Hope Deferred

feels illegal to play

Certified classic Dungeon Crawler with modern game play. By far the best thing that's happened in years since the Among Us popularity spike.

Great first impression. I’ve no idea what’s going on or what I’m supposed to do and I’m having a blast doing it.

Wish you the best, dev.

I have searched high and low for another good kings field like and I've played so many ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ones in pursuit of a game that can stand up with something like Lunacid. For me, this is one of them. While I think there's a ton of whiplash from the heavy and depressing material to the recreation on undead burg, I still loved my time with. I think that many will say that there's a lot of trauma dumping, but I personally didn't mind it, and found it incredibly interesting. I think my only real gripe with this game is that I have no idea how to find some of these endings, as a lot of the secrets are really well hidden.

incredibly strange game with Insane atmosphere, feels like kings field (being made on the kings field engine will do that) but with a ♥♥♥♥ ton more disturbing imagery and obtuse/obscure puzzles heavy on exploration and Looking With Your Eyes for a solution jank as hell and may not run properly (the engine is from 2000) but there are community patches and engine fixes that can help, depending on your setup

I went to the ER for chest pain the day after playing this game for the first time. The previous night, crimson images haunted the insides of my eyelids: maddening paths of brick, pig faces, bloated nudes, eyeless men, locked doors. Hope Deferred is an unforgettable, singular experience. I beat it in two sessions, compelled onward despite heavy backtracking and infuriating platforming. The first level, and perhaps the best (partially due to it being the first), is like a PKD'ian vision of an abandoned castle on Mars. Another level is soaked in pathos and poison. The spaces are purgatorial. Everything works against you, including the controls, a conspiracy against the player: the formal elements of the game breathe in unison, against you. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite stick the landing. I appreciate the intensity of the final level, and parts of it are as glued to mind as anything else, but it becomes overinterpreted, heavy-handed, veering close to self-indulgence. The mystery (and immersion) crack. And I know this is in some ways an anti-video game: If you play it like a normal game, you'll die or wander eternally. It's intended to upset the player's expectations and punish conventional playstyles. But: trust the game. Trust the aesthetic. The first part of the game not only describes the trauma, but makes the player feel as if they're experiencing it. Exposition and a very "gamey" key hunt dull the expressionism of the rest of the game. Regardless, a masterful KingsFieldlike with contempt (ie. love) for the player. It embeds you, grows malignantly around you, curses you: a pure delight.

Hope Deferred explores the darkest reaches of the mind, the human experience and how unfair circumstances and unfortunate events can completely alter the course of someone's life. It is morbid and at times uncomfortable, yet deeply interesting as a result. And just when all hope is lost, the game presents a joke which makes you laugh and for a moment you forget the horror's you were just mere moments ago presented with. All this is to say that the game feels like a deeply personal insight into someone's mind. Outside of the narrative, it is a well made First Person RPG made on an absolutely archaic engine and inherits all its technical issues as a result. However it works on a controller, runs smoothly and the developer thinks outside the box to create some truly interesting levels. The level design is winding with many shortcuts and secrets. I was actually amazed at some of the shortcuts. It is a very unguided experience so exploration is incredibly rewarding. The only thing I disliked was some of the platforming segments which are rare enough to not have impacted my experience.

Cool game that you'll likely have to play more than once to see everything in it. Deeply personal and all the better for it, you best like reading though.

Fells like something that J. King-Spooner would cook if he was into esoteric 20-year-old Japanese game engines.