Praise Paeguth

I booted upDread Delusionand fell 30 feet to my death.

This throwback first-person RPG is hazardous, and not only due to the dreamlike islands floating in the sky.

Far from being a nuisance, meta-jank like this only endears me further to Dread Delusion.

A ghost “welcomes” the player to the Clockwork Kingdom.

It is anRPGfrom the other side of some attic mirror, an Elder Scrolls from a parallel 2002.

It has, somehow, slipped into our reality and is seeingits full release today.

There are gods you could thank for this, but we dare not speak their names.

Cover image for YouTube video

Everything about Dread Delusion leans into the trappings of the era it loves.

The slopes are a little too steep, the textures a little too blown-up, or haphazardly applied.

Enemies approach you like stiff marionettes, eager for blood but unable to expand their minds beyond petty swipes.

A clockwork Myrmidon confronts the player in front of a huge rolling factory.

Low fidelity slashing noises whiff through the hot pink air as they attempt to hurt you.

You may feel like you have played this game before, but not quite.

Look again at that creature.

Posters for missing people are plastered over a pillar in the Clockwork Kingdom.

At the start of this story you are a prisoner, another tribute to Elder Scrolls.

You are to be released, provided you hunt down and apprehend a notorious rebel known as Vela Callose.

And exploring is the main verb here.

The Clockwork King welcomes the player to its throne room.

Another crowd of skulduggerers want help activating magical contraptions that allow travel across vast distances.

You know what to do.

The aforementioned map is pleasantly shonky and uncooperative.

A farmer greets the player in Dread Delusion.

And when quests are given, you’d be wise to remember what people say.

Random little events I can’t quite piece together.

The wackiness of a past eon of jumblesome RPGs.

A skeleton attacks the player in Dread Delusion.

It’s filled with imaginative and expressive world-building you don’t always get in current-day blockbusters.

Install an elder god as invisible overseer to a bustling market town.

Change the parameters of a clockwork auto-serf from “militant agriculture” to “benevolent agriculture”.

The elder god Paeguth watches over Hallow Town, unseen by everyone but the player.

(Why did you trust me, Aphra?

When you inspect his body, you find a curious parchment, titled “Scroll of Icarian Flight”.

Curious players will use to scroll and find themselves leaping thousands of feet into the air.