Obscurant’s Mesmerizing Take on Mimicry Looks Like Nothing I’ve Seen Before
In the opening moments of Obscurant, I don’t immediately understand why what seems to be a typical top-down adventure game is placed on a grid. Why every step the android-like, amnesiac protagonist takes through the desolate sand of the first desert area feels laborious and rhythmic, as if they have to pause and think before each one.
Then, I meet the “Little Round Guys.”
They are strange, robotic little creatures, not unlike the most basic machine enemies in Nier: Automata in shape. They walk back and forth in a pattern – two steps in one direction, then back two steps the way they came, then repeat. After a few cycles of this, they pause in the middle of their path to recharge for five beats, before lighting up again and resuming their pattern. If they see an enemy, aka me, they give chase. They are faster than me and will always catch me.
Which is, immediately, where the grid and my character’s hesitant stepping motion clicks into place. When I make a move, they do too. Each step is one “turn,” and I can stand in one place and wait to make turns pass with a single button push. At first, I’m using the Necrodancer-like rhythms to sneak past enemies. Then, I find a broken Little Round Guy on the ground and steal its outfit, and here then is the main loop of Obscurant: in order to avoid being observed and murdered by more Little Round Guys, I must become the Little Round Guys and effectively deceive them into believing my masquerade. Two steps in one direction, back the way I came, then rush past them while they recharge. Repeat the pattern when they wake up again. Beep. Beep. Booooop.
(Developer King Brick Games did not name the Little Round Guys – I did, via an in-game journal that allows me to freely jot down names and
Read more on ign.com
