Judging by the Demo: White Knuckle
Palms are sweaty
Have I got a wager for you. You know the rules. I say how well I think a game will do. You say how well you think a game will do. We’ll see who gets closer after release.
White Knuckle is a first person climber because you don’t have enough anxiety in your life. You’re trying to escape what appears to be an industrial rock climbing gym made of concrete and steel—And do your best ignore the sludge slowly filling the room or the tentacle shaped shadows creeping up the walls beside you.
Focus instead on the titular clammy pale hands in front of you. Hands which grow redder and shakier the longer you use them without a break until they eventually give out. It’s all so simple yet oh so effective. I had to wring the sweat out of my mouse and keyboard a couple of times.
If we were to stop right here, I’d bet the house on this game, no questions asked. The atmosphere is oppressive. The immersion is impressive. Climbing games in general seem to do fairly well right now, ranging from what people might consider slop streamerbait to snob journobait.
There’s Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy or A Difficult Game About Climbing and Chained Together to name something more recent. Asset-flipcore at its finest.
On the other end there’s Jusant and the upcoming Cairn. Therapy on the rocks.
We can even expand from there and add Mount Your Friends, Jump King, or even Celeste to leverage my point that people seem to enjoy games about difficult ascents, but it really has to dig deep into the human core in some way or another, be it with outlandish humor, obscene tedium, or even a deep melancholy.
Anecdotally, off the top of my head, the climbing games that didn’t do so well are the ones where the emotional extremes were subdued like in Surmount or Valley Peaks, which has as much emotional tension as listening to the Lumineers while going up an elevator in Autumn. (Yes, that is me recommending the demo.) I don’t think it’s the cutesy art that did them in, as I believe Bread and Fred was received rather well and it’s just as vibrant while still being a relationship stress test. You can be cutesy, and colorful, but it seems cozy climbing is a no go for now.
But is it possible to go too far in the other direction when talking about White Knuckle? There’s already the usual level of terror one would expect from a brutalist free climb, made even more tense by the sight of your reddening hands. Palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, and to make matters worse there’s Mom’s Spaghetti. That’s the pet name I’ve given to one of the monsters in the facility. For you see, this first person climber is also a horror game. Difficult to say how that will be received. Most climbing games figure the climb is stressful enough without more PvE elements, and most horror games tend to be designed with the less dexterous in mind. More horrifying perhaps is the fact that there are combat elements as well.
I feel it’s all too easy for combat mechanics to step on the toes of other mechanics. Take Tunic for example, a rich mind tingling isometric metroidbrainia, like the original Legend of Zelda with more emphasis on puzzles. 10 out of 10 in every respect except when it comes to the combat. Filter Tunic’s steam reviews by Negative Only and it’s like reading eulogies someone would give after having to put down their gran for biting someone. Likewise, Scorn, a meaty HR Giger wetdream of a gorish puzzle facility, had the same issue. Great atmosphere, tension you could taste, so-so puzzles, questionable price tag, a few odd bugs that softlocked the game, and combat that felt out of place with the rest of the game. Luckily, the horror game crowd seems to be more forgiving.
But even then at least you could take every game I mentioned so far at your own pace. White Knuckle has an ever rising well of sludge, adding a speed running layer of stress. What I’m trying to get at is that not all tension is the same. Just because someone signed up to get slapped doesn’t mean they’re ready for whips and chains.
Add on to that one more mechanic that will have people wanting to whip or chain you to the walls, roguelike elements. I like roguelikes and roguelike accessories, but most of the time I don’t like how they are implemented. Here, I’m conflicted, because I feel the whole appeal to a climbing game is to overcome a struggle and make progress. From a social aspect climbing games are a shared experience. People want to gawk at you. People who also played the game will want to see you fail and succeed like they did. “Woah, I didn’t know you could do that.” “Oh here’s that part that took me 3 hours.” And for the sake of progress, these games also have soft check points. Once you get to a certain location, there are usually other parts of the map that will prevent you from falling all the way back down, unless you really mess up.
But in White Knuckle, while the overall shell is about the same, the handholds change around. The items spawn differently. The monsters spawn differently. And if you die, not because you failed at climbing but because the sludge caught up to you or a monster grabbed you, then you die and it starts all over. You don’t even get the satisfaction of a salty runback because the map will have changed. BUT, this does offer more replayability at face value, which might make it more appealing in this economy than a static map like say Peaks of Yore.
Now, this last bit is a doozy. From appearances, White Knuckle will be released in early access. I feel this once again compromises that shared sense of achievement. Did you climb Mt. Everest before or after the patch notes? Or maybe again this will make people more willing to play an ever changing climber. Like one of those rock climbing treadmill thingies. This is uncharted territory, and I feel like this game has a solid enough core that’s worth betting big. The emotional extreme is there. Other games in the genre tend to do well. This game’s closest point of comparison is probably Lorn’s Lure, and that did rather well. However, I am expecting conflicting sentiment. I’m betting White Knuckle will get the sales to be a huge commercial success, but I’m expecting the steam rating to be, not Overwhelmingly Positive, but Very Positive at best. Part of me even sees a world where this only ends up as Mostly Positive, but I’m feeling optimistic.
What say you? Over or under?
Imma vote Over simply because I don't know of many other climbing games that focus on speed like White Knuckle does