Jusant is a great compact journey that sees you go on a daunting climb and tells a story about your journey and what befell the world, all without a single word of dialogue. That statement is technically true, but I would be remised if I didn’t elaborate on one element regarding its storytelling.
Jusant feels inspired by another game, Journey, that loosely follows a similar premise. You’re just a little dude dropped into a world with no context or explicit guidance, who goes from point A to point B. Additionally, all of the “narrative” is told through the environment, allowing you to ponder on what happened before you showed up and why you are making this journey. Except in Jusant, where it does heavily employ environmental storytelling, in addition to notes and log entries. As much as I would rather a game of this type to go all in on environmental storytelling, I can respect Jusant for providing greater depth to the world with these. However, these notes and logs litter your climb putting a halt to all exploration all too frequently. I believe notes and logs can work in a game such as this, if it weren’t used so abundantly. Luckily, that is my only major qualm with Jusant. The only other thing would be a minor nitpick about getting stuck on geometry when on foot. I never got softlocked and was never stuck for more than a second, but it happened frequently enough to be a little annoying.
Climbing in Jusant is very fun and satisfying. Maybe, there could’ve been more challenging parts of the climb, but Jusant is more than just a climbing simulator. The environments are gorgeous; I found myself standing around numerous times to soak in the sights and sounds. The environment also changes quite drastically from chapter to chapter, always keeping things fresh. With changes in environment, always brought a new mechanic to add a little wrinkle to climbing. Never anything that fundamentally shook up the gameplay but enough to keep you interested is continuing the journey up.
If you found Journey to be a magical experience and yearn for that feeling once again. Then Jusant may deliver that, in its own unique way. Happy Climbing!
Jusant feels inspired by another game, Journey, that loosely follows a similar premise. You’re just a little dude dropped into a world with no context or explicit guidance, who goes from point A to point B. Additionally, all of the “narrative” is told through the environment, allowing you to ponder on what happened before you showed up and why you are making this journey. Except in Jusant, where it does heavily employ environmental storytelling, in addition to notes and log entries. As much as I would rather a game of this type to go all in on environmental storytelling, I can respect Jusant for providing greater depth to the world with these. However, these notes and logs litter your climb putting a halt to all exploration all too frequently. I believe notes and logs can work in a game such as this, if it weren’t used so abundantly. Luckily, that is my only major qualm with Jusant. The only other thing would be a minor nitpick about getting stuck on geometry when on foot. I never got softlocked and was never stuck for more than a second, but it happened frequently enough to be a little annoying.
Climbing in Jusant is very fun and satisfying. Maybe, there could’ve been more challenging parts of the climb, but Jusant is more than just a climbing simulator. The environments are gorgeous; I found myself standing around numerous times to soak in the sights and sounds. The environment also changes quite drastically from chapter to chapter, always keeping things fresh. With changes in environment, always brought a new mechanic to add a little wrinkle to climbing. Never anything that fundamentally shook up the gameplay but enough to keep you interested is continuing the journey up.
If you found Journey to be a magical experience and yearn for that feeling once again. Then Jusant may deliver that, in its own unique way. Happy Climbing!