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Has any film opening topped the excitement of Raiders of the Lost Ark? The initial approach of our fedora-sporting hero plunging through jungle ruins (braving copious quantities of tarantulas in the process) is ominous, but nothing our hero can't handle. A runaway boulder presents a greater challenge, but even this is all in a days work for Dr. Jones. Then a tribe starts spitting venomous darts at Indy and by this point all bets are off. Start the damn plane!For adventurers, the worse things get, the better. As a result, these sequences of derring-do are riveting in film, but don't always translate so well to video games. Make the escape too easy and we feel pandered to. Ramp it up too much and failure leads to frustration as each retry becomes increasingly methodical and wearisome. Swiss developers Adrian Stutz and Florian Faller at Bits & Beasts cunningly navigate this tightrope in their debut title Feist by doing away with scripted sequences and giving players just enough leeway to bounce back from a near fatal error. When things go pear-shaped, they only get more exciting.
Feist begins with your character, a wooly fluffball, freeing themselves from a beast's trap. From there the concept is simple: go right. It's an uncomplicated set-up, cut from the cloth of Mario and Sonic, but an effective one all the same. In many ways, Feist is as remarkable for what it doesn't include as much as for what it does. There's no plot, dialogue or collectables to hamper the pacing. Feist isn't a game about collecting knick-knacks or spinning a yarn; it's about just one thing: fleeing.
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