Future Unfolding Reviews

I had Future Unfolding on my wish list for several years, eventually buying it, then not playing it for even longer. Now I finally played it, I can't remember why I ever wanted to buy it. This is essentially Nethack: In A Forest (Except You Have No Weapons). You randomly walk around a randomly-generated maze that seems like it's outside except actually it's all little rooms surrounded by cliffs and doorways leading to other rooms. You get chased by monsters that one-shot kill you and send you back to the start of the room. Eventually you stumble upon the exit. And then you go to the next dungeon of little rooms-connected-by-doorways. The game is ostensibly about running free in nature, but because the landscapes are all walled-in and claustrophobic, it never really captures the grandeur of actually being out in nature. There are some animals you can find and occasionally follow or manipulate to go to the next place, but it's hardly a puzzle game because everything is procgen so it's just an exercise in spamming the spacebar on anything that looks mildly different from the other million things to see if something useful happens. (Usually nothing happens.) This kind of game could be meditative, I suppose, if you have the kind of personality that feels the need to visit every square inch of a minimap just for the pleasure of having it mapped out. But there's just not very much to find there. I agree with the reviewer who said you'll know after the first level if this is for you, because the second level, and the third, are exactly the same. Do not go in expecting a puzzle game, or something with a well-paced narrative arc. There might be a story here, but I doubt it after only being given a couple of lines of tedious poetry after an hour of "exploring" (read: randomly running around till the exit appeared). Not recommended.