GloomWood is the perfect immersive sim

The immersive sim genre had a recent come back in a form of new indie games made by solo or small size game dev studios, we had Peripeteia, Fallen Aces, Shadows of Doubt and other ambitious projects.

What is an immersive sim you may ask?!

An immersive sim is a design philosophy rather than a strict genre. At its core, it's about creating a believable, systemic world that consistently responds to player creativity, an immersive sim gives you a toolbox of abilities and rules, and trusts you to find your own way, to put it simple its about giving the player complete freedom to progress through the game in his own way without handholding

And GloomWood perfects that, you start at Fishery a fishing outpost where you have been captured by the huntsman, suddenly a strange old guy appears and opens the door for you, the area is filled with huntsman and you are armless.

You stealthfully make your way to your Gentleman's Case which is a very special design decision to make the inventory system full interactable in a 3d environment, you acquire your first weapon which is very unique, the Canesword, with this weapon you can stealthfully kill your enemies but the Canesword is very weak in face to face combat.

After acquire your first weapon you get to the second floor and find a safe that needs a code, you search around the room to find a light switch, when the light is off you see the safe code painted on the wall, after opening the safe you acquire your second weapon which is a revolver that needs three shots to kill a huntsman, ammo is very scarce and every shot counts.

While cleaning the fishing outpost from the huntsman you will found a cave near the building, the cave have another safe that needs a code, you acquire the code later in game, the safe have the Flare Pistol which has different ammo type, one can break light bulb, interact with buttons and levers ,another can choke enemies and the normal flare can burn the impacted object, it's a very versatile weapon.

The arsenal of tools and weapon is very good and fulfilling, it gives you the necessary tools to venture in your own way. There is a good variety of enemies and creatures you will face in the game, and every one of them has its own unique way to fight or avoid, like The Goatman that live in the Tavern, The Goatman is very strong enemy that can suck a lot of punches so you have to setup traps and take a good position before engaging the monster.

Throughout the game you will find valuable items that you can sell later in the market. In the market you can interact with the Merchant that runs the place, and the Merchant has a lot useful items and upgrades, like you can buy the ability to expand your Gentleman's Case, also you can buy the Monocle to get the ability to zoomin when pressing Z.

The atmosphere is fabulous and well made its gloomy, dark and some times horrifying, the story is still incomplete but it helps in creating the mystery of the game world and the feeling of being haunted by the mean game antagonist The Countess. The Countess controls the huntsman which she is the one who ordered your capture in the beginning of the game.

Gloomwood is developed by Dillon Rogers and David Szymanski and published by the beloved New Blood Interactive, the game is still in early access with a massive update every couple of months

I highly recommend Gloomwood for those who liked the Thief series, deus ex or system shock 2, it's very well made game that clearly had a lot of passion and love put in to it