The Forgotten City, Released 2021, Developed by Modern Storyteller, available on every platform.
"Fontana di Trevi (Rome)" by Giampaolo Macorig is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
It is the third time in an hour that I have entered the ancient, secluded city. It is a small city from antiquity, so there aren’t Volkswagens darting through the streets. Still, I feel like a gifted dancer as I navigate the patterns, social pleasantries, and foot traffic of the city’s inhabitants with mastery and social grace.
I know this place like I know the actual neighborhood I live in. I nod at the digital doctor in the game the same as I nod at the guy down the street with the cute, well-mannered German Shepherd mix in my actual life.
For a game rooted in history, I am immersed in the present it is sharing. It feels alive and its details feel fully realized and completely well rounded. Some of that is due to the craftsmanship of the developers, but I also think my affections for this place are due in part to how fully I know everything.
I’m a local.
The Forgotten City is a masterful piece of game design, but it is not an immense one. I feel I can detail every inch of the city, much the same as I can probably draw a pixel perfect map of Verdansk from Call of Duty: Warzone. The difference is that I spent 10 hours playing The Forgotten City and over 500 hours playing Warzone.
The Forgotten City revels in its Tiny Open World. Size does matter, but here, it is the small approach that carries the day. I am so smitten with this narrow slice of antiquity that I am going to try to make the case that everyone should shrink the hell out of their worlds.
This is fundamentally a question of real estate, so we are going to use the priorities of a realtor to compare: Proximity to Activities, Neighbors, School District, and Maximizing your Investment.
Proximity to Activities: When purchasing a home, you want to ensure it is close to quality restaurants, a good grocery store, and close to the freeway to ease your commute. In a typical open-world game, the player needs to consider several venues, including the merchant, the quest giver, the boss, the dungeon, the high point that reveals the map, the place where you obtain your mount, and the person who improves your gear.
The tower that reveals the full map like the one in Assassin’s Creed is entirely superfluous in The Forgotten City because everything is already within eyesight.
I rarely drive my car in my actual life, because I live in between two downtown areas, neither more than a mile away. I do not need the “fast travel” mechanism of my Prius, because it is enjoyable to walk. When I reach my local downtown, it’s simple for me to stop by the alchemist (pour over coffee), armor merchant (hardware store to replace the light bulb), and challenge arena (my dog likes to chase the geese at the baseball field.
There are things to purchase in The Forgotten City and shady individuals to rob, but I do not need to consult a map. I do not need to budget for travel time. I just efficiently ping pong between areas of interest, shiny baubles, distractions, and yes, fine, pursuits of purpose. It is more local farmer’s market than Mall of America, but at the end of the day, my basket is still full. At checkout when asked if I found everything I need, the answer is still yes (but in Forgotten City I’m sincere).
This tiny open-world has walkability. For a game about conversation, that works. What about Grand Theft Auto V, a driving game interspersed with murder? It is hard to drive 100 miles per hour around a two-block radius! The reality is, the sense of speed is relative. I used to race indoor go-karts where the track was a scale model of Formula One. We weren’t driving very fast, but it felt fast. Grand Theft Auto could be a game of high stakes crime in which you know every alleyway and side street. One that doesn’t require a map, because you know when the local train arrives or when the ferry departs to use to your advantage.
But, it isn’t as useful to discuss what Grand Theft Auto could be at a smaller scale and instead bask in what The Forgotten City actually is at a smaller scale. When a law is broken and the gods seek to punish the inhabitants, the sprint to escape the city is tense and terrifying. When you need to get to a certain ledge before a certain gentleman kills himself, I am not racing at 100 MPH in a sports car, but it is nonetheless plenty tense. It feels exactly as fast as it needs to feel.
This game uses every inch of its pavement meaningfully.
The Forgotten City has the relative density of a bigger world without the baggage. You don’t need a map, or fast travel, or a notebook to remember where everyone is located. You can see everything, walk to everything you can see, and you’ll enjoy every step along the way. You won’t feel the wind whipping your hair as you walk on foot, but the loss of adrenaline is more than ample trade for the excellent pacing.
Neighbors: It takes a village, which means you need more people than just yourself, or your video game character for the sake of this piece. Approximately 150,000 people live within a one mile radius of me, but only about 15 matter. These are the 15 people I wave at regularly. The barista, the other dog owners, the people on the street who happen to be outside at the same time as me every day.
Robin Dunbar theorized we can have meaningful relationships in our lives with at most 150 people. This is known as Dunbar’s Number. However, our inner core shrinks dramatically from here. Dunbar believes we devote two thirds of our time to only 15 people.
The Forgotten City dispenses with the façade of a bustling city. It even foregoes the notion of Dunbar’s Number, and hurries directly to that inner, meaningful core. The result, is that every neighbor matters. This isn’t just an emotional level, but a mechanical one as well.
Every character in The Forgotten City is meaningful. They all have a motivation, or a flaw, or a problem. Because there are so few of them, the player is able to intuit their connections and follow the thread of their stories. You become a part of the city, not just as a pedestrian moving down the street in Grand Theft Auto, but as an entity in the community.
The Tiny Open World makes this possible. If you get too big, you need more bodies to fill the space. Once you have extras, supporting characters, and stars, you need robust feedback to communicate who is who. You need to start adding quest logs, dialog diaries, and guides out of the game.
The Forgotten City requires none of that, because it focuses on the inner core and capitalizes on our brain’s best output in this regard. Grand Theft Auto cannot do this. It is too big and there are too many people. Elden Ring, a dying, abandoned world cannot do this, because the few people it has are stretched so thinly across its landscape that keeping track of them requires a huge investment in tracking.
We can tie this back to walkability. The truth is, you aren’t walking in between venues, as in most open-world games, but in between people. The people are what matters here, because they are all essential, they are close together, and they all have a place in your mind. Every person is a rich, fully realized destination worthy of the walk. You’ll be thankful that all of these activities are so close together, as they’re so interesting.
School District: A key aspect of a home buying decision for parents is the quality of the school districts in your potential neighborhood. A key aspect for time starved parents choosing a video game to play is understanding the quality of feedback and instruction in a potential video game. How long does it take to be fun? Time is precious.
I attended a User Experience Design conference years ago where one of the key note speakers shared dozens of slides explaining all the iteration involved in trying to expose a complicated mechanism to their players. Perhaps she was being a polite team player, but my only takeaway from the presentation was that the UX team was expected to pull off a miracle. The core design was fundamentally flawed, as a result of too much complexity. There was no layout to make the design intuitive.
So many open world games invest huge sums of time and money into making their games more intuitive. For better or worse, one of the coolest innovations in Ghost of Tsushima is their wind based mechanism that shows you where to go. But, while it’s certainly intuitive and integrated, it serves the same function as a gigantic arrow hovering over the car you are driving.
These games require enormous maps, tutorials explaining how to travel, and how to set up waypoints. They create a visual language in their level design, where a certain building means it is a market, but another building indicates an enemy.
There is so much to learn. Am I playing a game, or am I learning your visual language?
The school system is not ideal in The Forgotten City if you’re looking for a traditional education. It pushes an approach of learning through experience, through experimentation, and through failure. It can do this, because the ante is cheap and the stakes are low. It can do this, because it has a tiny sandbox where my expectations of complexity are limited. I see the people, understand the society, understand the neighborhood and activities. There are fewer parameters, but that doesn’t mean they are simple.
The game teaches you with events and things you encounter. Yes, you might encounter the midnight Klan rally to disrupt in Red Dead Redemption 2, but you might not because the world is so big. The Forgotten City introduces you to the doctor, because you will reach the market. It introduces you to the assassin, because you will find the church. You learn that a man is going to attempt suicide without your intervention, because you can see him on the cliff.
The game has teachers everywhere. Each member of the community is a teacher. Not only are they fully developed characters for the sake of the narrative, but they serve a purpose in your instruction. They teach you the rules, the consequences, and the relationships.
They did away with a formal education because their small game is intuitive, engaging, and a pretty good teacher. If you’re willing to have some free range children, The Forgotten City might be the school district you need.
Maximizing your Investment: Buying a home is a great investment and one of the primary sources of generational wealth.
Most AAA open world games require a 50 hour investment, which is the video game equivalent of a government bond. These 50 hours are spent with:
A few dozen hours of content tied to the narrative
Exploring challenge caves
Completing scored and timed events (groan),
Completing tasks for 4 characters who each have you do the same mission 10 times
Collectible checklists
It is a lot of time for a modest return.
It reminds me of a Las Vegas buffet. Sure, there is prime rib and lobster, but they’ve been sitting under the heat lamp since the night before. The mashed potatoes are stale. Those vegetables are eerily shiny. Honestly, did you really need $75 worth of prime rib and lukewarm buffet food?
The Forgotten City asks for 10 hours to complete four endings, each of which are distinct, clever, and valuable. It is that rare investment where you get a lot, quickly, at very low risk. When I saw low risk, I mean it. The endings build upon each other. You do not need to replay the game. They responsibly isolate the critical choices such that time is not wasted. When you solve a conundrum, you solve it and cash out.
The Forgotten City is only the prime rib, but it exceeds the quality of the Vegas buffet and also costs significantly less. It defies economics! Everything is distinct, but the game includes thievery, exploration, light combat, conversation, logic puzzles, and detective work. There is also a light dash of philosophy, religion, and history.
There is so much variety that you might ask a few times, through a mouth stuffed with meat “and you’re sure this only costs $20…for this much prime rib?” The meat is tender. The returns are high. Indulge, my friends.
The One Cool Thing
Player expectations are like a gas: they fill the space they occupy. If you give them an enormous island, well, they want the entire island to be filled with activities. If you give them a smaller island, or even something as small as a town? They can be just as happy. People are seeking variety, systems that meaningfully connect, and rich characters. Sure, people who play games often tolerate arduous tutorials and complex mechanisms to reach the good stuff, but if it were all right in front of them? That isn’t downsizing, but a value add.
Don’t get me wrong, I love getting lost in the vast and under-explained world of Elden Ring. But, one shouldn’t always assume that sprawl supersedes focus. The Forgotten City has a Tiny Open World, but the concise nature of its address shouldn’t color your impressions on the contents of this envelope.
It may not have the square footage to justify the mantra of “location, location, location” - perhaps just one “location,” but The Forgotten City uses every square meter like a masterful city planner.
Preview for Next Time
I am taking a different approach for the next post, which is that I am writing about a game I did not particularly enjoy! I think it will be a good test for the thesis of this blog. I will be writing about Chorus, a novel take on the starfighter genre that doesn’t quite stick the landing.
Chorus is the perfect kind of game to sample via Game Pass, but not something I recommend for purchase. Check your inbox in a few weeks to learn about the one part of Chorus I thought was perfectly on key.
Currently Playing Finished
I completed Elden Ring after 120 hours. It is a candidate for my Favorite Game Ever and I’m trying to decide if I wish to write about it further. But, following Elden Ring, I intentionally played several small, quick games.
What Remains of Edith Finch was a beautiful, haunting, deeply sad exploration of the tragedies endured by an eclectic family, centered around their bizarre house. A truly wonderful expression of how interaction can elevate a narrative.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, is a fascinating look at making a co-operative game where instead a single player controls both characters. The game revolves around simple environmental puzzles where you need to have both brothers participate, but I was most excited at how they don’t speak English. Instead, they use expressive animations as you interact with the world to convey their personality and feeling.
Finally, I enjoyed FAR: Lone Sails. This is a simple 2D game where you’re driving a land ship across an apocalyptic, empty landscape. Controlling the ship is a simple Rube Goldberg meets Mario experience. You jump to hit the button to send junk into the furnace to make fuel. You push in the button to activate the engine. Ride up the elevator to unveil the sails. Rush back to the engine to hit the steam release for a boost. Rush back to activate the vacuum to suck up more junk. It is soothing and satisfying and simple.
All of these games were around 3 hours each, available on pretty much every platform, and often severely discounted or quite cheap.
Recommendation
A friend recommended I play The Swapper, an ancient 2013 release that is still incredibly fresh, inventive, and quick. You can play on the platform of your choice for only $15.
This is a 2D side-scrolling puzzle game in which you duplicate yourself, move yourselves at the same time, and try to line all of you up on switches to solve puzzles. It is deviously clever, sharp, and has a wicked story in the background.
If you are like everyone else in the video game space and deep into Elden Ring, I think this will be a perfect palette cleanser whenever you escape The Lands Between.
Thank you for reading! If you liked what you read, please subscribe and share, but also, let me know what you think. See you in two weeks.
Edited by Joshua Buergel