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Contemplate The Montague's Mount Trailer


Despite AAA game developers talking about how more powerful hardware and shinier engines mean you can better experience the character's emotions, the evidence is clear that they really don't care about that, or even understand how to do it. If you think about it, they're saying they need more RAM and HDD space to make you care about characters. That's ridiculous, and though I do feel emotions when adding things to my PC (the emotion of "squeee!"), I don't think it'll help games be more emotional. Meanwhile in the indie space, a place typically divorced from anything even approaching additional hardware, they're at least attempting to make you care (or feel lonely, or depressed, or other emotions that don't come from guns). It might not work for everyone, but I'm betting a few people out there will feel something, connect somewhere with Montague's Mount, "a psychological rollercoaster ride through isolation, desolation and one man's tortured mind all set against the bleakness of an isolated Irish island." Which of course means it's a FPS puzzle game.

You're allowed to watch the trailer and think "Hmm, it looks a lot like Dear Esther", btw. The settings, narration and theme are all broadly similar: isolated Celtic island that feels like it hasn't changed since the dawn of time, a narrator who thinks in prose, and a mystery to unravel. That said, the very brief five-minute play I had at Rezzed made it clear that this is a puzzle game as much as it is a trip through memory and such, so there's more to do than just wander the landscape feeling like you're on holiday with my dad.

Watch on YouTube

It's up on Steam Greenlight, and wants you to be its friend.

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