Game EXP: Benign Land (VSD)

 [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Benign Land through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

Benign Land
Systems: Windows, Linux
Release Date: January 24, 2025
Publisher: Afternature Productions
Developer: Leandros Ntolas
Time Spent: 93 Minutes

I am, admittedly, woefully ignorant about the Troubles, the time predominantly in Ireland between 1969 and 1998 when Irish republicans fought for Irish unification and separation from the United Kingdom, while Ulster loyalists along with the United Kingdom fought to keep Northern Ireland part of the UK.  There is a whole lot more to it than that inadequate sentence, but that's the best I can do right now without just copying verbatim the entire Wikipedia article.  So I knew that going into Benign Lands, a video game adaptation of an immersive visual arts experience about Ireland's history with the latter half focusing on the Troubles, what I was getting myself into, but only just and again, admittedly most of the imagery went over my head.

Beforehand, I knew the generalities of the conflict.  I knew about Bloody Sunday, but couldn't give you an exact date, and to be honest, I'm not great with remembering specific dates of historical importance.  I knew about the Good Friday Agreement, but again, I couldn't give you any kind of specifics.  I knew that there were bombings carried out by the IRA, but I couldn't give you locations.  I'm sure that it was covered to a certain extent in any of my World History courses from Jr. High through High School, but only that the conflict was still ongoing because I graduated High School in 1998 and I couldn't tell you when our textbooks had last been updated.  I knew that certain neighborhoods in Belfast were separated between Catholics and Protestants, but I didn't know that they were called "Peace Walls."  I also knew nothing about the Prison Maze, the multiple hunger strikes, or any other dozens of things that were not deemed important to go over in the flurry of information during history classes.

So this is where I was going into Benign Land, pretty bad I admit.  I was hopeful though because the game says that the original experience was created from an outsider's perspective, which I misinterpreted as meaning that the player didn't have to know anything about the Troubles in order to get the message of the game.  What I didn't know was that the outsider was actually the developer, Leandros Ntolas.  Again, that was on me for not being better prepared before starting.

Now, before we get to the actual gameplay, there needs to be some hardware context.  I played on the Steam Deck because I knew that my laptop would not be able to handle anything that uses photorealism as its basis.  I first started the game on Wednesday night and immediately knew that I was going to have to make some graphical adjustments because just in the menus, the game was maxing out at 12 fps.  I also noticed that the GPU was running at 99% while the CPU was hovering around 45%.  Not a great sign.  So I lowered the graphics down to Low and was able to get a max fps of 24, but even that felt exceedingly sluggish as you'll be able to tell down below in the playthrough video.

First, I couldn't tell what was going on when I tried to invert the Y-axis for the right joystick.  I could hear and see the click, but the box itself never changed so I had to go into the controller configuration in the Steam settings to make the necessary changes.  I can't always tell from the other playthrough videos I watched, but the way the game felt to me was that I was swimming through thick viscous water, that the controls were sluggish and response-delayed.  The first time I played (and the video I recorded) there were countless times I found myself looking up at the ceiling or down at the ground as I found that I was often overcompensating with the right joystick.  There also seemed to be a baked-in mechanic that slowed you down if you were going in the wrong direction of where the portal to the next scene was, coupled with invisible walls hampered my desire to explore.  There were also two instances above where the portal didn't seem to initially take and made me think that there was something else I needed to do.

Sadly a lot of that last paragraph made it hard for me to either enjoy and/or understand everything to do with the visuals.  True that I didn't catch most of the visual references, but I can only blame myself for that.  The rest of the blame lies with the Steam Deck and that this game, even on low settings was too much for the system to play smoothly and in a way that felt enjoyable.  While a lot of the visuals were impressive and beautiful to be in the presence of while I walked/floated through each environment, I was saddened that I felt more frustrated than anything with how the game played than anything else.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

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