Alleys are perpetually places of shady deals and hidden bodies. Subways are perpetual inbetweens, with flickering lights, and a sense of wrongness from being underground. Downtown is vibrant and bustling, but it’s those same features that keep normal people (called Sleepers) so engrossed that they are less likely to look up and notice a dragon flying over their heads. It is dynamic and changing, and the feel of a specific place alters its relationship. Rather than spelling out specific locations, the game describes the feel of each part. I was entranced by how City of Mist handles world creation. I was immediately reminded of parallels to works by Neil Gaiman: the Fiddler’s Green from T he Sandman comic, and the gods and other associated beings from American Gods, both examples of the legendary passing unnoticed by human eyes. Example characters include people who embody Enkidu from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Excalibur from Arthurian lore, and Don Quixote from the eponymous work by Miguel de Cervantes. The book encourages you to be creative from where you draw your concept from, and they showcase a number of examples right off the bat. Instead, it was the premise: combining the mood and feel of the noir genre with carte blanche to use whatever, myth, legend, or story inspires you. It was not these praises, however, which grabbed my interest. The response has been very positive, and the game has been nominated for the 2018 Ennies in three categories: Best Interior Art, Best Cartography and Best Miniature Product. Originally Kickstarted by Son of Oak Game Studio back in 2016, City of Mist saw a full release date in late 2017. Why shouldn’t we have our chapter in a great epic? After all, we’re all just stories in the end. A Rift (the term for a PC) forms in the Mist, causing normal people to awaken to a story living inside of them. However, every once in a very great while, a story awakens in someone, spilling into their normal life. The mists that sweep through it throw shadows over the truth of what things are, disguising the fantastic and epic as mundane. It is a City that seems to encompass everything, an entire universe and more within its borders. It is a place where stories are everything, and everything has a story. Once its inhabitants were wide eyed and agape, but now they’ve seen it all…or so they like to think. But lots of strange things happen in The City. In the financial district there is a business guru who, despite his age, always seems to be in exceptional vigor and with an improbable knack for turning seemingly useless investments into gold…and nobody seems to know how long he’s been here? It’s like he’s practically immortal. In the Industrial District’s meatpacking plant, a grizzled old timer working the graveyard shift wonders how life passed him by, noting with some curiosity how his skin didn’t break on that saw, when he slipped and ponders why all the leftover animal parts always seem to vanish when he takes a nap on the job…and why he just gets hungrier whenever that happens. At a back lounge sits a bald man with a gold hoop earing who knows just what you need to do to get what you want…if are able to ignore the literal fire flickering in his eyes. The smoke from the hookah lounge downtown swims through the place, heavy and sweet.
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