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Review
Resurrection Gate is a demo for a choice-based dark fantasy work with RPG elements. It seems that in the full game one will be able to choose from different characters to play as, but in this version the player is limited to the point of view of Yasha, a traumatized soldier searching for a comrade who is probably dead.
The game throws a lot of worldbuilding and a lot of characters, both present and referred to in absentia, at the player in this short preview, and just when I felt I was getting to grips with Yasha’s story, that section of the demo ended and I got a brief interlude featuring a mysterious woman and then a longer one featuring a lich-duke. Baccaris’s writing is vivid as always, but with all the hopping around in the demo I’m not sure I got my teeth into anything in a way that made me go “oh, I have to come back for the full game.” But that could just be me—I know some people are thrilled by the beginnings of secondary-world fantasy novels where you have a lot of proper nouns flung at you all at once and have to figure out from context what they are, but I don’t really start having fun until I get my bearings.
As is usual for this author, the game has art, elaborate styling, and music. The art is stylish and the low-key ambient soundtrack is atmospheric, but I had some issues with the styling. At this point in my life I pretty much need to play things on light mode to avoid eyestrain, and while I appreciate that the demo includes light mode, it seems like an afterthought that was not tested thoroughly. Parts of the character information screen (or “mirror”) are illegible in light mode, as are the credits at the end, and some links don’t seem to have changed the way they should.
If the idea of RPG-flavored IF in a world beset by various types of undead described in vividly nasty detail, featuring beleaguered protagonists who have been through some rough times (and who sometimes also are the undead), sounds like something you’d enjoy, Resurrection Gate is worth a look. Just be prepared to come out of the demo feeling somewhat confused.
