Developer: Strange Scaffold
Genre: First Person Shooter
Platforms: PC (tested)
Time to finish: Roughly 3-4 hours
Sidenote: This was the first review I’ve ever posted to my Neocities page.
The end of 2024 kicked off with a Steam sale and of the then nearly seventy wishlisted games I have on the platform I bought I Am Your Beast due to the trailer selling me earlier in they year but lacking the money to purchase it. This Christmas I finally bit the bullet.
I Am Your Beast is a revenge thriller power fantasy sort of game where you follow the escapades of a former marine going against a shady and corrupt government outfit in an unnamed forest in North America. Why our protagonist is doing this is something that is gradually explained through the games cutscenes in which the protagonist communicates over radio to the enemy, with text and background colour changes appearing to give some style to proceedings.
These cutscenes appear after almost every level you play, this is also the first time you’ll get a hint of the games heavily cel-shaded art style, full of lush colour and feeling almost reminiscent of an old PlayStation 2 game bought up to date with what a dev team can do in 2024.
So with that out the way, the game begins with a tutorial level, standard fare here just putting a few things in front of you to acquaint yourself with the game mechanics. Then you get thrown into roughly 25 odd levels giving you various tasks spreading from merely reaching the end of the level to destroying or using objects before making your escape to killing all enemies in the area.
This begins what I refer to as the “core loop” of the game, each individual level is essentially an arena where you get given various devices to take down the troops deployed to kill the protagonist. Each level has its own devices to help you take down enemies, either lying about or can be picked up on the enemies you invariably kill. These range from melee weapons such as knives and pieces of wood to guns such as pistols and shotguns. It feels very old school but the nature of the game is such that you won’t be piling up bodies like in Doom and the limited amount of ammo each weapon has forces you to be careful about where you land those shots.
After finishing the level you are ranked and any bonus challenges achieved are given to the player which will unlock later levels in the story and also new unrelated challenge levels.
This loop could get repetitive I found but a multiple of factors including the introduction of new mechanics such as new weapons and scenarios kept the game from getting stale as well as a well though out story that I don’t think is entirely original (People who’ve watched the Bourne series should know what it is doing) it is well executed and with an excellent voice cast to boot. I found myself sighing whenever the game required me to get a ranking on a level or to do some bonus challenges in order to unlock whatever was coming next but the game lets you choose exactly what level you think you can get the best ranking on and allows the same with any challenges it gives you. The game is also short enough that you feel like it simply ends at the point it would truly start tiring the player out, it does what it sets out to do as needed and no more and in an age of many hour long epics in video games, a cut down experience is exactly what this player wanted.
I found I Am Your Beast to be an excellent game, not an amazing five star game by any means but a game doesn’t have to be an incredible 5/5 to be worth playing. The soundtrack by Rj Lake is simply incredible and I hope to hear more of their work in the future. Given how small an audience this game could’ve been seen by, to see such high effort put into its soundtrack that will now be on hard rotate for the next few weeks if not more. It deserves soundtrack of the year and matches the mood of the game perfectly.
Completable in just a couple of hours with still significant replay value to come is something that makes the eleven or so pounds I paid for it a bargain and I cannot wait to finish off all the challenges I’ve missed or getting more S ranks as I find more and more to exploit in each level.
Reviewed 4th January 2025