Promesa Reviews

"Promesa" is an interactive art experience rather than a game - which explains the low review score. This is definitely not something which can be enjoyed by everyone, but people with an open mind for artistic interactive media might enjoy it. And for others the game will boil down to a boring, easily forgettable quick-completion.

The game tries to grasp the concept of recalling a memory where you only remember certain details. In a walking simulator style you slowly move through "memories" consisting of scenes, sounds, a certain mood, but no people. These memory section are ordered randomly and some of them have no connection to the others. In one section you are in a Mediterranean apartment, in another you move through a village in a mountain, in another you seem to be in a prison. Unfortunately the game doesn't allow you to interact with any objects limiting the gameplay mostly to walking.

Personally I felt confused and somewhat nostalgic at the same time in certain scenes, which is quite a unique feeling for a game. Between some of the sections you get to read some text which apparently is a conversation between a grandfather and his grandson, but made me more confused. A playthrough takes around 45 minutes and each playthrough has the memories sorted randomly, but allows you to freely select all scenes after the 1st playthrough. You can complete the whole game including all the achievements in around 1 hour.

At the beginning a text prompt tells the user to use headphones and to be in a dark room for the best experience. I can confirm that it helps to get immersed. The game uses binaural audio which feels very natural and detailed in certain scenes. You can hear dogs barking in the background or cars driving past. In one scene you need to find a TV set in the clouds and you search for it by moving into the direction where TVs sound comes from. Visually there are some interesting aspects. While the 3D models, geometry and the pixelated textures are somewhat simplistic, the detailed lighting model and shadows give the game a realistic look, especially in daylight-scenes.

In summary: This is a slow interactive experience without any gameplay mechanics meant for people with an open mind for artistic interactive media. Or just an easy quick-completion game for some.

Promesa is supposedly a walking simulator. That kind of game is already going to be very divisive, and this is on the low end of them. A good walking simulator needs either beautiful graphics to admire, or a compelling narrative. Promesa has neither.

In the kind of game Promesa is, you should expect to go through a series of levels, giving you insight into the character, or at least details about something that has taken place. But it fails in that by making it a random sequence of levels, which means it is impossible for the game to give you any sense of plot because your experience will be different every time. There are multiple levels that clearly take place in the same 'stage', but the items might be different. If it were clever, going through levels repeatedly in different times might make a neat story. Where the first time you visit, it's clearly new and barely furnished, then it becomes well-lived, and then decrepit. No, it's clearly the same assets just with a different color filter over it, and maybe a piano is gone now.

That comes to the second issue. The graphics of the game are terrible. Nothing is interesting to look at, and it's all extremely low-resolution. When you get up close to objects you can see the different pixels, it is quite nauseating to look at. There's no interactions either, so there's nothing that would compel you to actually explore. It tells you to just get to the next spot asap.

The way it doesn't encourage any actually walking around to explore makes the walk speed such a nightmare. It lets you get 20% or 40% faster and even 40% faster is a slog because, again, there's nothing actually neat to look at.

This is definitely a game where the only reason to buy it is for achievements. Those can be gotten in an hour or so, but you should strive to do it in one sitting as the game won't save any progress until you finish a single playthrough.

Promesa had originally caught my eye due to the schedule of adult life whereby a small indie game is often more appealing with their short experiences and uncomplicated mechanics.

Developed by Julián Palacios Getchman and published by Fantastico Studio May 2021.
Promesa is a narrative story between Grandfather and Grandson as they converse through memory; attempting to recall those memories.

Promesa’s appeal comes from its abstract design whereby each memory is limited in size and detail, the family home being recalled in various states, whilst significant events start to haze the deeper you explore these linear pathways. Memory recall or Alzheimer’s as I perceived the narrative to be, had tailored the experience of Promesa to be different per user. The narrative’s Scenes as they are named, being recalled in a randomised order. The randomisation can make or break the experience tonally, with information being fed to you in the wrong order. Myself, did not pick up that it was a narrative between Grandfather, Grandson until digging deeper online post completion. I had thought it was diary entries being read or photographs being looked at.

The crux for many intrigued players hinges on some features that may leave players feeling cold. The first being no save file system which renders Promesa to be a one time playable experience, post ending or the ending that you are given from your selection of recalled memories. Scene Selection allows and highlights the missing memories you are yet to experience or wish to replay. Although pressing Start which would be your default on the Main Menu will erase all your current progress. As with any explorative or Walking Sim as appropriately dubbed. The players speed and lighting conditions can be adjusted, although boosting your speed by 40% will start to grind on players.
Graphically and asset use on surface can be inconsistent, with some aspects being distorted heavily whilst a corrugated roof for example is perfectly rendered, again. This along with the historical photographs you can find within select Scenes where the distortion levels vary work incredibly subtle to the decay of memory.
Sound design is prompted at the beginning of your experience for full immersion, this is the one occasion where I had just turned my TV instead of a headphones experience, minus the odd setting of music, sound design appeared heavily absent or the few select moments such as footsteps when crossing a street were out of sync with the player due to increased player speed.


The Brief:
Walking Sims are a genre I tend to enjoy, there is little trial and error in most cases although the concept for most of the indie genre Walking Sims tend to fall in the category of “It’s interesting, just not exciting”. Promesa also falling into that category with an interesting concept but failing to have any excitement or emotion. I applaud the subject of approaching memory. The overall experience will last approximately an hour, even with Scene Selection and with little exploration that you are restricted to will make the majority of the achievements unmissable.

At the time of writing:

- £4.19 | $4.99 | €4.99 and currently available on Xbox, PlayStation, Steam and Nintendo Switch.
- 1.0 TA Ratio with 23 Achievements amounting to 1,000 Gamerscore. Estimated completion of 60 minutes with numerous Walkthroughs on YouTube.
1.83GB download.