(Click link at the bottom for screenshots)
While it's certainly not impossible to create a game with niche appeal that still has mainstream accessibility, I don't believe it's optimal. There are always things a small group of people may want that are going to be undesirable for everyone else. So even the smallest concessions in favor of the majority are going to lessen the game's appeal to the minority, and whatever quirky bits are left in to please the minority will doubtless confound the majority. Miasmata has a rather elegant solution to this problem: it avoids it altogether. It doesn't even bother trying to have mass appeal, and as a result it's one of the most "not for everyone" games I've played since Noctis IV. But it's also an amazingly unique and wonderful experience. This review is going to run a little long. There's a lot to talk about. Some of you may not want to take the time to read it. So if you just want to know "do you think it's worth $15?" I'll refer you to the large text at the bottom of the page. See it? Yeah... I think that answers your question.
The premise of Miasmata is quite simple. You're stranded on an appropriately idyllic island called Eden, and you have some sort of horrible plague. Luckily, Eden is filled with all manner of useful plants that can be synthesized into different medicines. All you have to do is figure out which ones you need to cure the plague, by doing botany and piecing together the journals of Eden's previous inhabitants. So there's a lot of time spent exploring the island. Wandering around, gathering plants, reading journals... and getting lost. You see, navigation in Miasmata involves more than just glancing at an automap or following an objective marker. The game uses a unique system where you have to use "known" landmarks to triangulate your position on an in-game map. Draw a line to one landmark, draw a line to another, and your location is revealed, along with any nearby "unknown" landmarks. It sounds like a gimmick... but it's not. It means that you actually have to think about where you're going. It's very possible to get completely lost if you dash haphazardly into unexplored areas with no known landmarks. Not just possible, in fact... mandatory. But it's never frustrating. You can always find your way back if you make good use of your compass and look for campsites or trails. In fact, it makes exploring the dense jungles of Eden that much more exciting.
Miasmata isn't just a game of exploration. It's also a game of survival. You can't just stroll around Eden whistling nonchalantly. You have to deal with a fever, for one thing. A horrible fever that leaves you unable to do even simple tasks like swimming or running for any extended period of time, and forces you to gulp water at an alarming rate (either from environmental sources or your trusty canteen). Medicine can be synthesized to keep various symptoms at bay, but death by fever is still an ever-present danger. It also leads to one of the game's most interesting mechanics: the movement. Not only does your character have actual momentum, but his ability to slow down and his ability to keep from sliding down embankments is greatly reduced due to his physical weakness. Simply walking around can be hazardous. You can trip. You can lose your footing and tumble down an embankment. Even minor falls can be enough to aggravate your fever, to say nothing of deadly drops from cliffs. You have to think about how you get places, and how you're moving. And while some people may find this irritating, I thought it made trekking around the island surprisingly engaging. It's not just a matter of holding down the "w" key. You have to be attentive to everything you're doing. You have to pay attention to the environment, rather than just bulldozing through it.
And there's a predatory creature (hereafter referred to as 'Whiskers') who would like nothing more than to turn you into a pile of sloppy cat food. For the most part, Whiskers poses a pretty formidable threat. He (or she?) can chase after you pretty much indefinitely, he can sniff you out if you're hiding, and he can hear you step on dry twigs or leaves. The first time I encountered him, I thought the "run away a few feet and hide behind something until the threat disappears" skills I had learned from Amnesia would serve me well. They did not. Whiskers does not give up after a few seconds of hiding. He does not forget where he last saw you. And there's nothing pretend about his efforts to hunt you down. You have to actively escape him. Outmaneuver him, distract him with fire, slink away in the tall grass, swim out of his reach, get to high ground... there are a variety of strategies to employ, depending on the situation in which you encounter him. And for the most part, running and hiding from Whiskers is wonderfully intense. Especially while you're trying to deal with treacherous terrain or an attack of the fever. Even more than Amnesia, Miasmata captures the rarely-explored terror of being chased. You are not the predator, ever. You are the prey. And as such you will be hunted, pursued, and killed. Period.
The handling of Whiskers isn't perfect, though. First of all, encounters seem to be randomly triggered rather than emerging from any organic AI. Whiskers spawns somewhere close by, hunts you for some time, then despawns if you get out of range or if he can't find you. The result is that you very quickly start thinking of them as random events rather than dynamic meetings with an ever-present foe, and the fact that he often spawns predictably in front of you means that simply turning and walking in the opposite direction is often the most effective strategy. On a related note, the heartbeat mechanic isn't always a boon. Your heart will start beating when Whiskers is nearby, and will beat faster if he sees you. This does elicits some brilliant moments of panic near the beginning, when your heart starts beating and you have no idea where Whiskers is coming from, but can make things a little repetitive near the end when your heightened senses give you the ability to track him. There are also some AI glitches and exploits, including a rather common one where Whiskers will start endlessly pacing in circles, a disturbing lack of appearances near the coastline, and reported instances of him materializing out of thin air in front of the player. Finally, Whiskers shows up just a little too often. Once the game picks up, traveling anywhere will inveriably feature at least one or two encounters, which not only robs individual stalking sessions of weight, but also doesn't leave a lot of room for the player to stew in their own paranoia--something the game really begs for (the developers expect to reconsider spawning frequency in the future).
But what's amazing is that while these things are unfortunate on their own, many of them end up offsetting each other in positive ways. For instance, it's possible to avoid many encounters with the "turn and walk the other way" method described above, but the frequency of spawning means that there are still plenty of times that this won't work. Conversely, the possible frustration of having Whiskers spawn so often is remedied by the fact that it's possible to easily bypass him in many cases. And without giving anything away, let's just say that there are some good reasons story-wise that Whiskers spawns and despawns like he does. I feel that using a spawning system was not an optimal decision. It robs the game of some potential dynamicism, and makes it a little too easy to avoid danger. I think that having Whiskers freely roaming the island would have been better in every way. But that being said, the game still does a damn fine job of making the system work.
There are other things worth mentioning, too. Like the save system, which has you lighting fires or sleeping to save your game, and manages to channel the tension of checkpoint-only save systems while eliminating some of the frustration. Or the awesome "never leave home without it" in-game journal that keeps track of everything from your research to your health. Basically, Miasmata is its own beast in almost every way. It's the sort of game that could only ever be made in the indie market. When you play it, you don't see an FPS, an RPG, and Adventure game, a puzzler... all you see is Miasmata. It's not an incarnation of one of the industry's archetypes, it's a personal vision. And it is glorious. It's hard to fully explain what Miasmata does right, because Miasmata does a lot of things right. A lot of little vinettes of rightness and freshness and uniqueness, that combine together into an even fresher, righter, and more unique whole. A lot of little moments and emotions. A lot of design flourishes. A lot of small things that keep the experience varied. A lot a lot a lot... a lot that's created from a little. There's no adequate way to sum up the experience of playing the game. You have to experience it yourself. If the basic concepts and mechanics of Miasmata sound interesting to you, chances are you'll love the way it uses them.
I've been thinking and talking a lot about videogame storytelling lately, so it's perhaps serendipitous that Miasmata showed up right now... because the storytelling is absolutely fantastic. I might even go as far as to say that Miasmata has some of the best videogame storytelling of all time. No, no... that's too grand a claim. But suffice to say, it's good. And it's good because it knows how to stay out of your way. The majority of the narration in Miasmata isn't narration at all, but is in fact the emergent plotline of your own actions and experiences in the world. It has just enough structure to create a narrative arc without ever violating the player's right to go wherever and do whatever they want. It just gives little hints and clues about what to do next, and lets you fill in the gaps yourself. No matter what you're doing, you feel like your actions are contributing to a greater sense of progression and purpose. There's a narrative arc to Miasmata, but it's masterfully integrated into the gameplay and the game world, and you never feel like the game is dragging you along by the nose. There's a backstory, too, told through scraps of journals scattered around the island. There's a certain amount of improbability there... the fact that you find repeated entries in different locations and the fact that they're scattered inexplicably about to begin with. But the writing is uncommonly good (apart from rampant typos), and the backstory itself is intriguing. And the game has no qualms about leaving you to piece together some of the more juicy mysteries yourself. The ending in particular is quite brilliant. Not just for what it does, but also for what it doesn't do. There's no big climax, no final confrontation, and no big reveal of the rather shocking plot twists. Your victory is personal, and revelations are left buried or uncovered by the player's own hand.
Given that its engine was built entirely from scratch by one guy, Miasmata is a graphical marvel. The lighting and shadowing are particularly impressive. Everything from dense foliage to buildings and even to terrain features cast their own dynamic shadows. What's more, they also cast volumetric godrays, which actually exist in the 3d world rather than just as 2d effects when you look at the sun. As you can see from the above screenshot, they are quite pretty. There's also a nifty voxel engine for rendering procedural cloud patterns, which leads to some of the most believable weather I've ever seen in a videogame, as well as some of the most beautiful sunsets. They're especially attractive when you're on the coastline, looking out onto the ocean, with the realistic water reflecting everything. Contemplating your inevitible painful death, no doubt. On top of this, the island is quite vast and full of detail. Every inch of the beaches, woods, jungles, pine forests, and swamps are interesting to explore and very natural-looking. And the lush variety of ambient wildlife and liberal scattering of camps and ancient ruins certainly helps.
Sadly there are a lot of problems with the visuals. First of all, Miasmata is a powerhog. It expects you to have a powerful CPU and a powerful GPU, and it doesn't always give a convincing reason why. Many players have reported poor performance, even on machines that are capable of running most AAA titles. An optimization patch is expected to be released soon, but those with lower-end computers should still be somewhat wary. And there are a lot of visual rough edges. Most objects are unattractive on close examination, with polygon counts and textures straight out of last generation, and there's a lot of pop in. Sometimes from mere feet away. What's more, repeated environmental textures sometimes "tile" at medium to long range, making some vistas look a little odd. Animations are a bit off as well, and clouds exhibit strange blurry and jerky movement. Oh, and your character constantly holds his arms out in front of him like a zombie. Don't ask me why, I don't know. Does this make the game ugly? It most certainly does not. Miasmata is one of the most photogenic games I've ever played. It has an aesthetic appeal that transcends all discussion of technical merit. But by the same token, it's not a game for people who can't look past technical shortcomings.
So here's the conclusion to this rather lengthy review:
GO BUY MIASMATA
I'm serious. Right now. Go to GOG or Steam and buy it. Buy it, download it, and play it, this instant. Do not look back. Well... if it sounds like the sort of game that intrigues you, that is. As I said, the experience isn't for everyone. I recognize that there are plenty of people that are going to read this, play Miasmata, and think I've lost whatever marbles I might have had for recommending such a game. It's got elements that will alienate some people, like the touchy movement and the limited carry capacity. It's also got plenty of bugs and glitches, in the graphics as well as in the gameplay. And it never tries to be anything but slow-paced and low-key. But I consider it one of the best and most memorable indie titles I've played in a very long time. The subtle storytelling, the beautiful visuals, the intelligent pacing, the engaging exploration, the tense games of cat-and-human... all these things combine to create something that just about defines "a breath of fresh air." It's an unapologetically intimate game in an industry that lauds impersonal excess. It's the antithesis to the blockbuster thrills of the AAA arms race. Likewise, it's a mature and earnest foil to the self-referential satire and lofty pretensions of the indie market. It is purely and simply good. It is Miasmata. It is why I play videogames.
http://videogamepotpourri.blogspot.com/2012/12/review-of-miasmata.html
While it's certainly not impossible to create a game with niche appeal that still has mainstream accessibility, I don't believe it's optimal. There are always things a small group of people may want that are going to be undesirable for everyone else. So even the smallest concessions in favor of the majority are going to lessen the game's appeal to the minority, and whatever quirky bits are left in to please the minority will doubtless confound the majority. Miasmata has a rather elegant solution to this problem: it avoids it altogether. It doesn't even bother trying to have mass appeal, and as a result it's one of the most "not for everyone" games I've played since Noctis IV. But it's also an amazingly unique and wonderful experience. This review is going to run a little long. There's a lot to talk about. Some of you may not want to take the time to read it. So if you just want to know "do you think it's worth $15?" I'll refer you to the large text at the bottom of the page. See it? Yeah... I think that answers your question.
The premise of Miasmata is quite simple. You're stranded on an appropriately idyllic island called Eden, and you have some sort of horrible plague. Luckily, Eden is filled with all manner of useful plants that can be synthesized into different medicines. All you have to do is figure out which ones you need to cure the plague, by doing botany and piecing together the journals of Eden's previous inhabitants. So there's a lot of time spent exploring the island. Wandering around, gathering plants, reading journals... and getting lost. You see, navigation in Miasmata involves more than just glancing at an automap or following an objective marker. The game uses a unique system where you have to use "known" landmarks to triangulate your position on an in-game map. Draw a line to one landmark, draw a line to another, and your location is revealed, along with any nearby "unknown" landmarks. It sounds like a gimmick... but it's not. It means that you actually have to think about where you're going. It's very possible to get completely lost if you dash haphazardly into unexplored areas with no known landmarks. Not just possible, in fact... mandatory. But it's never frustrating. You can always find your way back if you make good use of your compass and look for campsites or trails. In fact, it makes exploring the dense jungles of Eden that much more exciting.
Miasmata isn't just a game of exploration. It's also a game of survival. You can't just stroll around Eden whistling nonchalantly. You have to deal with a fever, for one thing. A horrible fever that leaves you unable to do even simple tasks like swimming or running for any extended period of time, and forces you to gulp water at an alarming rate (either from environmental sources or your trusty canteen). Medicine can be synthesized to keep various symptoms at bay, but death by fever is still an ever-present danger. It also leads to one of the game's most interesting mechanics: the movement. Not only does your character have actual momentum, but his ability to slow down and his ability to keep from sliding down embankments is greatly reduced due to his physical weakness. Simply walking around can be hazardous. You can trip. You can lose your footing and tumble down an embankment. Even minor falls can be enough to aggravate your fever, to say nothing of deadly drops from cliffs. You have to think about how you get places, and how you're moving. And while some people may find this irritating, I thought it made trekking around the island surprisingly engaging. It's not just a matter of holding down the "w" key. You have to be attentive to everything you're doing. You have to pay attention to the environment, rather than just bulldozing through it.
And there's a predatory creature (hereafter referred to as 'Whiskers') who would like nothing more than to turn you into a pile of sloppy cat food. For the most part, Whiskers poses a pretty formidable threat. He (or she?) can chase after you pretty much indefinitely, he can sniff you out if you're hiding, and he can hear you step on dry twigs or leaves. The first time I encountered him, I thought the "run away a few feet and hide behind something until the threat disappears" skills I had learned from Amnesia would serve me well. They did not. Whiskers does not give up after a few seconds of hiding. He does not forget where he last saw you. And there's nothing pretend about his efforts to hunt you down. You have to actively escape him. Outmaneuver him, distract him with fire, slink away in the tall grass, swim out of his reach, get to high ground... there are a variety of strategies to employ, depending on the situation in which you encounter him. And for the most part, running and hiding from Whiskers is wonderfully intense. Especially while you're trying to deal with treacherous terrain or an attack of the fever. Even more than Amnesia, Miasmata captures the rarely-explored terror of being chased. You are not the predator, ever. You are the prey. And as such you will be hunted, pursued, and killed. Period.
The handling of Whiskers isn't perfect, though. First of all, encounters seem to be randomly triggered rather than emerging from any organic AI. Whiskers spawns somewhere close by, hunts you for some time, then despawns if you get out of range or if he can't find you. The result is that you very quickly start thinking of them as random events rather than dynamic meetings with an ever-present foe, and the fact that he often spawns predictably in front of you means that simply turning and walking in the opposite direction is often the most effective strategy. On a related note, the heartbeat mechanic isn't always a boon. Your heart will start beating when Whiskers is nearby, and will beat faster if he sees you. This does elicits some brilliant moments of panic near the beginning, when your heart starts beating and you have no idea where Whiskers is coming from, but can make things a little repetitive near the end when your heightened senses give you the ability to track him. There are also some AI glitches and exploits, including a rather common one where Whiskers will start endlessly pacing in circles, a disturbing lack of appearances near the coastline, and reported instances of him materializing out of thin air in front of the player. Finally, Whiskers shows up just a little too often. Once the game picks up, traveling anywhere will inveriably feature at least one or two encounters, which not only robs individual stalking sessions of weight, but also doesn't leave a lot of room for the player to stew in their own paranoia--something the game really begs for (the developers expect to reconsider spawning frequency in the future).
But what's amazing is that while these things are unfortunate on their own, many of them end up offsetting each other in positive ways. For instance, it's possible to avoid many encounters with the "turn and walk the other way" method described above, but the frequency of spawning means that there are still plenty of times that this won't work. Conversely, the possible frustration of having Whiskers spawn so often is remedied by the fact that it's possible to easily bypass him in many cases. And without giving anything away, let's just say that there are some good reasons story-wise that Whiskers spawns and despawns like he does. I feel that using a spawning system was not an optimal decision. It robs the game of some potential dynamicism, and makes it a little too easy to avoid danger. I think that having Whiskers freely roaming the island would have been better in every way. But that being said, the game still does a damn fine job of making the system work.
There are other things worth mentioning, too. Like the save system, which has you lighting fires or sleeping to save your game, and manages to channel the tension of checkpoint-only save systems while eliminating some of the frustration. Or the awesome "never leave home without it" in-game journal that keeps track of everything from your research to your health. Basically, Miasmata is its own beast in almost every way. It's the sort of game that could only ever be made in the indie market. When you play it, you don't see an FPS, an RPG, and Adventure game, a puzzler... all you see is Miasmata. It's not an incarnation of one of the industry's archetypes, it's a personal vision. And it is glorious. It's hard to fully explain what Miasmata does right, because Miasmata does a lot of things right. A lot of little vinettes of rightness and freshness and uniqueness, that combine together into an even fresher, righter, and more unique whole. A lot of little moments and emotions. A lot of design flourishes. A lot of small things that keep the experience varied. A lot a lot a lot... a lot that's created from a little. There's no adequate way to sum up the experience of playing the game. You have to experience it yourself. If the basic concepts and mechanics of Miasmata sound interesting to you, chances are you'll love the way it uses them.
I've been thinking and talking a lot about videogame storytelling lately, so it's perhaps serendipitous that Miasmata showed up right now... because the storytelling is absolutely fantastic. I might even go as far as to say that Miasmata has some of the best videogame storytelling of all time. No, no... that's too grand a claim. But suffice to say, it's good. And it's good because it knows how to stay out of your way. The majority of the narration in Miasmata isn't narration at all, but is in fact the emergent plotline of your own actions and experiences in the world. It has just enough structure to create a narrative arc without ever violating the player's right to go wherever and do whatever they want. It just gives little hints and clues about what to do next, and lets you fill in the gaps yourself. No matter what you're doing, you feel like your actions are contributing to a greater sense of progression and purpose. There's a narrative arc to Miasmata, but it's masterfully integrated into the gameplay and the game world, and you never feel like the game is dragging you along by the nose. There's a backstory, too, told through scraps of journals scattered around the island. There's a certain amount of improbability there... the fact that you find repeated entries in different locations and the fact that they're scattered inexplicably about to begin with. But the writing is uncommonly good (apart from rampant typos), and the backstory itself is intriguing. And the game has no qualms about leaving you to piece together some of the more juicy mysteries yourself. The ending in particular is quite brilliant. Not just for what it does, but also for what it doesn't do. There's no big climax, no final confrontation, and no big reveal of the rather shocking plot twists. Your victory is personal, and revelations are left buried or uncovered by the player's own hand.
Given that its engine was built entirely from scratch by one guy, Miasmata is a graphical marvel. The lighting and shadowing are particularly impressive. Everything from dense foliage to buildings and even to terrain features cast their own dynamic shadows. What's more, they also cast volumetric godrays, which actually exist in the 3d world rather than just as 2d effects when you look at the sun. As you can see from the above screenshot, they are quite pretty. There's also a nifty voxel engine for rendering procedural cloud patterns, which leads to some of the most believable weather I've ever seen in a videogame, as well as some of the most beautiful sunsets. They're especially attractive when you're on the coastline, looking out onto the ocean, with the realistic water reflecting everything. Contemplating your inevitible painful death, no doubt. On top of this, the island is quite vast and full of detail. Every inch of the beaches, woods, jungles, pine forests, and swamps are interesting to explore and very natural-looking. And the lush variety of ambient wildlife and liberal scattering of camps and ancient ruins certainly helps.
Sadly there are a lot of problems with the visuals. First of all, Miasmata is a powerhog. It expects you to have a powerful CPU and a powerful GPU, and it doesn't always give a convincing reason why. Many players have reported poor performance, even on machines that are capable of running most AAA titles. An optimization patch is expected to be released soon, but those with lower-end computers should still be somewhat wary. And there are a lot of visual rough edges. Most objects are unattractive on close examination, with polygon counts and textures straight out of last generation, and there's a lot of pop in. Sometimes from mere feet away. What's more, repeated environmental textures sometimes "tile" at medium to long range, making some vistas look a little odd. Animations are a bit off as well, and clouds exhibit strange blurry and jerky movement. Oh, and your character constantly holds his arms out in front of him like a zombie. Don't ask me why, I don't know. Does this make the game ugly? It most certainly does not. Miasmata is one of the most photogenic games I've ever played. It has an aesthetic appeal that transcends all discussion of technical merit. But by the same token, it's not a game for people who can't look past technical shortcomings.
So here's the conclusion to this rather lengthy review:
GO BUY MIASMATA
I'm serious. Right now. Go to GOG or Steam and buy it. Buy it, download it, and play it, this instant. Do not look back. Well... if it sounds like the sort of game that intrigues you, that is. As I said, the experience isn't for everyone. I recognize that there are plenty of people that are going to read this, play Miasmata, and think I've lost whatever marbles I might have had for recommending such a game. It's got elements that will alienate some people, like the touchy movement and the limited carry capacity. It's also got plenty of bugs and glitches, in the graphics as well as in the gameplay. And it never tries to be anything but slow-paced and low-key. But I consider it one of the best and most memorable indie titles I've played in a very long time. The subtle storytelling, the beautiful visuals, the intelligent pacing, the engaging exploration, the tense games of cat-and-human... all these things combine to create something that just about defines "a breath of fresh air." It's an unapologetically intimate game in an industry that lauds impersonal excess. It's the antithesis to the blockbuster thrills of the AAA arms race. Likewise, it's a mature and earnest foil to the self-referential satire and lofty pretensions of the indie market. It is purely and simply good. It is Miasmata. It is why I play videogames.
http://videogamepotpourri.blogspot.com/2012/12/review-of-miasmata.html