The Nameless: Slay Dragon (Steam)

As the sole survivor of a town ravaged by a dragon, The Nameless: Slay Dragon is a bloody revenge story taking place across a tactical RPG that tells a ripping yarn. In fact, the game is more heavily reliant on narrative than most, principally because the game tells more than it shows, leaving much of the interaction to your imagination. However negative that may sound, it's actually not a major issue. Let's explore.

Described as a "gamebook adventure", you start the game by choosing your class - Adventurer, Magus, Oracle or Dark Knight. Each of these starting classes has a description as to how your choice will begin your story - born in disdain, anonymous, blessed or master of two dark magics, each choice has an impact on the story being told. This continues throughout the game, your choices determining paths, relationships and actions, weaving into the story in such a way as to make each telling of it someway unique. You'll still be chasing the dragon, but why and how remains in your hands throughout. It's terrifically engaging. 

Once you've decided on your origins, you have to set the difficulty of the game, set not by the harshness of your enemies but by your own stats. These are boosted, left on default or hindered by your choices, affecting your check success rate (chance) damage and ability to escape encounters. Again, it's less about what the game throws at you as it is your own innate abilities with which to tackle your quest. There's a bad ending too, so be careful with your choices!

Menu screens are straightforward and easy to navigate. It's all very intuitive.

Once the story proper begins, the game allows you to move a cursor between points on the maps, activating any of them tells the next part of the tale and offers options, much like the Choose you own adventure books I grew up with by Ian Jackson. Your choices will be checked for success and the story unfolds depending on the result. Successful checks will often affect your stats, such as improving your hearing (if you stop to listen). But you'll see none of this, it's described in prose.

Should you take to battle, your enemies are displayed on screen - you can use attack, ability and item to fight or heal, alternatively you can defend if you think you're about to take damage. This is handled the same way as most dungeon crawling RPG's, you select a target and then take your turn. Once finished, your enemies will attack you. Given that this is such a genre staple, you'll have no problems mastering it fairly quickly.

It's a bold move, making the majority of your exploration no more complex than moving a cursor over a map, but it survives this reduced interaction thanks only to the really rather splendid prose that drives you through the game. It's very well written, with a strong grasp of engaging, descriptive narrative. An early encounter at one waypoint allows you to gather fruit - during this process you're attacked by tendrils from the ground, and have to test your luck to see if you can escape. You see absolutely none of this, it's all presented in writing, but it makes the attack no less surprising or exciting. 

When you encounter other characters with which you can converse, you're treated to some incredibly nice artwork of the characters, and honestly I wish the additional content had been an artbook over the soundtrack currently available. The music is fine (if a bit twee and uninspiring at times) but that artwork is gorgeous and I'd love some hi-res examples to enjoy. 

This is a hard game to get too in-depth with as the story is really the meat of the title - suffice to say that I found the twists and turns of the story hugely enjoyable, the cast well written and the ending satisfying, if a little rushed. With over 30 hours of gameplay, the price seems almost negligible. 

Possibly the most impressive aspect of the game is the fact that it's the work of a single developer with the help of some online creatives - a real feat in today's budget-heavy world, and probably the sort of game we need more of given the news of Bandai Namco now joining the worrying number of studios downsizing their developer staff. 

The game will release for Nintendo Switch down the line, but given the narrative options available I'd suggest picking it up on PC now if you have the time - it's not spec-heavy due to the nature of the game, as such it runs like a dream on the Steam Deck, which seems to have been considered when it comes to the size of the text and intuitive controls, so I imagine the Switch will be just as smooth.

This is unlike most games I play, but a pleasant surprise. I had worried that the lack of interaction between the game and player might be too much of a barrier to overcome, but the constant feeling of progress from each well-written encounter, fascinating characters and action-packed story held my interest. It's a credit to all who worked on it and I'm pleased to see that it's finding favour on Steam as well, proof that you don't need a budget of millions to attract real gamers.