The Forgotten City Review

Introduction:

Here I am again with another game review, this time for The Forgotten City, an adventure mystery game set in a hidden Roman city, two thousand years ago. The about twenty people living there enjoy their lives, continuing as they had before entering the city but are under the unclear Golden Rule. What exactly constitutes a violation of the rule is unclear and solely judged by some unknown god, but if it is violated, all of the people are turned into gold statues. As a constant reminder, citizens from prior generations still occupy the city, motionless and cold beneath the luster of the yellow metal.

You have come to the city through a portal in time, created by its magistrate, Sentius in an effort to prevent someone from breaking the Golden Rule and killing everyone. Failing to do so requires the portal be recreated so you start again, with the knowledge and items you collected before. Each citizen has a story and each might be the threat you are to stop. Ask questions, uncover secrets, and explore the city to find the answer.

The Forgotten City began as a mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, created by Nick Pearce that won a national Writer's Guild Award in 2016. Now, with Nick having left his ten-year legal career to create games, the development team is a bit larger, with the Modern Storyteller core team having three developers. To make the setting as authentic as possible, the studio got the help of Dr. Philip Matyszak and Dr. Sophie Hay, with the former teaching at Cambridge and the latter having 20 years of experience at Pompeii. Accurate art, architecture, costumes, and customs are present thanks to the involvement of these two.

By the nature of the game, there is great risk of spoilers, but I will do my best to avoid them, or at least any serious ones. I have still captured and uploaded my review playthrough, so only watch it if you are not concerned with spoilers. To be on the safe side, only the first of these videos is public on YouTube, with the others unlisted and age-gated. The game is only rated T by the ESRB for alcohol reference, blood, suggestive themes, language, and violence so the age-gate is not about the appropriateness of the content, but as a way to further protect against spoilers. (A spoiler-gate would be a nice feature on YouTube.) The key was provided by Tinsley PR for Dear Villagers, the publisher.

Though I do intend to avoid spoilers as best I can, I do feel this much is fair to share. The game has four endings, with one being the canon ending. In my playthrough I arrived at three of them, including the canon ending. I am unsure how I might find the missing ending, but did not want to delay this review to hunt it down; perhaps another time.

I think that covers enough for the Introduction, so time to see if The Forgotten City is worth visiting, or if it should be left to meet its golden fate.