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Kim

Kim

A survival game that builds upon Rudyard Kipling's work, though not without fault.

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Kim is an easygoing survival game based on the work of the same name by Rudyard Kipling, a work dating back to the 19th century. You play the role of a homeless orphan boy who begins on the streets of the then-Indian city of Lahore, eventually traveling beyond, earning money, increasing your skills, getting involved in deliveries, mercenary work, or spying, and often just trying to find your next meal.

You are immediately introduced to a religious sage from the north who asks for your help, and soon also bump into a more world savvy man entangled in intrigue. The player isn't forced along the path laid out by these two or other quest givers, and when interacting with people you are sometimes given dialogue choices which can let you skip out on quests, and most quests can be ignored. This allows you to customise your experience, at least somewhat. The game follows a similar path at the start no matter what randomising seed you put in, but the placement of some of the personalities you meet, as well as the loot you may find, is altered. This allows you to uncover your own tale of Kim's journey, in a sense, though there are some early encounters that are pre-destined and follow you everywhere until you deal with them. There is an in-game time limit of 999 days, and much of this will tick down just traveling from one area to another, adding to the list of resources you must manage.

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Kim earns merit, which contribute to the primary score and gives you better prices in shops, by doing good deeds and experiencing the game's depiction of India. He is rewarded for his curiosity in other ways too, sometimes getting stat increases, rupees, and loot that he can stuff into his traveling suitcase. There are weapons in the game, camping equipment, and navigation tools to find, and different styles of clothing help you to gain access to places normally forbidden. The perspective is top-down, and you navigate each area by clicking and moving, or clicking on symbols you can see nearby that let you enter buildings, talk to people, buy items from shops, or travel. You also have stealth and combat modes for avoiding or battling criminals and others who might do Kim harm. The in-game map shows quest markers, and shows you where Kim has travelled during the whole of the game, as well as what cities have which shops, the locations of territories, and where the trails and railroads lead.

In addition to merit and several statistics, Kim needs food, rest, and more to stay happy and healthy. One of the major decisions you will make is what manner of travel you will take from one area to another, and each of the above resources are taken into account. You can travel quickly to save time, but your happiness will drop, as will your health. You can spend rupees to buy food rather than beg for it, cutting down travel time, and you can rent lodgings instead of sleeping under the stars, but over time your wallet will likely grow thin. The train is the quickest method in terms of travel, but is very expensive and is limited to major cities. Choosing the pace of travel and what you're willing to lose to get anywhere can feel a bit tedious at times, but when you get the hang of it you begin to see how travel habits over the long term can affect Kim's chances of reaching the end of his 999th day in the school of life.

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You can see new locations as illustrated by a period photograph that you can enlarge, and that reveals different shops to visit and people to meet. The burst of information, in contrast to the toil of travel, makes these discoveries more interesting, but you may find yourself rushing through travel at times to see things you haven't seen before, which can result in very low health or supplies. And while most of the people are fun to interact with to start, you will eventually exhaust the simple conversation options, which are usually a question, their response, and a witty quip from Kim.

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The quest-linked characters are often circled with a different symbol, and they tend to have more to say. Some offer jobs or quests, others give you a chance to prove your worth as a human being or to learn a bit more about your past. These are probably the most charming parts of Kim, and often draw text straight from the book or, surprisingly, other material by Rudyard Kipling. The prose isn't always straightforward, forcing you to stop and read, though on repeat playthroughs you may find yourself skipping or skimming a lot of text if you remember the gist. This can result in missing out on a few clues, but it's an understandable instinct, especially when interacting with minor characters just to earn some extra merit.

Given the source material, the player may consider themselves to be at odds with some of the attitudes presented in the game's world, but given that the game tries to be true to the spirit of the novel, it creates a conflict that is more challenging than what is often presented as moral choice in games, i.e. the obviously good or the stupidly evil. You may be asked to spy on dangerous rebels, but the rebels want to throw off the shackles of the British Empire, and you are given plenty of opportunities to steal, often with few consequences other than the loss of merit, being pursued, or having local warrants issued. Few of these choices seem to have long-term consequences though, apart from when you get yourself killed or refuse quest lines, but the situations are food for thought nonetheless.

Perhaps the greatest service the game does is giving people with a lack of knowledge of India a starting point to begin asking questions, looking up histories, seeing some of the buildings mentioned, and learning about the changes India has experienced leading up to today. However fantastical and skewed the novel's worldview arguably was, the game maintains just enough distance from the source material (both the work by Kipling and the 19th century travel journals quoted in area descriptions) to allow players the comfort of getting a taste for the era, so they can have their own journeys afterward.

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The game's first-run novelty is stronger than subsequent games, especially at the beginning. Players will come to recognise conversations and know where things are going in the starting town of Lahore and the surrounding townships. It may pay to be more experimental to start, trying specific approaches, and then play again after finishing to try to follow more of the paths laid out for you. This might preserve more of the conversations for later. It is also a good idea to put the game down for a bit before returning to it, as playing too much in quick succession may make the early parts feel like a chore. Poor resource management can sometimes leave you needing to grind away at a job to replenish your money, or leave you weak with few options if you're stuck traveling far from a city.

Combat is straightforward if awkward, basically requiring you to click on targets as they chop away at you, and it's often much easier to run away or let the authorities handle belligerents than trying to stop them yourself. There have been a few occasions for us where our character got stuck in the environment, or a character panel popped up and couldn't be dismissed, but these were fixed by saving and restarting. Sometimes interaction symbols don't pop up when you're near either, but the ctrl key is your friend in this case, making them all visible. Some character portraits also seem to be at the wrong resolution, though these are the exceptions, and occasionally a conversation bubble would pop up, but a conversation wouldn't be available when you clicked on a character. You also only get one game, your current one, though there is a setting to turn off permadeath if you prefer to explore even after you've been mauled by a tiger.

Once 999 days expire, however, you can actually keep playing even though you're granted no more score, allowing you to finish what you like, which is helpful when you find yourself doing the early game a bit too often. There are leaderboards to put your score on, but the usual problem the internet gives us, with people getting scores in orders of magnitude in excess of what seems to be possible, makes this feel a bit pointless.

The music of the game has some enjoyable tracks, the artwork depicting the items in the game are deliciously detailed, the sound effects are pleasing (except the endless beeps when you're in front of a bunch of hostiles' fields of vision), the digitised photographs and outsider descriptions of colonial India are fascinating, and the game's sense of adventure and place are an exceedingly rare thing to find. The freedom the game allows despite it taking place in the same general area increases replay value for the more experimentally minded, though those who prefer to play consistently should try to explore certain avenues more deeply, such as building up your reputation with some individuals by repeatedly helping them, to get new things out of subsequent runs.

Kim is a rarity: it takes a work suspended in time and presents it to us with minimal interference, but because it's a game and not a novel, the translation is transformative. You may wish for more of the local colour, or wish the game to put everything more rigorously into a modern context, but as it stands it is a 19th century artefact brought to some semblance of life.

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07 Gamereactor UK
7 / 10
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Free play style allows for different approaches to what could have been a linear story, Charming, varied characters, Adherence to the novel and other sources invites further inquiry into the period.
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Adherence to such sources may have uncomfortable undertones, Poor resource management during travel can leave you with few options, Replay value diminishes in the earlier portions of a game.
overall score
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REVIEW. Written by A. R. Teschner

"Kim is a rarity: it takes a work suspended in time and presents it to us with minimal interference, but because it's a game and not a novel, the translation is transformative."



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