Winter Voices

What a very strange game, at least so far anyway. You may or may not remember a while back I said I was going to make a point to looking outside the mainsteam more often for new games to play. The day after I said that this new RPG from French indie developers Beyond The Pillars appeared for sale on Steam. It was going cheap and the description was interesting so I decided I should give it a try. I didn't start right away as New Vegas took precedence but earlier today I had a little time to spare so I decided to get started. The game is to be divided in to 7 episodic installments, presumably the funds generated by each one helping to fund the next. So here I'm talking about "Episode 1: Prologue - Avalanche".


This is defintly not your traditional role playing game with swords and dragons. As the developers describe the game it's a drama unfolding in a tiny village buried in snow, the long journey to find answers will lead you through many events to overcome anger, sadness, pain and fear and finally unveil what is whispered by the voices of Winter.


The art style is basic, but looks nice and matches the play style and fits the theme. So it works well in context for this type of game. It's heavily text based with a lot to read. Although some of it is narrated it still gives it the feel of a game from ten years ago when developers has to rely on lot more on description. The main thing that sets it apart from other RPGs is the combat styles. It's turn-based which is nothing new, but the overall concept is not something I've ever seen anything like. The combat situations are hallucinations in which you are fighting things like bad memories and feelings. To fight those the skills you use are things like distraction, courage & fairy tales. I don't know if it's all going to be like but it's pretty unique.

It's not sucked me in completely yet but I've not given up either, I'm definitely intrigued though.