Jusant

meditative climbing game that asks you to relax, take in the scenery and enjoy the trance state the climbing mechanics put you in. fantastic presentation end-to-end, and an amazing story. the actions the player and their companion go through are mostly just an excuse for the player to go through the tower and collect the notes, which is where the bulk of the story lives. the story within these notes follows the quest of a group of young people who originate from the lighthouse at the bottom of the tower. they're convinced these "ballasts", mythical whale-like creatures, are the key to bringing back rain and ending the drought. this group, with a certain "Bianca" at the helm, embark on an adventure told through the lens of her journals. they end up making a fantastic discovery at the top of the tower! the player's journey parallels the group's own adventure - following these notes through your own ascension of the tower makes you feel like you're retracing their steps. you end up making the same discoveries they made, and you slowly learn how their civilization worked - how people lived at different levels of the tower, how they managed to live through the drought, their dreams and aspirations. how some chose to venture off in the desert, while others chose to stay where they were and accept their fate... as a French native speaker, i played the game in French (the credits actually show that the whole game was written in it first, then translated to English later!) seeing these notes use gender-neutral language (the pronoun "iel", inclusive writing with the median dot...) was a good surprise. Don't Nod made a great statement about its importance - characters in Jusant's lore live in a world where non-binary individuals are normalized and treated like anyone else, and that's great. for example, the main character's gender is never explicitly shown - to me, it's a clear case of Don't Nod wanting to make a proper "self-insert" character, that anyone of any background can relate to. it's an example of inclusiveness done right, as the average player doesn't realise all this, and in turn normalise it themselves. it's not "shoved" in your face as some might say. well, it's not really a gripe with the game, and moreso with the French language, but inclusive writing in French is an actively debated part of the language that isn't "natural" like the usage of "they/them" in English is, especially with how everything in French is gendered. so my point about this writing being seamless in Jusant gets floundered by that fact, as it is obviously quite striking in the French version, which is the very reason i've thought about this and chose to write about it in the review. lingustic tangent aside, Jusant is a game that stuck with me. maybe it's the characters in the notes, and how they still dealt with life's struggles, be it scraping by day-to-day, or finding the courage to declare their love for someone. maybe it's the long climb, and the courage it gave me as i played this through my studying for my final exams for my computer science bachelor's degree. i'm not too certain. but i think everyone can find their own meaning in the journey of Jusant. everyone has their very own tower to climb - that initially looks incredibly tall and seemingly impossible to climb. but everyone has in them what it takes to climb it, slowly, step by step, at their own pace. and see the view from the top.

If I could I would put a in between positive and negative review. Since I can't I would choose positive since the game was fine. The Good: The game is basicallya self journey of climbing. The mechanic are very simple but straight to the point, it feels very fluid and exploration to the summit is enjoyable. The story is niche, the visuals and art style are beautiful. The Bad: Lack of substance, The story is meh, not much mystery it's pretty obvious what happened. The game might be too simple, navigating took very little effort and sometimes it tends to be boring. Price tag is a bit much, should be 50% cheaper. It's not a bad game but it's not great either, just a niche adventure.

Seems like a nice game but it hurt my hands to play so I had to return it. The game involves constantly holding down the RT and LT buttons which is impossible if you have any sort of hand pain. I did try to play with a keyboard but the default buttons were the mouse RB and LB buttons, which were just as bad for my hand. I tried remapping the keyboard but it didn't seem to work. Too bad, it seemed like a cool game with a nice vibe, but not for my hands. (Note, my teenage daughter also complained that it hurt her hands and she hasn't even spent decades working on a computer...)