Strange Scaffold‘s recent streak (over two years) of wildly different indie releases has been pretty wild: From El Paso, Elsewhere to Life Eater to Clickolding, the indie studio has represented tight and laser-focused gaming at its best and most experimental. Its latest release, I Am Your Beast, might be the less weird one of the bunch, but that doesn’t make it any less rare.
After a September half-defined by my disappointing experiences with a group of highly anticipated indie games (the other half was a bunch of kickass big ones), I Am Your Beast feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s concise and doesn’t overstay its welcome, but is also built to be highly replayable in a brutally satisfying and uncomplicated kind of way.
Sure, many independent releases fall under that description, but very rarely the game is a narrative-heavy first-person shooter. Yup, at first glance, I Am Your Beast looks strictly arcade-y, and its DNA very much makes the brain go brrr with scores, ratings, and crazy multipliers. But it also happens to pack a pretty convincing story with perfectly defined characters through nothing but text and audio. There are nearly as many cutscenes as there are main story missions, and they’re as tightly written and edited as the breakneck game itself.
It’s also the type of game that isn’t sold super well by screenshots and written praise alone. So, first of all, check out the wild and straight-to-the-point launch trailer below:
Do you hate the very idea of the military-industrial complex but are sadly attracted to weapons and digitally murdering dozens of goons? This is your game, I reckon. The story follows retired secret agent Alphonse Harding, who’s happily studying birds in the middle of some woods in bumf**k nowhere. Declining ‘one last job’ (we know how that goes) sets in motion a furious guerilla war between him and the Covert Operations Initiative (COI). There’s a bit of both John Wick and Rambo going on here, and you’re meant to go all Predator on the COI’s ass.
Games where you’re sort of a hunter rock. At least on a basic level. Of course, devs have to make it fun. The thing is that they’re normally more slow-paced and tactical than your usual action game. I Am Your Beast does the opposite and feels like Titanfall 2 on crack (but sadly without mechs). Bullets fly all over, sliding and jumping across the scenarios is as important as landing those kills, and oftentimes you gotta get creative to survive and/or achieve your objectives before the clock ticks down.
If those Warzone streamers stopped playing AAA games for one hour and checked this little gem out, they’d probably lose their s**t. That’s the level of wild ‘aggression-based movement’ I’m talking about. Pop those fools, stab ’em and dice ’em, and rush your ass to the level exit. Want to perfect your skills? There are bonus objectives. Want even nuttier levels? Challenge ones are there for you. It’s a pretty sweet package that, even for strict completionists, is only a few hours long.
Even when the main story hits bonus objective-related roadblocks that sadly kill a bit of the momentum, I Am Your Beast feels unlike anything I’ve played this year, big or small. There’s zero fat on this orgy of bullets, knifes, and blood. That also applies to the visuals and raw sound design: The whole thing simply pops out of the screen and speakers and feels readable even during its most hectic moments. I can’t speak for Strange Scaffold, but I’d wager this has been tested to hell and back, because it just works and flow so damn well.
What I am getting at, I guess, is that even indie projects are progressively getting bogged down by some genre trappings and the always-present influence of bigger games. I’m talking about narrative-oriented games that needn’t open-worlds to do what they’re really interested in, or roguelikes that can’t quite figure out how to lace together a bunch of flexible mechanics that maybe didn’t belong together to begin with. Right in the face of those creative shifts, Strange Scaffold’s games are some of the most concentrated and ‘creatively steady’ that I’ve come across recently.
Even with boomer shooters enjoying a second life of sorts thanks to the many indie studios and solo devs lovingly honoring ancient FPS, retro-looking releases like I Am Your Beast or Ultrakill manage to wow and surprise with unique styles and an attention to the moment-to-moment loop that feel lifted straight out of character action games. Yes, they feel classical and arcade-y, but they’re pushing the genre forward in meaningful ways. And the substance is there as well; I Am Your Beast made me care about its central character more efficiently than countless games that just try too hard with walls of text or spoken dialogue.
There’s beauty in simplicity, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got to sacrifice themes and characters. It’s a difficult balancing act, especially for artists creating video games. But Xalavier Nelson Jr. and Strange Scaffold appear to have figured out that very sweet spot, offering the right amount of ‘bang for the buck’ time and again and leaving players with more questions coming out of the game than when they first booted it up. Surprise, surprise, people are showing up for every new wacko experiment they put out. That’s how you do it.
I Am Your Beast is currently a PC exclusive. It’s available on Steam and GOG.