On a mysterious island, adventure awaits… You’ll fight against the very forces of nature in your mountaineering journey. If you enjoy an exploration-based game with plenty of interactivity, danger, and an air of mystery, you’ll love Insurmountable by developer/publisher ByteRockers’ Games. I was given the game to review before it released, and I really enjoyed its relaxing, yet adventurous feel.
Playing Insurmountable for the first time, I was surprised by the relaxing atmosphere of it. For a game about scaling impossible heights and facing unknown danger, the experience is fairly slow-paced and calming. I played as an adventurer whose goal was to scale a mysterious mountain while keeping myself warm, sane, healthy, and maintaining enough energy and oxygen to make the climb.
I did this by managing my scarce resources and exploring the terrain around me to find more resources and tools to aid in my survival. I used items such as tea, canned food, and herbs to keep my stats up during the adventure. The inventory and resource management added another level of interest to the gameplay without being too difficult to manage.
I enjoyed the game’s focus on exploration balanced with a need for survival; it made for a slow-paced game that was relaxing, but not boring. Insurmountable was fairly challenging, as well, but not impossibly so. It was just difficult enough for me to feel a sense of satisfaction after finishing each climb.
The terrain of the mountainous game world is built in hexagonal sections that you can travel across, which lends a unique board-game-like feel to the game. There are different kinds of tiles- snow, ice, and rock- which can affect aspects of the game such as how much energy it takes to traverse them or the speed at which you travel. Some tiles trigger different types of events when you walk across them, such as encounters with natives, discoveries of ancient shrines, or even dangerous rockslides. Each event is played out in an interactive text-based form. It feels a bit like reading a story- much of the imagery is left up to the player’s imagination, which can be fun, but also may not be appealing to every player.
As a player, you can interact with the game in two main ways. One way is the path you travel. You can choose which tiles to cross depending on the danger, energy cost, and events triggered by each type of tile. There are an almost infinite number of ways to reach the top of each mountain. The path you choose may determine how difficult it is to finish the game, or whether you even survive the adventure.
The second method of interaction is through the various events you may encounter throughout your journey. Depending on the choices you make in these situations, you may end up with an extra can of food or a broken ankle. These events can mean the difference between reaching the end of the game or dying in the interim.
The things I liked the most about Insurmountable were the relaxing pace and storylike elements. It was a nice change of pace from the typical action-heavy games I play, and I enjoyed slowing down for a bit. The story events were also really cool and well-written, and I enjoyed being able to interact with the game in that way.
There were a couple things I didn’t like as much about Insurmountable, although they were fairly minor: the player’s perspective and the glitch I encountered. The player’s perspective was a little annoying because of how closely it was anchored to the character- if I climbed down into a ravine, for example, the camera would get stuck very close to my character so I wouldn’t be able to see around the outside of the ravine. This made it a little difficult to choose the best path sometimes, although it didn’t affect my experience too much. One thing that did affect my experience, though, was a glitch that reset my progress. After climbing the first mountain, I took a break before doing the second one; then, after I reopened the game, it reset my progress so I had to complete the first mountain again before I could continue.
It didn’t set me back too far, but it was still an inconvenience. However, the same thing happened after I completed the second mountain, so it set me back a lot farther that time. But then, when I played the game a few days later, it didn’t corrupt the save. This means the glitch was possibly fixed. Either way, it was still enjoyable to play because every adventure was unique.
Overall, my experience playing Insurmountable was very enjoyable. Every step I took in the game felt like an adventure, in the best way. I’d rate this game 9/10 overall, and I definitely recommend it!
Check Out the Insurmountable Trailer:
You can wishlist Insurmountable for PC via Steam right now. The game releases April 29, 2021.
Steam Review
I'm a student of game design at Michigan State University, and I enjoy playing all types of video games, from competitive multiplayer games to simple solo games. Some of my favorite games have been Minecraft and Among Us.
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