Saying that one of 2023's best games is also its ugliest seems pretty straight-forward: I'm telling you there's a game that is a lot of fun but looks like garbage, right? That's not really what this is. The game, for all those Saved You A Click accounts salivating, is Bramble: The Mountain King, and by no technical measure is it the best. It runs awfully, and not in the frame rate/stability sense that we're supposed to care about these days. It runs badly in ways games used to in the good old days, like how when you jump for a platform you'll clip right through it, or you'll pass through a doorway and the level won't load. This game is made of bubblegum and sellotape. Also it's very ugly. I know I'm not selling it well. But Bramble: The Mountain King is one of the best games of 2023, and by 'best', maybe you should think of it as 'interesting'.
Bramble: The Mountain King is on Game Pass and it's about five hours long, both of which will be huge selling points to many of you, and make it the perfect game to give a shot. That's the whole reason I discovered it in the first place. Developed by Swedish studio Dimfrost, it is a macabre Bavarian fairy tale in which a young boy sneaks out of the house with his sister, only for her to be kidnapped by a beastly monster in the dark forest.
This young boy, Olle, is shrunk down to the size of a mushroom as he befriends gnomes and escapes from trolls and pond monsters. In some ways, the game is gorgeous - it has fantastic cinematography in ways games rarely bother with these days in their quest for realism. We see Olle's sister's silhouette haunt his dreams, and each section of the woods is brought to life in vibrant colours.
In other ways, the game is monstrously ugly - all of the characters look like they're from that Pinocchio movie with Pauly Shore where he says "deeskideeskideeskidee" before he jumps on his horse. And finally, in the best ways, it’s ugly on purpose - one platforming section takes place on a dead stag carcass impaled by thorns, another has Olle wade through bloody viscera, and when spotted during stealth sections a troll grabs Olle's skull and squeezes it until it pops.
The game is often deliberately upsetting with its visuals to pull you into the twisted fairy tale it spins. Even where it's not trying though, it still succeeds. Olle in his creepy lederhosen, often soaked with blood, feels like it's fresh out of an animated movie you'd find in the bargain bucket made by a studio you never heard of with actors you thought were dead - so Pauly Shore's Pinocchio again, I guess.
Bramble: The Mountain King can be frustrating to play because it sometimes just refuses to work, which is doubled down when you try to do something standard like climb up the wall you're grabbing only to fly off in the opposite direction to your death. There's a lot of platforming across standard podiums, boss battles with telegraphed attacks, and sections from other games like sliding down a hill avoiding barriers or scaling a wall while dodging a villain's glare. But there's something cosily horrifying about how Bramble puts it all together that draws you in.
In a year with Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo 4, and Final Fantasy 16, plus Super Mario Wonder, Spider-Man 2, Starfield, and Baldur's Gate 3 still to come, Bramble: The Mountain King is not going to be discussed as game of the year and doesn't deserve to be. It's not even my pick for obscure indie game of the year, with Paranormasight still comfortably holding that lead. But it's a great title that only gets more weird and compelling as it goes on, despite often leaning on cliched gameplay ideas. You won't want to look at it for five hours straight, but you might not be able to put it down either. Live out your deeskideeskideeskidestiny. Check out Bramble: The Mountain King.