Othercide

First published in GRIND I, pages 22–25.

“I fought with every bone and every muscle, all that I am I leave to you, take it. My blood is my legacy, may it pour into an army that will tear Suffering from its host.”

My obsession with tactical turn-based games has deep roots — and every title that lands in my lap wraps itself a little tighter around my heart. Recently a new root has left its mark on me: Othercide, a genuine work of art with a Franco-Swedish pedigree, signed by indie studio Lightbulb Crew.

The player steps into the shoes of a nameless heroine fighting dark monstrosities in a city much like 1897 Paris, only plague-ridden. The ‘Chosen One’ (that's what the heroine is called) tries with all her might to stop the ‘Other’ from tearing the ‘Veil’ (the unseen barrier between ‘Reality’ and ‘Unreality’). Shortly after the game begins she is defeated by a grotesque character called ‘The Child’, who lets himself be corrupted by the power of Suffering and shatters the whole world. A supernatural power-granting entity, an Other called Memory, merges with the Chosen One's soul before she is cut down by the Child's unleashed power, and becomes the Mother: a last bastion in the fight for Simone, for the integrity of the Veil.

From here begins the Time of Fragmentation, a temporal limbo in which Reality and Unreality coexist in an anachronistic loop called Remembrance. Eternally stuck somewhere between 1897 and 1920, the Mother sends her Daughters (physically manifested memories of the Chosen One) into battle against the Child's forces, closing as many of the ruptures in the Veil (called synapses) that he has caused as she can.

Although it has the classic tactical turn-based elements — action points and a grid to spend them on — the battles keep the game's temporal theme and make use of a simple, elegant mechanic: the timeline. If a Daughter spends up to half her action points on her turn, she moves 50 positions forward; but if she crosses that threshold by even a single point she enters BURST mode and moves 100 positions, leaving herself exposed to attacks from faster enemies. So far, so simple — but plenty of abilities affect the order of characters on the timeline, or only activate a number of positions later.

On top of all this there are also a number of abilities that don't spend action points at all, using a set percentage of a Daughter's health instead. They're powerful enough, but they depend on specific conditions to trigger (an enemy has to stop inside the Daughter's range, say, or another Daughter has to be attacked). Using them without being sure the conditions will fire can therefore contribute to an early defeat — which is why careful planning and forward thinking are key elements.

Every synapse-closing mission is synonymous with the death of at least one of the Daughters... because the game is merciless and leaves no room for more than one or two mistakes without punishing you severely. Health points don't regenerate at the end of the mission, and that is only possible by sacrificing another Daughter of a level greater than or equal to the one that will be healed. Bringing a Daughter back from the dead is possible only by spending rare tokens.

As the survivors level up, they get stronger. But at the same time their actions on the battlefield can be reflected in specific personality traits — if a Daughter kills a lot of enemies without taking so much as a single hit, she will become arrogant; that is, she gets a permanent attack bonus in exchange for a permanent penalty to the experience points she earns.

In the same way, if a Daughter soaks up every enemy attack, she may become timid. She then gets extra health in exchange for a steep action-point cost for moving around the battlefield.

Missions completed successfully, by contrast, bring — along with a postponement of the apocalyptic event — Memory fragments (little pieces of story about the Child's life and the Mother's from before the Time of Fragmentation). On top of all that comes an essence called Vitae — the Mother's life-giving blood, which you can use to germinate other Daughters or to slot in Memory fragments (passive effects that improve the Daughters' abilities).

> Dressed in graphics that are conceptually impressive, with gothic horror influences, Othercide's monochromatic monotony is broken by the Mother's bright red blood, which spills

:

she | to slow Suffering down. A subtle way of saying that suffering is a constant of the human experience: suffering begets suffering, but the paradox is that self-sacrifice and embracing your own suffering can heal another wounded soul. The whole game is, in fact, a poem full of metaphors, exploring every facet of human suffering. My favourite metaphor is also the one I learned the most from:

Memory asks the Child to give up, one by one, all the memories that cause him suffering, this being the only approach that weakens the Other's influence over him.

Unfortunately, I now come to the game's imperfections: on top of text boxes that overlap each other oddly and don't even disappear during the short cutscenes for some abilities, my main problem is with the way the story is told. Othercide borrows a gimmick from Transistor, Supergiant Games' game: story fragments handed to you willy-nilly in a random order. The reason this exposition technique doesn't fit here is that Othercide, unlike Transistor, uses far too many terms of its own, explained in only a few of the memory fragments. I spent a fair few hours playing without having a clue what was going on in the cutscenes I was watching. Practically everything I've told you in the first few paragraphs about Othercide's story context is information discovered after far too many hours of GRIND.

The problem isn't necessarily that the story is + structured like a big puzzle you have to complete X by playing. Rather, the random system for handing out the essential pieces * is what can ruin the experience. In other words, certain details can land in the player's lap far too late to have the same impact.

As a die-hard fan of the tactical turn-based genre, I confidently and warmly recommend Othercide to anyone who loves action points, enemy predictions and ability combos that pump dopamine into the brain of the tactical genius behind the keyboard. It's a genuinely beautiful game that will stay in my Memory (and in my Soul) for a long time. po izi Othercide, o; is interrupted by pony rw are

= Mihnea Niță foreboding into a true anthem of despair and suffering that screams at you from the depths

7 a a " | earned an eternal place in my playlist, and ALAS -- SUFFERING IS every time it rains outside and ERIN... WB PAITTED TEE this song starts, I will remember the battles CHILD pe te yap yp airy of every soul lost or won, but also of

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