Caligo Xbox Series X Review 6.5/10 "Striking Visuals and Imagery, with Heavy Iconography" 🕯️🗼 @Krealit_team @Pinkerator #IndieGame #GameDev

"Jane's tent was a bitch to put up but it was a hit at Glastonbury"

One of the most visually interesting walking simulators that I’ve played, Caligo begins with your unknown player character being beckoned forth by a masked entity through a series of locations to meet a mysterious individual. 

The first thing you’ll notice is how crisp and interesting the game is visually – with each area you pass through being rich with things to take in, as well as the occasional, scattered collectible item to pilfer. 

"Rupert was starting to think that his new armchair wasn't quite as comfortable as it was in the DFS showroom..."

A short game that has a focus on the musings of existence, and the value of life (and infinite lives), the only time that the game stutters at all is in a particularly verdant section, where the frame-rate took a hit as I trundled through the foliage. Accompanying the visuals is a surprisingly varied soundtrack that alternates genres, so the music you’ll hear whilst traversing the aforementioned grassy fields is quite different to, say, the living photograph of the vicious battlefield you must make your way through at one point, and the game is all the better for it.

That said, due to the briskness of the journey, a lot of monologues and conversations take place - almost constantly - unpacking quite a dense topic in a bite-size adventure naturally leading to a situation whereby the narrative can get quite heavy-handed. There were two endings that I discovered, and I have to say that the denouement to Caligo is surprisingly touching and informative, leading me to do a little bit of research of my own following completion of the game.

"The East Hertfordshire LARP event was beginning to get slightly out of hand..."

SUMMARY
The walking simulator genre as a whole tends to deal with life and death as a main topic, and few do it with as much visual and technical aplomb as here with Caligo. That said, the heavy duty narrative delivery, and occasionally underwhelming voice acting may mean that this is a game better suited to streamers who can have live existential discussions with their viewers as they unfold in-game as opposed to being a truly meaningful experience for a solitary player.