Selfloss (XS)
by
Lee Mehr
, posted 3 hours ago / 247 Views
For those who were curious: Selfloss refers to a ritual about empowering individuals to move past their deep-seated grief. It’s fitting then that in his previous life, Kazimir was a healer. Beginning in what’s essentially purgatory, he’s been selected to reprise that role in a more metaphorical sense. His newly-acquired magical staff is central to accomplishing this: lighting up carved runes, vanquishing foes, and capturing the spirit essences of various fish. The last detail is particularly important, as this motif is directly inspired by Slavic and Icelandic folklore. Like the recent Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, it’s examining the grieving process through genre; unfortunately, it too carries gameplay baggage that obscures its potent themes.
Unlike the spry & youthful Zau, it’s immediately established that our fated protagonist has no such energy nor alacrity. His running gait is the equivalent of a jog through deep mud and the mere act of toggling sprint will result in animated sweat drops streaming down his bearded face. He hasn’t earned his wings yet. He has undeniable fortitude though. After plummeting from Slavic limbo, this surreal adventure continues as a tall, lanky, beak-faced guide tells you – in an imposing, guttural voice – to find the next creature ready for the Selfloss ritual.
The tempo is rather simple: go around from place to place with a wooden dingy to learn about the atrabilious individuals in need of healing and solve puzzles to acquire the necessary items. Chapters typically consist of modest overworlds with islands separated by seawater. But like an old-school Legend of Zelda dungeon, or a more recent example like The Last Campfire, mainline and secondary puzzles are readily accessible; it all just depends on which way your curiosity takes you. Learning the lay of the land and eventually puzzle-solving comes back to using your staff to light up various objects. The fundamentals are familiar but the circumstances tend to change; one brainteaser might be lighting up runes in a particular order and then the next has you ferrying fish, who’re somehow “swimming” above the water, to ignite a lantern.
Remember: this staff is for puzzles and combat. With an isometric viewpoint and no camera control, the right control stick is instead used to aim your staff’s light source in a general direction. So, focusing light energy against Miasma-infected enemies, be they humanoid or grotesque pimples, handles like a slow twin-stick action game. Depending on the enemy, fully filling up their dark meter with light either instantly destroys them or temporarily petrifies them so Kazimir’s sickle can finish the job. Many later combat scenarios take place in the water, replacing a bladed weapon with charged boat ramming.
The nuanced finger dexterity is interesting in principle, but – unfortunately – Selfloss bit off far more than it could chew. Kiting while aiming is kinesthetically lackluster thanks to an indecisive camera and unreliable hit detection. Imprecision also affects platforming, ranging from Kazimir’s locomotion to unreliable control inputs. Perhaps the greatest offender, though, would be the laborious boat-centric puzzles that demand you push objects to the right place; worse yet, speeding up the process by boost-smacking them can get said puzzle pieces locked inside the geometry – forcing a restart altogether. Even smaller things, like the camera wrestling control away to show you exactly what you’ve unlocked, feel like copious paper cuts to an already-unpolished foundation.
There’s a stronger drive to finish by learning more about its inspired folklore. Although his laggard pace does annoy me in gameplay terms, making Kazimir an old man is an inspired narrative choice. His interstitial flashbacks between chapters – while limited – capture the sense of a beleaguered man reminiscing during the twilight of his years. Through those bits, brief character interactions, and various collectibles, you quickly glean this timeline as being the end of an epoch between warring factions. But it’s less to do with this being an age of peace and moreso how a physical and spiritual decay is swallowing everything up with reckless abandon. Its grey, desaturated color palette reflects that dejected atmosphere too. The way it’s effectively conveyed reminds me of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, by leaning into depressing folktales while not over-indulging to an absurd degree.
Speaking of Brothers, Selfloss’ visuals borrow liberally from that aforementioned example and Ashen to great effect. The zoomed-out viewpoint does wonders in making the world look like detailed Play-Doh sets. And it’s not merely the quality soft textures (which I’m biased towards), but also the sense of scale and different scenarios that make it feel so vivid; some of its creative camerawork in particular puts many current AAA titles to shame. That beauty would risk going to waste were it not supported by impressive audio work as well. From all voice work being like a foreign-language film with English subtitles, to the plaintive and imposing OST, each gear clicks into place as though you’re indulging in a foreign myth passed down across generations and now transplanted into a game.
As an interactive folktale, Selfloss successfully marries several identities in a way that feels just nuanced enough to be its own thing, but also stumbles while doing so. The ways in which iffy controls, an annoying camera, stultifying design, and various paper cuts make playing more of it the least engaging aspect is a damn shame. That’s especially frustrating given just how expansive it feels despite such finite resources. Through it all though, the galvanizing positives still earn it a tentative recommendation for fans willing to weather through this conflicting tempest.
Contractor by trade and writer by hobby, Lee’s obnoxious criticisms have found a way to be featured across several gaming sites: N4G, VGChartz, Gaming Nexus, DarkStation, and TechRaptor! He started gaming in the mid-90s and has had the privilege in playing many games across a plethora of platforms. Reader warning: each click given to his articles only helps to inflate his Texas-sized ego. Proceed with caution.
This review is based on a digital copy of Selfloss for the XS, provided by the publisher.
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