[Disclaimer: I received a review key for The Nameless City 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.]
Release Date: July 13, 2024 & September 3, 2025
Systems: Windows, macOS, Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 4 & 5, Nintendo Switch 1 & 2
Time Spent: 1 Hour 11 Minutes
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The Nameless City is primarily a walking-sim with some light puzzle elements and is an adaptation of the short story by H.P. Lovecraft. In the original story, the narrator wanders through the Arabian Desert and comes upon mysterious subterranean ruins, and explores them. He/they/she/it then discovers dwellings within a cliff face, followed by some more ruins, then a descending staircase under the sand, some sarcophagi and murals, and finally a tight-fitting tunnel, after which he becomes trapped. The story can be read in just over 30 minutes, while the game took me just over an hour, although some of that time was spent plummeting to my death while forgetting that there is a "duck" button, but for the most part, the original story is here and rightly expanded upon to make a playable video game. .png)
First off, I have no issues with how Paradnight Studio expanded upon the existing story. There is a lot more in terms of exploration, there's the introduction of spellcasting of ancient runes, there are features that will blow you off a cliff if you don't duck, there are visual references to Lovecraft's original design for the
Elder Sign, and
Elder Things. Unfortunately, if you're fond of camels in literature, the camel was omitted from the game, likely because it was something that didn't really contribute to the story and would have been something else that required animation.
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My experience playing on the Switch 2 was mostly positive, although there were a couple hang ups, both of which are likely Switch-specific. First, and you can see this happen multiple times during my playthrough, the game would fade to black in a specific area and essentially freeze. In the first instance, I could repeat the bug every time, and even after contacting the developer and publisher (who ported the game to the Switch), my only solution ended up being to restart the game. Thankfully, I was fewer than 20 minutes into the game. The second instance of the game crashing, thankfully, only happened once so I didn't have to restart the whole game 21 minutes in; not that 21 minutes is a long time to have to replay, but doing so in the hope that the bug wouldn't happen again after many attempts during the first occurance was not something that I would look forward to. But again, thankfully, that didn't happen.
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The last issue with the Switch port I wouldn't have noticed had I not
watched a playthrough to see if I was missing something back during bug #1, I wouldn't have thought anything was missing. As it turned out, every time the player/narrator interacted with and picked up a new rune, or when your sanity dropped to zero (we'll get to the sanity meter next), you were witness to a short animation of non-descript Elder-things. The visuals in the Switch port felt very shaky and moved only a little bit, but in the PS5 version, they're almost shimmering. I honestly have no idea what would cause this to happen, and it's not like it took anything away from the game. Again, I only noticed because I looked at another port of the game, but it did feel like something was a little off during these animations.
This is the perfect time to bring up AI, since the above animations felt like they were created with a similar kind of AI that was used for the opening sequence to Secret Invasion. It just looks very much like a product of 2023 when every company was crawling over themselves to find ways to integrate AI animation and make it look edgy and just a little off. How it's used here, I just feel like something better could have been used instead, as it takes away from the visual aesthetic created by the pixelated graphics. Maybe that's what Paradnight was going for, but the look of it takes away a bit from the rest of the game.
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As for the sanity meter, I guess all I have to say is that there was a meter drawn like a brain stem, and if that meter reached all the way to your brain, you lost consciousness and essentially died, but only in video-game terms. You would respawn at your last checkpoint. There were some visual cues, apart from your brain stem shrinking, such as purply veins creeping in from the outside of the screen towards the middle. I don't know if it only happens outside or in this one particular instance, but at one point, there were what looked like purple raindrops rising up from the ground into the sky, right before I fell unconscious. The effect never felt like it was trying to achieve something like Eternal Darkness, but more like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which also used a brain as a visual indicator of mental well-being, where the screen would take on a slight distortion. Later in the game, once I figured out what I was supposed to be doing, I did enjoy the sanity meter being used as a timer between safe zones, being a nice use of an otherwise background mechanic.
Lastly, I wanted to touch on the music and voice acting, both of which I very much enjoyed. The narrator, who cropped up during important sequences and the voice-overs, never felt melodramatic or overdone, something that could easily happen with either Lovecraft's text alone or an overly dramatic reading of it. The music, composed by Andrea Baroni, is appropriate for the setting, creating an atmosphere of mystery and dread, fitting in well with the Lovecraftian themes. It's more than your standard ambient music that plays during a horror video game, as there feel like there are elements of melodies hidden within the music, but they never quite develop in a traditional sense. I don't know how else to describe it, but fitting for when your ears perk up and notice the music during the game.
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For a retro-styled lo-fi walking-sim inspired by a story written by H.P. Lovecraft, Paradnight really does a great job of straddling the line between accurate adaptation and engaging video game. It's a tricky needle to thread, partly because it's Lovecraft, but also because it's a lesser-known story that doesn't have your traditional cosmic horror entities like Cthulhu or Nyarlathotep, and even when they veer from the ending, it still feels fitting to the original story. There is no satisfying conclusion, no happy escape from the nameless city, no joyous return to reality. It's all ambiguous, and you're left feeling like there should be more, which is a great way to end this type of story.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Nem lész nyugovása lelkemnek e földön
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