Steam has too many games for its own good. Finding quality titles among the glut of asset flips and joke games can be nearly impossible. One of the genres most affected by this is horror. Thanks to the popularity of streamer-targeted horror games filled with cheap jump scares, the market is absolutely flooded with subpar releases that often bury the B-tier games. Unforgiving - A Northern Hymn is one of those games, something I wouldn’t have known existed if not for my Steam discovery queue suggesting it to me. While it seemed like yet another predatory horror title at first, its inspiration from Swedish mythology and a decently intriguing trailer hooked me enough for a purchase.
In Unforgiving, you play as an unnamed Swedish woman. After a car accident, you and your brother Lukas are lost in the forest. It doesn’t take long to realize that something is wrong in these woods. As you explore, you learn about the creatures inhabiting the area and try to find a way to escape to safety--basically, it’s just an excuse to wander around creepy areas and get chased by monsters. The gameplay is fairly typical for the genre: you walk around and explore while finding notes to read and occasionally solving some basic puzzles by finding items or using your limited supply of matches, which can also be used to light your surroundings.
Despite its simplicity and adherence to many horror game tropes, I found myself charmed by many parts of Unforgiving. My favorite element is simply the presence of your character. For instance, you can look down and see your body, a rarity in first-person games. I know it's silly, but as a male gamer fascinated with playing female characters, looking down to see the breasts of my character is a delightful novelty and I always appreciate games that go through the trouble of doing so, especially when it's done without sexualization as it is here. There are also a lot of great little animations as you play. She cups her hand around lit matches as she runs to prevent them from blowing out. If you stand still long enough and look down, you can see her hug her arms around her midsection for comfort. Even simple, gameplay-relevant animations such as checking your matchbox to see how many matches you have left are clearly crafted with a lot of care.
Unforgiving’s one unique mechanic is a mystical harp you use to solve certain puzzles. It has six strings, each designated with a different Norse rune. You use these runes in two ways. First, you may see a string of runes and must play them on the harp in order to do something, usually opening a gate or door. Second, you can play one of two special "songs" in order to activate different glowing symbols to, again, open gates and doors. Both of these methods are essentially the same thing, but you must to do both at different points throughout the game. It's mechanically simple but I still enjoyed plucking away at the strings, especially how the notes thrum louder and louder as you get closer to finishing the set. I also appreciated the way you could play the "songs" manually if you want, even though there is no benefit to doing so (other than an achievement). The game even gets some good tension out of this since you are completely vulnerable and unable to fully check your surroundings as you play. It's a neat, creative mechanic that I just wish had a bit more depth and was used more frequently.
Maintaining good tension is an important part of any horror game, and Unforgiving does a decent job at doing so. Most of this tension is built through fantastically unsettling sound effects that almost constantly reverberate through the dark forest: the harsh cracking of trees and branches, the haunting whispers of spirits forever trapped there, and the distinct groans and cries of the game's various creatures. They are expertly crafted to unnerve you and often had just that effect on me. The best example is during a late game section with creatures called trolls. These creatures cannot see very well and instead track their prey via sound. You have to creep through multiple caves filled with them, trying to make as little sound as possible while their shiver-inducing chittering fills your ears. It was almost unbearably tense, and I think most of that tension is owed to those creepy sound effects.
Unfortunately, Unforgiving also has quite a few flaws. There isn't much story to speak of, no real reason to push forward except to see what settings and creatures the game has to offer. It opens with an interesting setup (which I won't spoil here) but never mentions this setup again after the first few minutes. There are also scatterings of Swedish mythology and lore but not enough to really sink your teeth into. As someone who has no familiarity with this type of mythology, I feel the developer could have done a better job of setting up these creatures as you encounter them; as it is, they may as well have just been generic enemies instead. The worst part of all, however, is the trite, cliched ending which is entirely unearned.
The game also has some pretty bad pacing problems. The first few chapters--taking probably about 30-45 minutes--are the worst, filled with long stretches of walking through empty forest with no real danger. Many of these sections are also somewhat confusing to navigate, unless you intuit that you're supposed to follow particular waymarks in the world, such as train tracks or power cables. Getting lost is far too easy and there is little interesting to do or see on the way. The tension does build and fall through a handful of events, but it's still pretty boring walking through similar-looking forest sections for such a long time before getting to the real "meat" of the game in Chapter 4.
Finally, there's a bit of roughness to the production. Outside of your character's animations, a lot of the models move rather awkwardly and look a bit too cheesy to take seriously. Controlling your character could also be better. The default turn sensitivity is PAINFULLY slow, and everything you do feels just a tad too sluggish. Easily the biggest hindrance in the production, however, is the game's soundtrack. It could not be more unremarkable. What's worse is how it is not timed to the action of the game whatsoever. It seems to rise and fall entirely at random, suddenly increasing in pitch and intensity despite a complete lack of danger. As such, it is entirely pointless and even undermines the game’s attempts at horror by disrupting the natural build of tension: I quickly learned to ignore it entirely. These rough edges are somewhat forgivable, due to the small size of the team, but they do hurt the game nonetheless.
I was surprised by my infatuation for Unforgiving. Its shortcomings are numerous and severe, but I still came out the other side feeling an adoration for the game and its creators. There’s just something about it, an undefinable allure to its dedicated craft, that helps me overlook its imperfections. At the same time, I understand that most people will likely not be as forgiving or tolerant of them as I am. I also can’t deny that the game’s deficits really undermine it as a whole. As such, it’s hard to recommend picking it up, especially at its base price of $15. I purchased the game for $3.24 and more than got my money’s worth out of it. If my praise for it has intrigued you, maybe give it a shot at that price--you can always return it. Who knows? Maybe you’ll end up just as enthralled as I was.