When you think about it, every game is an RPG, after a fashion. Whenever we step into a protagonist’s shoes, we’re inhabiting a role. Yet, as Book Of Travels’ creative director Jakob Tuchten notes, some games don’t always think about what it means to truly embody the character you’ve become. Should bards and priests really be picking up swords? In downsizing the traditional MMO, Might And Delight’s new game is hoping that players learn to organically live their part. There’s a bit of Method in their madness, you might say.
Indeed, there’s a remarkably broad selection of roles to take on within this month’s Hype crop. In Santa Ragione’s deeply unsettling Saturnalia you switch between several characters. As a visiting geologist or photojournalist, the game’s disorienting tricks make you truly feel like an outsider. As for when you’re inhabiting one of the locals, well, those shifting streets come to reflect your struggle to escape.