Such a weird little game. I'm not sure who thought steampunk American literary heroes vs literal lovecraftian monsters was a good idea, but it kind of worked. Its hard to figure out who the target audience was and the markets didn't help. What percentage of people who play video games even know Randolph Carter is Lovecraft's alter ego he wrote into a few of his short stories? The gameplay was pretty solid. Standard XCOM fair, but you line up weak point shots instead of rolling the dice, which heavily favors aggressive play. The game did a good job constantly introducing new characters and maps, but ran out of enemies to pull from halfway through the game and started to throw multiple previously plot-important bosses at you all at once. The soundtrack, however, was fantastic. While the enemy music could unfortunately stumble into dubstep, the player phase music was a glorious combination of metal and strings , somehow giving songs that were both fully metal and 18th century america. Despite my enjoyment, it doesn't get my recommendation as there's simply better games you could play instead. Its not like this will ever get a sequel with how poorly it performed anyway.....

Do you believe aesthetic can be narrative? Manifold Garden is so obsessed with its aesthetic that it forgets to use it in any interesting way aside from just looking cool. But holy shit it looks cool. I was hoping for an antichamber-style game and got a walking sim with minor puzzle elements instead, but did I mention the visuals were fantastic? If you want a 5 hour game walking through Piranesi/Escher-style architecture stretching into infinity, this is your game. And fractals. Lots of fractals at the end.