The World Has Forgotten Forgotlings, But It Deserves So Much Better
Life has imitated art a little too closely when it comes to Forgotlings. It currently sits on Metacritic with two critic reviews (presumably three now) and no user reviews. On Steam it has only 48 reviews. Even websites that celebrate the more off-kilter, independent games are quiet about it. Yet, it’s the prequel to the celebrated Forgotton Anne (28 critic reviews, 1,638 Steam reviews), and made by the same development house – Throughline Games. It’s a delightful game, richly made and entirely absorbing. What happened?
It’s a question that we aren’t equipped to answer. But we suppose the response to Forgotlings has been appropriate considering the game’s subject matter. Forgotlings takes place in the Forgotten Lands, once explored by Forgotton Anne, where objects that have outlived their purpose exist. It is here that they try to find a semblance of a life. It’s a world where everything has been lost and forgotten, just as Forgotlines seems to have been – even if unjustly so.
A World Of Animate Objects
Where Forgotton Anne was more ponderous, a kind of platform-puzzle game, Forgotlings is more of an action-platformer. The two games are clearly of a piece, made by the same people and exploring the same world, but there’s a definite orientation more towards Prince of Persia-style 2D platforming, stealth and the occasional bursts of combat. The action is still punctuated by dialogue and characterisation, as it was with Forgotton Anne, but it’s a notable shift.
The story follows Fig, a marionette posing-doll with a face on his chest. He starts off unsure of where he is, but is soon found, sold off as a ‘shooting star’ (a Forgotling that remembers something of their past, which is apparently a commodity in the Forgotten Lands) and then gets whipped up in a rebellion. Eventually, he ends up with a determination to unite the five tribes of the Forgotten Lands. As you would expect from any good hero’s journey, it’s a tale that starts off small and then burgeons into an epic.
The world and the storytelling within it are wonderful, just as they were in Forgotton Anne, and they’re reason alone to play Forgotlings. The characters are almost entirely household objects that have gained sentience, and their personalities riff on those origins. Blow, a set of bellows, puffs away, fighting to take a breath. An inflatable man is your initial rival, and he’s all hot air and bluster. Forgotlings derives a huge amount of joy from creating Ghibli-esque characters from these items, and subverting them on occasion (a book club full of actual books is a highlight).
Like Playing A Saturday Morning Cartoon
Throughline Games have always excelled at animations, character design and music, and that’s true here. This is an experience that borders on the cinematic, often feeling like you are playing a top-drawer independent animated movie. At the densest story moments, you can sit back and watch it like an animated series. The storytelling keeps pace, bringing you to vibrant, disparate worlds associated with each tribe (an Ancient Park, home of the Videra, is a standout), and diving into rich narrative seams, all flowing from that central conceit of purpose, and what it means to outgrow it.
If there are weak links in the storytelling, it’s the voice-acting and obstructiveness of some of the cinematic moments. Everyone is voiced in Forgotlings, and there is a gargantuan cast. Something had to give, and it turned out to be an uneven set of performances. Some voice performances are exceptional, while others are a tad amateurish and cringe-inducing. And I found the cinematic moments to be relentless on occasion. Forgotlings is a faster paced game than Forgotton Anne, but it doesn’t always let its gameplay flow, as a palm appears at your chest, forcing you to stop to appreciate a board game, chat or cutscene.
That board game is called INA, and it plays a Gwent-like role in Forgotlings. Most characters have the option for a bit of board game sparring, and it can often be a means of overcoming conflicts, or gaining some additional rewards. But it’s also not mandatory. You can play through Forgotlings with only a handful of games played.
Unleash Your INA Board Game Player
If you do choose to play it, INA can be as consuming as Triple Triad. INA is a kind of Boxes/GO hybrid where you place pieces to claim boxes on the grid. Those pieces can have special abilities, and you gain those special pieces by playing INA or finding them in the wider game. I found my interest in INA waning over time – this is a big game, and I wanted to get the story under my belt – but I can respect how devious certain matches got, and how synergistic the special abilities became. If you’re prone to jumping down rabbit holes in games, then this is most definitely one of them.
Elsewhere, the gameplay is satisfying but not hugely special. There is combat, but it’s perfunctory and relatively rare. You can attack, block, dodge and flash-bang your opponents (you have a scarf-camera hybrid accompanying you called Dilla), but the combinations of attacks don’t change all that much, and it can feel like you’re performing the same combat rotations with each mob. It’s not bad, just a little repetitive.
The platforming and stealth sections are better, reminding a little of Shantae in how the levels work. You can back into and out of 2D platform-networks, making the world more explorable and dense than they might seem in screenshots. Fig’s controls are fluid, and it feels good to slide down ramps, grab a rope and swing onto an upper platform. Some stealth sections add in guards, CCTV-like owls and other entities to avoid.
Gone, But Not Forgotton Anne
I miss the puzzles, though. They are here on occasion: Fig can push and pull blocks, while there are levers and blocking walls to negotiate. Ultimately, though, Forgotlings isn’t quite as cerebral as the OG. I hoped for grand environmental puzzles to solve, or to dive into deep dialogue branches, but that never quite happened. There is room to be clever-clever in the game’s hidden items (of which there are bucketloads), but that’s more about spotting low passages and doubling back on yourself, rather than solving anything.
But once I learned to detach myself from the Forgotton Anne expectations, and give myself over to the strange face-chested Fig, I found myself swept up in Forgotlings. It was never particularly difficult, even on harder settings, so I could relish the interactions instead. The world was glorious, delightfully authored, and the characters were even better. While I was fiddling away on the board game, INA, or picking the perfect dialogue option, I was unaware that the story was taking me to a delightful sequence of unexpected places.
I fear the world has forgotten Forgotlings. But if you happen to come across it, I suspect it will worm its way into your heart. Sure, there’s nothing altogether special in its combat, platforming or puzzles, but the opposite is true of its world. The Forgotten Lands is such a painstakingly sculpted place to explore that, once it is over, you can be sure that Forgotlings will lodge in the memory.
Important Links
The Beautiful World Of Forgotlings Is On Xbox And PlayStation – https://www.thexboxhub.com/the-beautiful-world-of-forgotlings-is-on-xbox-and-playstation/
The Forgotlings on Xbox, PC and console to release in 2024 – https://www.thexboxhub.com/the-forgotlings-on-xbox-pc-and-console-to-release-in-2024/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/forgotlings/9N5HH573G2JW/0010
