Forsaken

If you actually LIKED smug atheism, then oh boy! Do I have the game for you!

The primary purpose of this journaling TTRPG is to spread a political message. That's not me being against it, either. It straight up tells you that. The political messaging is that of anti-theism.

In Forsaken, you play the role of someone in the biblical end times. The goal of the game is to get salvation, but you have a less than 1% chance of actually achiveing this. The other end condition is you dying.

The gameplay is actually pretty decent. I don't really play journaling TTRPGS, and they're basically just you writing, but I think that the prompts this game gives you are well developed, and that it's gameplay facilitates the feeling of futility it tries to instill in the player.

The whole point of this game is to really hammer in how horrible the biblical end times would actually be to live through. That it's incredibly strange that millions of deaths are something that millions of people are praying for. The cruelty of religion, and whatnot.

Personally, I agree with this point of view. I, in full honesty, think that humanity would be better off without religion. The fact that people believe in the end times and will use it an excuse to not take action against climate change is deeply dystopian. However, this game simply makes me cringe. It's so heavy handed that I can't imagine anyone enjoying it if they didn't already agree with it's thesis.

It was a pretty fun one off game, but I wouldn't play it again. You've seen everything there is to see after one playthrough. 2/5 Stars.