No, your eyesight is not going bad yet, there is no pixel art in these screenshots. Long before Retronator was focused on just retro art styles, I discovered an artist on tumblr, Sylvain ‘@tohad’ Sarrailh, who quickly became my favorite illustrator. So in form of meta-nostalgia for the old days of this tumblr when I reblogged Tohad’s masterpieces, today I present his game Forest of Liars, as it just entered Kickstarter.
Forest of Liars is a procedural narrative adventure, where you meet many characters as you travel into a forest no-one has ever returned from.
Your companions will give you advice on how to traverse this labyrinth, and in a sort of logic-puzzle fashion you have to discover who of them are pathological liars so you can rely even on their advice, by doing exactly the opposite of their recommendation. (On another side note of nostalgia, this brings back memories of middle school logic competitions, which featured similar problems called Knights and Knaves.)
I’m sure the logic puzzle comparison is a gross simplification, as it will be embedded into an exploration adventure spanning over more than 100 beautifully-illustrated locations.
Something along the Eurogame-like Curious Expedition perhaps—but that’s just it, in the sea of platformer-derivative indie games, Forest of Liars seems to not look around itself and just go for creating a unique style of gameplay that fits their idea. Same with art style. And that’s what I love most about indie games.
There’s more to be excited about, like music by CloZee, and you can learn it all on the campaign page, which I hope will enable another indie team to bring more diversity into our gaming choices.