➤ Jusant, the review of an ascension that never reaches the top 🕹

Here you have our review of Jusant, the new NO NOD game in which we have to climb, but in which we never manage to reach the top.

Man has always loved the sky, which becomes in the imagination the home of the divine, the place of origin of the great cosmic mysteries and above all the bearer of life, that is, of rain. Water itself - or rather its absence - is the protagonist of the new story of DO NOT NOD.

The French team - famous for Life is Strange, but author of many other very different games, such as Harmony: The Fall of Reverie and Vampyr - offers us an adventure that talks about survival, hope and dreams, all through the theme of water and through a tower to climb.

Let's talk about downstream, of which we had already offered you proof and of which we can now give you our complete answer in this review.

Juant, a silent journey

Jusant, the review of an ascension that never reaches the top — About us? Jusant does not say this explicitly.

Jusant puts us in the shoes of a mysterious figure -accompanied by an even stranger liquid creature- who must climb a huge rock structure which is located in the center of a desert. However, the sandy lands are dotted as far as the eye can see with boats, ships and wrecks of various kinds, evidence of what was once an infinite sea. What happened? Jusant, French term that literally means reflux or extraction of water. The ocean then disappeared and the tower was left without water, which does not even fall from the sky.

What can we do? We can't give you answers, since that's exactly what you need to find out, but We can tell you what awaits you in the tower: desolation.. Jusant's world seems dead from the first moment. On our way we will only find the remains of a prolific civilization that for generations had to face the disappearance of water, presented not so much as the answer to thirst, but as the founding core of the tower's technologies. Without water almost nothing works and more and more people are looking for a solution.

Everyday life, small problems, big questions about the future, first reactions: what happened in the tower will be discovered thanks to John's Collectibles, small texts that we will have to collect and read as we ascend higher and higher. There will also be stone cairns, shells, frescoes or musical altars (many collectibles, in short), but the most important are undoubtedly the narrative ones, also because, otherwise, Jusant is very sparing in details.

If in some Journey the focal points of progress provide some dull narrative reference, Jusant decides to leave everything in the hands of the players and their desire to look around and find letters and messages placed on the ground. In particular, the group is essential Bianca's letters., an inhabitant of the lower part of the tower who, unlike the majority of the population, joins an expedition that climbs the tower, instead of leaving it.

Bianca - whose letters are masterfully written and in just a few lines manage to captivate and move us - thus becomes our traveling companion, a kind of our double epistolary who took the same steps as us, but much earlier. Bianca is something like the true protagonist, but at the same time she is a figure that can be completely lost if we are in a hurry or, simply, the current collectible escapes us from time to time.

It would have been much better if you had NOT PLACED Bianca's letters in places where it would be impossible to lose them, although give more strength to the narrative. If we continue without most of his writings, we will reach the end with a great sense of incompletion, of a journey that counted for too little and that ended, among other things, very quickly, given that there was enough just over three hours to get to the end credits. Let's be clear, the duration in itself is neither positive nor negative on paper (then each player makes their own calculations), but let's admit that when we reach the end we are left with a certain feeling of regret for a story that could have lasted a few moments more to expand. What's more, even from a purely recreational point of view, Jusant would have deserved something more, let's see why.

Go up and then go up

As we have already mentioned, in Jusant we have to climb to the top of the tower and to do so we have to climb. That is, we literally have to climb onto the available handholds, on a fairly linear path with occasional crossings that, however, take us to the same place after a few seconds. It's mostly the level design that misses the mark.- All areas are very easy to navigate, but at the same time there is no passage that surprises us anywhere. Virtually every move, interaction, and platform was exactly where we expected: the result is work that is extremely fluid and therefore enjoyable, but also not very memorable.

downstream It is not a game that focuses on difficulty. and each player will decide for himself whether it is good or bad. Of course, it doesn't have a semi-automatic climbing system like Uncharted (to give a famous example), but you will hardly have to retry a step or work hard to reach the next point. We will have to pay attention to several factors, such as resistance and the three pegs that allow us to freely place an additional anchor point so as not to fall at the beginning of the current route or swing to reach distant places. ledges that we cannot grab with a simple jump. However, Jusant is very generous and calculates each section to ensure that these resources are always more than abundant. Several times we completed passages without placing spikes, even though the game proposed doing so with text on the screen. Jusant is, therefore, a game suitable for everyone, but perhaps not for those who always feel the need for a minimum of challenge.

The thing doesn't end here, in any case. There small aquatic creature that accompanies us is capable of activating a wave of energy that awakens a couple of types of plants, which grow and thus create corridors and handholds. In addition, there are environmental modifiers in a couple of sections, such as the sun that dries out a plant and destroys it after a few seconds or the wind that supports or counteracts our movements, asking us to move at the same pace.

These are good ideas, which help keep the game a little varied, but what they sell out too quickly. The brevity of Jusant means that you never get bored, but once you reach the second half of the game - much shorter than the first - you understand that the adventure is about to end although the feeling is that of having touched the surface of what what is it. the game can do. Jusant would have absolutely deserved at least a full additional section, not so much to increase the length (four hours instead of three doesn't make much difference), but because the gameplay would have the opportunity to easily implement other ideas or give more space to less used ones. . The last chapter, which should close the adventure, is also extremely flat on a playful level and anticlimactic in narrative terms, which reinforces the feeling of a wasted opportunity.

At least, Jusant is a pleasure to behold.. The tower is a beautiful place in its desolation, as we said, but still full of small details that make us understand just by looking around us how life went on in those places, with abandoned houses, restaurants with plates and bottles still on the tables. tables. and luminous mushroom farms in the internal caves. The sound is also well done, playing with silences and rare delicate musical cues and capable of emphasizing the feeling of mystery of certain places or danger during the most intense climbs (even if the danger is only superficial, as we said). There are occasional interaction problems during the climb and some moments where the camera doesn't quite know how to position itself, but these are situations where we exploit some holds in a way that is not entirely intentional.

Conclusions

Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam Price 24,99 € Holygamerz.com 7.5 Readers (26) 7.8 your vote

Jusant is a particular and not unpleasant experience, but above all it seems like a wasted opportunity. The climbing system, with all its small interaction systems, generates a fluid, very simple gaming experience, but one that runs out quickly and without ever reaching a real peak of playful intensity. The tower is a beautiful place to discover, both from an aesthetic and narrative point of view, but you have to be careful: losing a handful of collectibles risks leaving you with a very limited experience, since simply progressing will not reveals nothing.