It's apparent that beneath the janky shell, there is some fantastic material worth grappling with. He feels like his friends have grown apart, his career is already tail-spinning, and there's something missing, though the game shields players from exactly what for a good while.Įach time Sid connects with another character, the writing feels genuine and has a way of making me forgive a lot of the game's technical flaws. For Sid and for his book's hero, the intention is to escape to someplace where time stands still - literally in the case of the fantasy brainstorm.įor Sid, he can't help but dwell on the past, wishing to be a kid again playing games in his bedroom, without the adult stressors he's now burdened by.

The central theme of Forgotten Fields is nostalgia - how it distorts our memories, how it spoils our future, or even how it pulls us out of our present. These issues are apparent early and persist throughout the short runtime, in both Sid's world and the fantasy world the story recurringly returns to, though like I said, a lot of what's great about Forgotten Fields is that way because it's authentic and even thought-provoking in spite of these issues. But these gameplay mechanics are so often broken that it seems the small team just couldn't get them to work as well as they envisioned. They even help explain Sid's unrest with his life. It made me wish for a more constrained experience where Forgotten Fields just embraced the 'walking sim' genre a bit more closely and didn't try to gamify these mundane tasks. Clipping is frequent, and characters who are meant to be pulled into a scene will often get stuck on geometry and spend what might be a heartfelt moment endlessly walking into a door frame. But whenever it asks the player to perform simple tasks, such as set the table for dinner or go swimming with his friend, a multitude of issues get in the way.Ĭamera struggles are constant, and the angled third-person view routinely betrays the given tasks, moving on its own and causing Sid to bump into objects. In Forgotten Fields, anytime Sid is having a conversation with another character, the game is good or even great. While this presentation is clever, the end results are less interesting. As he scrambles to finish his grant application before the long night is through, players live out his day as well as his story's brainstorm in his head, moving between reality and fantasy regularly. Sid is on the cusp of exiting those years where he's still allowed to struggle with work, rent, and relationships, unreadily diving headfirst into the stage where he's expected to have it all figured out. Sid is a sad young man, and though the setting and much of the story feel autobiographical and fresh, his insecurity about the future is more universal. He even catches up with his former partner for a brief beach respite just months before her wedding. He helps his aunt and uncle wrangle their windswept laundry when he makes a pitstop at their house. Early on, players fix up Sid's scooter so he can embark on his cross-India day trip back home. Now, faced with an imminent deadline to submit a writing sample for a grant he's depending on, as well as his mother selling his childhood home, the melancholic Sid decides the best way to clear his head may be to run away to that very home before it's gone for good.įorgotten Fields is an adventure game and gameplay tends to be very casual. Having spent the last year of his life dodging friends huddled in his room, feeling uninspired, Sid worries his best days are behind him and the beauty he could once see in the world, which behaved as his muse, has withered away. In Forgotten Fields, Sid is a late-twenty-something struggling to write his second book after some modest successes with his debut a few years prior. Forgotten Fields Review: The Curse of Nostalgia It seems to have ambitions loftier than its resources, but in spite of its flaws, and like its main character, it feels like the best may be yet to come.

But its style, writing, and sheer distinctiveness ensure Frotswood Interactive is a team to watch. As its own three-hour experience, it's a clunky, sometimes even buggy, adventure about a young man's quarter-life crisis.

Forgotten Fields is a great example of such a game.

Forgotten fields book