Publisher: Paradnight Studio

Developer: Paradnight Studio

Release Date: 01/29/2024

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H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are difficult to translate into game form, and very few are successful. It’s almost like a curse in and of itself. Many games based off of his short stories are adventure titles, and I have played many of them, with almost none being good. The Nameless City has some good ideas. It nails the atmosphere and the setting and has an interesting gameplay mechanic, but this game feels like a glorified demo of what could be.

The game starts you out at a campsite outside of some ruins in a desert. The lone adventurer narrates the game with a subtle and almost depressing tone. He is quoting lines from Lovecraft’s short story of the same title. A mysterious being is said to live in these ruins, and people will hear the call in their dreams. As you make your way through the ruins, you will come across runes. These can be learned to help open up pathways further in. As night falls, however, you will lose all of your sanity and have to start back at the last checkpoint. This isn’t all that bad, as the game is so short. There are only three runes you use in the game. You can use one rune for casting and another for dispelling or casting a barrier. These spells are just for barriers, and that’s it. There are strange open holes that blow wind across a chasm that you need to navigate. These will blow you off the mountain, so you need to crouch under some.

Once you get into the cave system, it’s pretty boring. You can eventually use a spell to cast light on strange crystals as your sanity depletes in the darkness quickly. Once you get through the cave system and back out, the game is pretty much over. I did hate the maze puzzle. This entire level will take up most of your 90 minute playtime. It’s an endless maze that repeats forever. You need to use this to your advantage to activate crystals to stop a beam from blocking your path. It took me nearly 45 minutes to figure this puzzle out, and it was not fun at all. That means there’s only 45 minutes of actual gameplay outside of this awful level.

With that said, there isn’t much to say for the game even if I wanted to. The visuals use the PS1 style graphics and look appealing. The atmosphere and ominous sound effects do a good job, and the end monster is a little goofy looking. The game is very affordable and can provide a spooky experience for an evening playthrough, but don’t expect too much from it.

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