Pagan: Autogeny (2019)

"Exhume" is a key word here. Even though the particulars of this virtual world were alien to me, Autogeny rings true to my thoughts on returning to a once familiar space that is transformed into something alien because of a new perspective provokes feelings of sometimes beautiful, and sometimes ugly melancholy. It's good to look at the old things, but exposing and being exposed to them can just feel harsh. PAGAN Autogeny gets at that scary element of nostalgia.

But on a non-cerebral level, the game was really cool to play through. I enjoyed learning what the game was about through just exploring. It was surprising to find myself doing very typical MMO things like grinding mobs for card drops, min-maxing my stats to kill the scarab lord, standing on hills and looking around at the environment. You even get to simulate the feeling of being present for an MMO's apocalyptic conclusion. (I recommend looking up the ending to The Matrix Online, if you haven't. This isn't too far off from that.) And it's a beautiful looking game, with excellent use of draw distance and sound for really strong ambiance across all its very disparately themed environments.

I only have two detracting points to warn you about. The scarab lord, the strongest enemy in the game who drops an essential item, is bugged and may not drop the item when you kill him. This can be fixed with a registry edit work around, but it shouldn't be this way. And then I also think a key to playing this game is to READ THE MANUAL IN THE INSTALLATION DIRECTORY OF THE GAME, and I didn't know this for the first hour. I just wish there was an in-game suggestion for this. All that said, I still highly recommend it.

Buy it on itch.io, or on Steam.