Happy New Year and all that and welcome to my first review of the year with the first out the gate being ‘Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest’, developed by Different Tales and published by Walkabout Games. How was it? Let’s start by it wasn’t what I expected it to be; what do I mean? Let us read on.

The story starts with your character Maia Boroditch, a 24-year-old, American woman of Polish descent. Waking up on a bus ride, I embarked on a journey to uncover my family’s past and the connection between weird dreams my character is experiencing involving the forest. While traveling to different locations of the town, meeting various people including your friend and fellow student Anya, who has accompanied you on your trip to Białowieża, Poland.

The gameplay is text-based and consists of reading a narration; there isn’t any actual action or combat gameplay as it is more a novella type game similar to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney games. You are there as the audience driving the story along through dialogue and choices of action. Starting the game up, it informs you it centers around anger and activism while asking you a few simple questions to sort your character’s sheet with answers determining how much Rage and Willpower Maia starts with, as some dialogue choices will only be choosable if you have enough of this Rage/Willpower to use.

Since it is solely a text-based game, that’s not to say there’s no action or suspense. I found myself entirely drawn in, and I have the attention span of a toddler. I powered my way through though, especially after starting a few times as I found there’s no save option, so if you accidentally choose the wrong choice you wanted, you pretty much have to restart the chapter which I’ve done a couple of times.

I enjoyed the fact that the main protagonist and others were strong women as opposed to being the usual damsels in distress that are usually the go-to, allowing me to be the tough as nails badass bish I could be, alongside the other women I encountered too. The controls I found to be super comfortable even with the Nintendo Switch’s backward button layout, with (X) bringing up your character sheet helping you to keep track of your relationships with characters and (A) being the select choice for options. The left analog-stick being the one to choose your chat option, as I said super easy.

Besides the story, this is where Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest really shined for me. Different Tales have done a fantastic job with the audio, from sound effects to background music matching with the area I was in, this really helps me sink into the story letting my imagination go wild. Visually, it is just as appealing with its almost hand-painted looking visuals that give off a moody and ambient vibe that go perfectly with its graphic novel style, which piqued my interest even more.

One feature I’m always vocal about with the Nintendo Switch is how I love playing games as portables, though, for this, it was a little bit of a letdown as the smaller screen meant smaller text to read. The fact that I’d pretty much only press a few buttons, causing my hands to get pins and needles from lack of use in handheld mode. Apart from holding the Switch upright making my arms ache it wasn’t too much of a big deal after throwing it up on the big screen reclining back, continuing my story.

I never thought I’d be into a text-based game though the way it was written helped feed and mold my imagination, really bringing Maia’s story to life in my head. I can see why our reviewer Brasher has a nerdy obsession with tabletop games. Am I going to really play them? That’s no.

Will I play it as a text-based game? You bet your ass I will, as I will be coming back to this even more once my other job settles down. I love anything to do with werewolves. All in All, fans of tabletops will surely love it; for new players, it’ll be a good stepping stone for you to test the waters to see if it’s you’re thing. So until next time, peace.

Written by: Anarchy Risen