Dabbling With… Annwn, Again

The sixth episode of a short series on games I discovered at EGX Rezzed 2019.

I already brought up Quantum Soup Studio’s Annwn: The Otherworld last year after its appearence in the 2018 Leftfield Collection.

A remake of a 1986 title called The Sentinel, your goal is to take down The Watcher on each island. The Watcher hovers at the highest point of the island, its gaze searching for you. In the Otherworld, you have no physical presence: your soul can only exist inside of a motionless totem. You soul cannot “move around” but you can generate more totems to transfer your soul into. You need energy to build totems which you must drain from trees or existing totems.

The constraint is that you can only build on or drain from island tiles that you can see, so any part of the island that’s above your totem is out of reach. You have to use the totems as stepping stones to climb the island gradually – once you reach the top, you should be able to drain The Watcher’s energy and end the level.

Last year, Annwn‘s procedural generation was producing islands which were very difficult to defeat and it made for an uncomfortable few days at Rezzed for Quantum Soup’s Chris Payne who watched players struggle. This year, however, the problem has been licked and the demo on show in the Tentacle Collective room was much tighter with three islands of progressing difficulty.

I was impressed with the stress this relatively simple design exerts on the player. As Payne has commented, The Sentinel was “so simple and elegant that it’s hard to riff on the core gameplay”. It is drenched in tension. You feel The Watcher’s gaze inch closer and closer, yet to look behind to see how close would waste precious time and possibly lead you to ruin: I cannot help thinking this is a natural Orpheus and Eurydice mechanic. You can grow a new totem quite fast yet it feels like an absolute eternity.

The complete game is currently available on itch.io for PC but has not been released on Steam yet. Payne is still making adjustments to the game based on Rezzed player feedback.

Here’s the game blurb:

Annwn: The Otherworld is a surreal stealth strategy game, played across an archipelago of mysterious procedural islands. Venture into the celtic Otherworld, a realm of dark gods and wandering souls, in search of your lost love.

Interested in other games I’ve dabbled with? Check out the series index!