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+--- Thread: Alum (/showthread.php?tid=63)
Alum - Joe - 09-29-2025
Alum: 6.5/10. Difficulty level: 6/10.
~8h gospel about good vs. evil.
First things first, it's a game from the team that made Wildwood Down, a game in my top 3 best p'n'c games of 2025. Honestly, I didn't know it was from the same developers until I finished the game. What a surprise.
Second, this game has a 67% rating on Steam, which is pretty bad for Steam and especially bad for p'n'c games, which are pretty beloved by those who play them. To be sure, I looked through ~200 games that came out in the last three years (yes, really), and only 10 of them had a mixed rating.
So why is that? From the negative reviews, it seems that people don't like that this game has a religious theme. It's not a secret; it says so on the Steam page. But people still didn't like it.
As for me (I'm not a religious nut nor a raging atheist) I found it kinda refreshing. We have an OCEAN of murder mysteries and eldritch horrors, but games heavy on theism? Yeah, they're pretty rare.
That said, while I won't call this game preachy, it's not exactly subtle either. Some of the exposition was delivered pretty heavy-handedly, and some of the ideas were, well, silly. My favorite was magic blue Kool-Aid, which makes you speak with God after drinking it, and God tells you not to be sad about your recently dead love once, because you will die soon and meet them again.
But how is the game?
Similar to Wildwood Down, the puzzles can be clever, tricky, and challenging. Unfortunately, the game suffers from a "few screens at a time" chapter structure. This means that at any given time, you are confined to a very limited space, and no matter how challenging the puzzles may be, they can still be beaten by brute forcing your way through them. I'm glad they changed it in Wildwood Down, and I hope they will keep it that way in the future.
Characters can range from "I believe in Jesus" to "Kidnapping kids is fun because I'm evil." There are more nuanced ones, but you will quickly realize where everyone falls on the good-evil spectrum.
The visuals are nice, and the music is good. The voice acting is... well... wooden. With a small cast of voice actors, everyone sounds the same. There's even a child character with a dude-bro voice in his mid-20s. It was hilarious.
Anyway, pretty fun game, play it if you not gonna melt because there is notJesus in the game.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/338420/Alum/
RE: Alum - srnickolas - 09-29-2025
I remember playing this game years back and thinking the puzzles were really nice. I am not religious myself and It was really preachy at times but it didn't annoy me, i did find it at times a bit ridiculous though. But i remember finding the gameplay cool with a nice puzzle variety, i was kind of surprised of the mixed reviews. People are kind of sensitive with this kind of stuff i guess. Didn't know the same team made Wildwood Down, I'll give it a go