Dipping into my Itch.io backlog, I discovered a game launched in September that we fully missed – Sagebrush. A walking-sim-cum-puzzle game wherein you discover the deserted web site of a cult. Abandoned within the worst attainable means. And whereas this might clearly be a subject rife with points, it’s dealt with right here remarkably sensitively, with none lack of emotional punch.
Set in Albuquerque, on the fictional Black Sage Ranch, this can be a first-person explore-me-do, wherein the story of the compound – and the way it led to what known as the “1993 Perfect Heaven mass suicide” – is instructed by selecting by way of the varied buildings that stay on the positioning. Gently gated by the invention of assorted keys, you meander by way of the assembly rooms, college, trailer park, church and numerous different areas, studying notes, listening to recordings, and piecing collectively the story of how the cult got here into existence, and the way it left it once more.
This is all offered in a pixelated world, that right here appears to serve two functions – to present the game a retrospective really feel that accompanies visiting a spot deserted within the early 90s, and to – I imagine – give the participant a way of distance, a scarcity of focus. It additionally appears impressively fairly, in a means I believe this construct wouldn’t had it been clear traces.
Contained inside are the sketchy particulars of relationships between members of the cult, the character of individuals’s devotion – or lack of – in its chief Father James, and the imaginative and prescient and values of his grim management. And it’s with a cautious hand that it reveals the main points, neatly permitting you to uncover it in a comparatively chronological order through the order wherein yow will discover keys and means to enter new locations. And that’s just about all you’d must know earlier than going into this. Unless in fact you groaned at “reading notes, listening to recordings”, wherein case I’ve excellent news for you: belief it. Yes, it feels eccentrically gamey – however belief it.
What I discovered most fascinating right here is the sensitivity with which it muses on the subject. In some methods, sure, it’s the grimly basic story of a bunch of individuals suckered in by the presence and confidence of a manipulative but unhinged man, and of how in his want to take care of full management, his strategies start to unravel. And sure, it actually goes there with regards to the utter inevitability of coercive sexual relationships between the chief and the ladies within the cult. But it’s… delicate about it? I imply, I say this from the place of by no means having been in a cult, nor having been sexually manipulated, so clearly I can’t profess as to whether it might presumably be acceptable to any who had. But from the luxurious of an outdoor perspective, it actually doesn’t really feel wanton, or reveling, or lazy about these issues.
Instead, the overwhelming feeling I had when enjoying was disappointment. And I imply on a deeper stage than “it is sad that all these pretend people died” – I imply that there’s an all-permeating sense of melancholy, virtually a way of the wilful inevitability of catastrophe from even probably the most sold-out believers inside. As a consequence, it asks questions of us, of what we’re believing in with out sufficient scrutiny. It ponders the hazard of complacency, by no means labeling any of the characters it creates as silly, however as individuals who put their hope within the flawed place.
Gracefully, it doesn’t supply the identical generosity to “Father James”, but on the identical time it actually impressively avoids portray him as a moustache-twirling villain. He’s a damaged man, who clearly really believes he was visited by an angel and given a brand new gospel to write down. But he’s additionally a merciless, grasping and harmful man, pushed completely by self-interest, and it doesn’t patronise him or some other cult chief by pretending in any other case.
Which is probably all to say that this isn’t a game that sees cults as a neat excuse for a backstory – COUGH Far Cry 5 COUGH – however slightly a game that exists to discover the notion of a cult itself. It’s a game that understands cults are actual, and individuals are trapped in them, after which dares to inform its story after acknowledging that. Which is spectacular, and unsettling.
Just a few hours lengthy, there was actually room to develop a number of the concepts additional. The schoolroom, as an example, felt undercooked to me. But on the identical time, I’m unsure how for much longer I’d have needed to attract out a game that inevitably ended (as made clear from the beginning) in studying the main points of the deaths of its characters.
I’m actually impressed by Sagebrush. It might have been cheesy, it positively might have been gross, but it surely’s neither. It’s delicate, effectively constructed, and harrowing simply the place I feel it ought to be. And it’s currently 33% off in Itch’s sale, bringing it below $5. That’s over a few bucks cheaper than the common value on Steam.
