The Forgotten City. Best short games to finish under 10 hours | 2021

What's The Forgotten City?

Forgotten City is simply inspiring. Starting as a mod for Skyrim, it became wildly popular and broadly acclaimed, eventually becoming a full-blown, standalone video game.

To be clear – this is an adventure game with emphasis on story, rather than adventure. This is definitely not a game for people looking for a beefy action game with engaging combat and a slew of additional activities. The essence of the game is discovering the mystery of the eponymous city, plagued by a mysterious curse. When one of its inhabitants commits a dishonest act that is the gods find displeasing, doom starts looming over the entire population.

An investigation has to be conducted. Dozens of interviews, searching for clues and testimonies. And what if w do not manage to solve the crime, and our actions bring another sin that sets the terrible curse in motion? We shall try again – keeping in mind what we learned thee last time. The game is based on a time loop, so failure means learning and is the starting point for the next approach.

What makes it worth it?

As befits a story-driven game, Forgotten City is primarily intended to intrigue the player, involve them in the story, entice with flashes of understanding that shed some light on the secrets, and finally – to delight, surprise and shake them with the ending (one of the four possible). Honestly, the game of the Modern Storyteller studio checks all these fields perfectly. It's no less important that the characters that help us solve the puzzles are fleshed-out, and conversations with them aren't mundane, which, given the amount of text, becomes extremely important.