Draugen is attempting that stunning photorealism one would associate with Everybody's Gone to the Rapture or What Remains of Edith Finch. Dreamfall always attempted to be photo-real, but obviously was held back by technical limitations of telling a story from a third-person perspective with dozens of characters. Again, Draugen probably would have benefitted from a little more focus if it was going to be so short.
Collecting pages in a church feels like busywork and everything is so easy, it's obvious that it's been put in place to simply drag out the game a bit, rather than really add anything to it. The mechanics aren't bad necessarily, just under-utilized. Clocking in at a brisk three hours, Draugen almost feels like it would benefit from less gameplay, really honing in on just conversation mechanics and exploration. That might be because the game isn't long enough to find its feet. There's a little language puzzle here, a little investigation sequence there, but a lot of these ideas are brought up once and then never explored again. You can see the threads (no pun intended) of what the gameplay was imagined to be. There's doesn't seem to be a branching narrative, but it's interesting to see the different things you can say, changing Edward's motivations.Ī big issue with Draugen is that there isn't much to do. You'll also encounter times when you'll have dialogue options. She will largely guide you around, suggesting where to go next and what to do. Aside from walking around the small village, the majority of your actions will be interacting with Alice. It's the aftermath of this incident in which Edward shows up, hoping to find her.Įdward is not alone he's accompanied by Alice, whose relationship to him isn't exactly clear at first, but she's a significant part of the gameplay. After the tragic death of a child, the village begins to turn on each other, the whole situation spiraling out of control. It's a little hard to follow the timeline, which seems intentional, but after Betty moved from Boston to New York, she somehow got tangled up in the drama of a family feud set in a small Norwegian mining village. The game tells the story of Edward, an American searching for his sister, Betty. There are pacing issues, lackluster vocal performances, and the ending might be on the weak side - but this will likely seem forgivable if you're fan of his previous games. Half of the charm of Tørnquist's games is that they've clearly bitten off more than they can chew and that issue is still clear with Draugen. There's also a nice homage to Red Thread's home country of Norway. This designer's fantasy has always worn the veil of real-world elements, with characters often wondering if they're dreaming or going mad, and Draugen is more of that. And that following will probably enjoy Draugen. He hasn't enjoyed the success or recognition of other celebrity adventure game developers like David Cage, Ron Gilbert, or Tim Schafer, but he definitely continues to be beloved by a loyal cult following.
DRAUGEN ALICE SIMULATOR
The game also represents a significant departure from Tørnquist's previous works, as it is more of a walking simulator than an adventure game.
DRAUGEN ALICE SERIES
After ending Ragnar Tørnquist's long-dormant Dreamfall series with Dreamfall Chapters, Red Thread has left the crowd-funding scene and instead Draugen was funded by a grant from the Norwegian Film Institute. Some studios have returned to the Kickstarter well, promising more of the same thing, but Red Thread Games has gone a different route. To this same effect, when the crowd-funding scene took off, few people gave a thought to what would happen when the project the studio was founded to make was completed, and suddenly an entire company was left over. When the indie scene emerged in the late 2000s, few people considered how the market could lure away AAA talent or how this new tier of the market would slowly eat away at B-level games. When design patterns shift in video games, we rarely realize their significance in the moment, or the long-lasting repercussions that are to come.
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