through.

Stage 3: Bargaining – “Don’t you think after all this time, and everything I have ever done, that I am owed this one?” – The Doctor in the Snowmen, Season 7 of Doctor Who. This quote sums up the bargaining stage of grief for me. We feel that we are owed something, that we deserve better than our current situation presents. That maybe, just maybe, the world will take pity on us and provide that little bit of hope. We beg for it, trying to barter with chips that have no real worth anymore, even though we know deep down that it won’t work. In GRIS’s case, this is seen when you come across a statue in the forest chapter. Her first reaction to it when you try to interact is to sing to it, despite her voice still being gone. She is trying to barter with something that isn’t there anymore.

If you don’t learn to accept things, it’ll weigh you down forever.

Stage 4: Depression – I think the use of the underwater section for this stage is remarkably clever. Often, we describe depression as sinking under the waves, falling further and further from the light that we so desperately try to cling to. In my case, it often feels like a heavyweight is attached to my ankle, slowly tugging me downwards no matter how hard I resist it.  In order to get this achievement in GRIS, you must seek out the statue hidden in the darkness. This section is pitch black and finding this hidden cavern is not easy, as its surroundings are full of creeping darkness that threatens to consume you. That statue is of a woman, seemingly sinking down into the inky depths, like how you fell from the sky at the beginning of the game.

We all sink into the darkness sometimes. We just need to keep pushing back to the light.

Stage 5: Acceptance – After retrieving your voice and escaping the shrouding darkness, you come across a tomb on the remains of the land. In this tomb is a statue, lying down, still and quiet. If you sing to it, the acceptance achievement pops. Although it doesn’t seem like much at the time, to me it reminds me of the songs you sing at funerals. In those moments, you can hear the whirling mix of emotions in everyone’s voices – grief, joy, longing and hope all mingling together as one. It’s a haunting yet powerful experience to be a part of, whether they were your close family, a good friend or just an acquaintance.

To me, this game is a tale of grief and loss. Now, this is just my interpretation, but I think that our young protagonist has just lost her mother. To me, the start of the game seems to be the moment that the loss truly hits her and her whole world crumbles around it, losing all the joy, colour and structure that her mother brought to it. Often when we lose someone, we feel like a part of ourselves has been ripped from us, like a missing limb or a hole in your once full heart. In GRIS’s case, this manifests as the loss of her abilities. She struggles to walk, to move through the world on her own, to begin with. Her voice, which can restore life to the world and heal the cracks in it, has been stripped from her. Every time she opens her mouth, nothing comes out – as if she is on one side of a one-way mirror, slamming her hands against it but getting no response.

Every colour she restores to the world, every demon she faces (looking at you, giant creepy eel thing), brings her one step closer to overcoming the grief that is threatening to consume her. The darkness and demons chasing her, seem to indicate depression and anxiety – the way they appear and disappear, how they creep up on her and force her to flee. She can’t fight it, only try to outrun it. The same is in life, you can’t outright fight mental illness. It’s always there and it always comes back. You learn to coexist with it, to lessen its hold on you, to accept it as part of you. The end of the game leans towards this, with her seemingly moving on – her voice spiraling up into the sky, harmonizing with her mother’s, shattering the remaining darkness and restoring colour to the world. It’s a powerful ending to a powerful game.

Light and darkness cannot exist without one another.

This is probably the most moving game I’ve played in the last year. Having recently lost my grandfather, it spoke to me on an incredibly personal level. Even if you can’t afford it right now, watch a playthrough of it, or even listen to the game’s soundtrack. It is, hauntingly beautiful and something I think we all understand on a primal level. Grief and loss are a part of life, yet I hadn’t played a game that really summed up that experience until I played GRIS.

I hope you all have a great week, next up is Little Nightmares! If you enjoyed this piece, remember to like it, follow the site and comment below any feedback or suggestions for future articles!

Much love,

CaitlinRC

Five Nights at Freddy’s – In Case You Weren’t Already Afraid of Animatronics:

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One of the main accusations surrounding the gaming industry is that gaming communities can quickly become toxic, putting off many potential players and creating a negative view of the game, including the hard-working developers who created it. These fans adore the game in question but can be overzealous in how they try to encourage others to play it, often resulting in insults and long debates on social media about how their opinion is the only correct one. The game becomes less about its message and gameplay, instead, it is associated with its reputation – be that negative or positive. In 99% of cases, it is only a small subsection of that fan community that causes this negative reputation, whilst the others are all enthusiastic individuals, wanting to share their love of the game and the creative pieces it inspires with others. Now, whilst reading this you’ve probably had a few games come to mind. My mind immediately went to the Five Nights at Freddy’s and Undertale communities, two of the most popular indie games of the last decade.

Let’s put all that negativity aside for the moment and look at what makes these games so popular, so much so that nearly all gamers will have heard of them. I’m going to focus on the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, as that’s the game I stumbled across first, back when it first released and exploded onto the YouTube gaming scene. I’ve always had a soft spot for the FNAF games, not because of the gameplay or the creepy animatronics staring at me through the camera but because of the storytelling involved in it. The simplistic horror games, created by Scott Cawthon, are infamous for their complex timelines and hidden lore. At first glance, the games don’t seem like much but the deeper you look, the more intriguing hints you find towards some overarching plot that nobody on earth seems able to fit together (not even you, MatPat).

The most recent entry in the series adds VR and also a freaky creature nicknamed GlitchTrap that dances menacingly after he kills you so that’s a thing.

You can’t deny how popular the FNAF franchise has become. From the original game, which was Scott Cawthon’s last attempt at video game development, to the VR game that was released earlier this year, there is no real area of gaming community that it has not touched – RPG’s, voice acting, spin-off books, plushies and Funko Pop’s, an endless volume of fan fiction and fan art, to entire games based off the series (though seriously, some of the fan games are phenomenal like TJOC). It is this popularity that drives part of the negativity against it since success comes alongside hate in this world. There will always be someone who doesn’t like what it and that’s fine, FNAF isn’t for everyone! However, the more popular the series, the more people will hate it just for the sake of it.

Anyways, let’s talk a bit about FNAF. If you’ve avoided this game series or just have somehow managed to hide in a cave without an internet connection, let me explain the rough premise of the series. You, the player, are a security guard on the night shift, watching over a pizza restaurant containing animal-themed animatronics that wouldn’t be out of place in a Stephen King novel. The animatronics wander around at night and if they see you, they’ll think you’re an endoskeleton and try to shove you into a suit (spoiler alert – it’ll kill you). As you may have guessed from the name of the game, you stay for five nights during which the animatronics become increasingly aggressive and if you survive, you win! The different entries in the series make use of various mechanics such as audio cues or ventilation shafts, however, in essence, all the entries follow the same formula.

Chica, I am not eating anything with you until you go wash your hands, this place is a health and safety nightmare.

However, if you simply just play through each night and survive the onslaught of jump scares, you would be doing the game a great injustice. No matter how loud the YouTube gamers scream, the gameplay of FNAF isn’t what has made it stand out as an indie game – the lore is. Any observant player of these games would notice the occasional unnerving detail in the background, from strange sounds coming from the animatronics to posters talking about missing children, to offhand comments from the guy on the phone about various incidents and risk of death. As a sucker for a mystery, it’s a franchise that I’ve kept a close eye on. Although nobody is sure what the true story is behind the game series, after all, Scott Cawthon is a wily one, the abundance of theories about these games and the real story it is trying to tell is phenomenal. This is the kind of series where the hex color of a textbox can make the difference between one timeline and another.

I think the reason that this game series intrigues so many people is the concept of things being more than they appear to the naked eye. This is a life lesson that I think we should all keep in mind, especially when it comes to the topic of mental health. It is not an obvious thing. I don’t wander around with a neon sign flashing above my head saying, “suffering from mental health conditions, please don’t upset me,” partly because that’d be ridiculously expensive to maintain and mostly because its not something that I want to advertise. Mental health is an incredibly personal thing, something that we carry with us everywhere, like a part of ourselves. You can look at someone, laughing and joking around with their friends, but have no idea that depression is standing right behind them, just waiting for the right moment.

Are those my eyes??? THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THERE!

You never have any idea what people are going through. If someone chooses to share their pain with you, to entrust you with something so personal, they are placing a level of faith in you that you should never take for granted. They’re sharing a side of themselves with you that they keep away from the rest of the world – much like the axiom:

“The Japanese say you have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends and your family. The third face, you never show to anyone. This third face is the truest reflection of who you are.”

FNAF takes a leaf out of this book, with its own three faces. The first being the gameplay, which is what most people will see during their first impressions of the series. The second is when you begin to look deeper and uncover the lore hidden behind those terrifying animatronic faces. The final one is known only to Scott Cawthon, the creator. Whatever story he wishes for these games to tell, is for him to know and for us to merely theorize about.

Whether you choose to show your second face to someone, is entirely up to you. All I hope is that you can face your third face and understand it because we can’t learn to trust others if we can’t trust ourselves. Anyways, this was a bit of a weird one, wasn’t it? Next week, maybe we talk Life is Strange or Prey? Up to you guys!

Stay Kind,

CaitlinRC

(Also, if you haven’t seen it, I wrote a piece for CheckPoint who is a mental health charity focused on providing resources and support for gamers and the gaming community as a whole. Go check them out and my article out here: https://checkpointorg.com/what-remains-of-edith-finch-how-family-can-build-us-up-and-tear-us-down/ )

Dragon Quest Builders – We Built This City on Monster Bits:

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First things first – if you didn’t sing the title of this article, I’m disappointed. Second, since Dragon Quest Builders 2 was released last month, I’m going to talk about the original instead because I refuse to follow the bandwagon and also I have basically no knowledge of the sequel, whilst I spent a ridiculous number of hours playing the original. So, if I was to describe the Dragon Quest Builder games, the most appropriate description would be where Minecraft, Dragon Quest, and Harvest Moon had a weird love child that nobody expected to be as good as it was. Although I’ve only actually played one Dragon Quest game from the main series, it’s a game that I frequently come back to and replay, so when I spotted this spinoff in the Nintendo Switch store, I was intrigued.

The game splits itself across several “chapters” that have you traveling across the realm, helping fight off monsters and rebuilding the society that has been consumed by darkness. The evil Dragon Lord has conquered the world and taken away the resident’s ability to build and create. This means that it is up to you, the hero, to rebuild their cities, dispel the darkness and eventually defeat the Dragon Lord once and for all. This mostly results in you doing various tasks for the villagers, painstakingly recreating blueprints and hoarding every resource that you can get your hands on. The characters you help are remarkably likable (except Rollo, screw that guy) so the tasks feel less like fetch quests and more as if you are actively improving these people’s lives.

ROLLO, OVER MY DEAD BODY WILL YOU BE MAYOR.

The game has a good balance of resource gathering, construction, and combat. Alongside the main questline, each island has a series of optional objectives available to you. Some of them involve battling dragons, others have you helping a friendly mob build a garden. Although they are not revealed to you until you complete the chapter for the first time, it adds a nice layer of replayability to each set of islands, as well as ensuring you pay more attention to the next chapter, now that you know roughly what to look for. Some of the combat encounters are tougher than others but running away like a coward is always an option (except boss fights). One of the first things the game teaches you is how to craft health items and food, which ensures that you don’t die a horrible death in the wilderness.

Like any Dragon Quest game, you can equip armor, weapons, and tools to help you along your way, although in this case, you must craft them using gathered materials at specific stations. For example, you couldn’t smelt metal on a workbench, so you better get to building that furnace! The further into the game you get, the more complex the stations you’ll require to complete your tasks – don’t fret though, the game never gives you more than you can handle and you can always view exactly what you need for the recipe. Rarer resources can be crafted into stronger armor or different weapons that can be used to take down specific enemies, really nothing you haven’t seen before.

I’m just saying, this would all go a lot faster if people would chip in.

Dragon Quest Builders is a remarkably calming game, an experience that you can actively lose yourself in for hours at a time. I didn’t quite realize it until I looked up from my Switch once to realize that it was 2 am and I’d been playing for four hours straight. I am particularly fond of building up my little town in each chapter to perfection. Depending on what you build in the town, you gain “points” and your town can level up. It doesn’t have a major impact on your game but there is something very satisfactory about having well-constructed rooms and defenses to keep out the various critters that like to attack you in droves. Plus, it does make completing the main storyline easier as you can skip any “level up the town quests” and finding space to build a new room is a lot simpler.

Like many games in the “building” genre, it has a creative mode. This allows you to build and travel to the various islands you’ve visited during the story, as well as craft all the items and rooms you unlocked. The more of the story and the side quests you complete, the more is available to you to play around within the creative mode, which really encourages you to get the most out of each world. Now, I’m no master builder like those who build to-scale recreations of various world landmarks in Minecraft, but I do enjoy putting my own twist on more simplistic creations such as a house or a garden. This game allows me to do that, alongside stabbing the occasional monster and blowing up various bits of the landscapes with my homemade bombs. Although I’ve never fully completed the game itself, I have sunk a lot of time into it, and I’m genuinely excited to get my hands on the sequel.

One day I will be able to build something this good.

Any game that brings that element of calmness to you is a good one in my opinion. Often sections in games can be stressful and tense, requiring you to step away for a while to calm yourself and fully appreciate what you just experienced. I love those moments but sometimes, I just want a game that I can throw myself into and just relax with, rather than stressing about the anxieties in the virtual world as well as my real one. I think Dragon Quest Builders fits that, with its cute art style and enjoyable gameplay mechanics making it a worthwhile experience, especially if you have a Switch. It’s the perfect game for on the go and doesn’t require much thought to be put into enjoying it, so you can play for a bit on the train and walk away without worrying about forgetting crucial clues or plot points.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this little piece on Dragon Quest Builders. Up next, the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise and how the lore behind it brought together a community. Remember to follow the site, like the posts and comment below any suggestions – or tweet them to me @OurMindGames

Until next time,

CaitlinRC