The Forgotten City // Milk Bar's Chocolate Birthday Truffle Crumb Cakes

As an impulsive grocery shopper, I have accumulated somewhat of a chocolate backlog akin to my growing list of unplayed games. Back in November I purchased *deep breath* ...Chocolate Birthday Truffle Crumb Cakes from Milk Bar... for my birthday. At the time I had the intuition to throw these in the fridge, though I didn't plan on forgetting them until 2022.

The same goes for The Forgotten City, a game I bought around the same time. My question going into both was: would these stand the test of a few months lingering in my PSN library (and chilling in my vegetable crisper)? Fortunately, the answer is a resounding yes!

[I will keep spoilers to just the basic premise, but if you're already interested, I strongly recommend going into The Forgotten City knowing as little as possible!]

Originally a Skyrim mode, The Forgotten City was re-released last summer as a standalone game. You play an amnesiac who accidentally time-travels back to an ancient Roman city that lives under one "Golden Rule": when any sin is committed, everyone dies. Each time that inevitably happens, said time portal re-emerges, and you start the whole day over again—but taking with you any items and knowledge you accumulated. Yes folks, another time loop game! Each day, you'll get to know a different citizen's backstory, goals, and potential motivations for sinning. This usually results in someone (either an NPC or you, the player) committing an unforgivable act, requiring the loop to restart.

Rather than feeling like a trendy gimmick, the day-based structure naturally fits the narrative reasons why it exists. It's simultaneously well-paced but squeezes in enough agency and exploration to make you feel like a necessary participant.

I spent the first couple hours waiting for more mechanics to be introduced before realizing that dialogue with the city's dozen or so citizens—and using that info to solve the Rubik's cube of a plot—is your main verb. Of course you must activate certain triggers to progress, and there's a few clunky yet passable action sequences. But the whodunnit and howdunnit is the reason to play. By the end, I had been so charmed by the ensemble cast, I was almost reluctant to bid them adieu.

Luckily, the writers pay off these dividends well. I haven't played the original mod, but I can imagine how this second pass served as a way to distill the formula. There's no way to explain the story further without ruining the surprises. But I will say that it scales from interpersonal conflict to broad, global ideas with ease—a balance that games twenty times this size (and budget) struggle to find.

Not unlike The Forgotten City, Milk Bar's unnecessarily-named Chocolate Birthday... Truffle.. Crumb Cakes... didn't lose any luster in the months since purchase. These peanut butter cup-sized hockey pucks of chocolate aren't quite the titular "cakes." They fit better in the cookie family, but denser. A geode of dense chocolate: coarse and porous on the outside, delicious chocolate gem on the inside. A sturdier cake pop. A double-chocolate Oreo that can withstand the elements. And covered in the one ingredient that supplies that indescribable "birthday" flavor: sprinkles.

tex·ture

As much as I strive to plow through my backlog and "catch up" to present day, part of me enjoys letting games simmer for awhile. Free yourself from day 1 discourse and the impulse to keep pace with what is now a year-round release calendar! Take time to stop and smell the chocolate. Just check the expiration date to be safe.