Review: Draugen Undermines Its Mystery by Pulling a Shyamalan on Players

The game forsakes worldbuilding as it increasingly gives itself over to making the most digressive of statements.

Draugen
Photo: Red Thread Games

The self-professed “fjord noir” whodunit Draugen certainly doesn’t lack for wild ambition. While that can be an invigorating impetus to the artistry behind a video game—or that of any creative work, really—it can also run great ideas into the ground. And there’s no clearer example of that than the latest from the Oslo-based Red Thread Games. Draugen is clearly mistrustful of its potential, stuffing itself with more and more narrative ideas until it practically asphyxiates, ending up as a sprawling and unresolved mess.

The game, though, makes a great first impression with its breathtaking setting and attention to detail. You play as a stodgy American named Edward, languidly rowing a boat along a meandering Norwegian fjord, backdropped by impossibly blue skies and snow-capped mountains. He’s accompanied by his young ward, Lissie, a boisterous and irreverent teenager who has a penchant for dropping quips and endearing jibes, and much to Edward’s chagrin. All the while, the tranquility of this scene is punctuated by a beautiful and evocative orchestral soundtrack, the melody eventually subsiding as the duo docks at a nearby island.

To Edward and Lizzie’s surprise, no one has come to pick them up. The island’s small village seems recently abandoned, almost as if its inhabitants vanished overnight. It’s an impression made all the more eerie by the fact that Edward and Lissie were invited to the remote island by its most prominent family. And as Lissie tears off toward their host family’s homestead and he trudges after her, Edward can only ponder exactly what’s going on in this place.

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It’s a picture-perfect setup to a potentially enthralling mystery about the secrets that plague this remote island, except that Edward is troubled by another mystery he’s looking to solve: the disappearance of his long-lost sister, Betty, who he insists has been leaving him clues to her whereabouts. But the inquisitive Lissie, who very much has the moxie of a budding detective, picks up his slack, jumping at every opportunity to learn more about the island’s secrets, even egging Edward on with her unbridled enthusiasm and imagination.

Throughout, Edward is able to search his surroundings for clues to his host family’s whereabouts, with prompts tagged to specific items around the island and inside the family’s house, leading him to make more logical conclusions than those of his more instinctually driven companion. At its strongest, Draugen spins colorful banter from the collision of Edward and Lissie’s disparate approaches to investigation. Lissie, for one, is prone to pulling nonsensical theories out of nowhere, and the contrast between her youthful exuberance and his reserved demeanor feels natural and lived in—until it suddenly isn’t.

Draugen’s sense of atmosphere is rich enough to keep one riveted for two thirds of its campaign, but then the developers spring on us a narrative curveball that effectively kills their game’s momentum. And things go downhill from there. Twist after twist is introduced without seeming rhyme or reason, almost all of them completely untethered from the mystery behind the island. After a while, Draugen completely buckles under the weight of one too many revelations, which mostly revolve around Edward’s deteriorating mental state—a plotline so astonishingly convoluted that it raises more questions than it answers.

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Moreover, the game forsakes worldbuilding as it increasingly gives itself over to making the most digressive of statements, which includes poking at the fallacies of the very detective genre to which Draguen belongs. This is most apparent in how Edward, in a moment of exasperation, tells Lissie that delving into the island’s mystery is a colossal waste of time, hollering at her, “This isn’t Agatha Christie. There won’t be a convenient set of clues leading to a tidy conclusion.” And Draugen seems only too happy to heed his words, given how many stones it infuriatingly leaves unturned. By the end, the impression that lingers most is that Red Thread Games didn’t have much of an endgame planned out in advance aside from wanting to leave players feeling as if all their detective work was for nothing.

This game was reviewed using a download code provided by Evolve PR.

Score: 
 Developer: Red Thread Games  Publisher: Red Thread Games  Platform: PC  Release Date: May 29, 2019  Buy: Game

Khee Hoon Chan

Khee Hoon Chan is a freelance writer and copywriter from Singapore. She has written for Unwinnable, Paste, Polygon, and other fine publications.

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