Gamescom 2019 is not only a stage for great triple-A titles, but also a sounding board for small creative realities, a shell to be wielded to express themselves, teams and games just waiting for space and voice to be given to them, like Honig Studios and their El Hijo.
The number of producers and developers under THQ Nordic is nothing short of great, and among the many members of this extended family there is Handy games: it is thanks to them and THQ that Epic Videogames Guide was able to put hands (and heart) on a title that best represents the indie reality of a world often too deafened by the din of the "headlines" to recognize the melody of the whitest voices (and also) of the choir.
El Hijo sees us in the shoes of a 6 year old boy, abandoned by his mother in a monastery after the arson of their home; at the departure of the parent the last thing the child wants to do is to be trapped between the tight walls of the place of worship where he finds himself, hence his escape in search of those who abandoned him there.
In El Hijo we are in front of one stealth game completely non-violent, immersed in the warm tones of tradition spaghetti westerns. The choice of adhering to a mechanics based on the flight rather than on the fight-response, according to Maria (Game Developer of Honig Studios), was necessary for consistency with the age of the protagonist.
I don't understand games that have as protagonists boys or children capable of killing monsters or enemies. How strong can a 6-7 year old be? The most logical reaction for a child to a conflict is to run away or hide, certainly not fight.
He's not all wrong.
The little protagonist will therefore always have to avoid conflict, constantly looking for new methods to overcome obstacles and sneak past his enemies; the levels will be 30, divided into three sections (Monastery, Desert, City of the Bandits), and those we were able to play in our hands-on saw us creatively use slings, smoke firecrackers, and even hand-wound toys, to best overcome them; each “stage” can be tackled with almost total freedom, so much so that we have rarely seen ourselves forced our hand towards one or the other mandatory resolution.
Honig Studios' game is to be commended for its transparent simplicity: none of the 30 levels introduces new features, preferring instead to focus on the evolution and refinement of the basic mechanics introduced in the tutorial; the parallelism with the story of the little protagonist it is undeniable, a coming of age through which everyone must (fortunately or unfortunately) go through. It is also very pleasant to insert a "view from above”Which allows, as in other similar games, to observe enemy movements and vision cones.
The narrative power of El Hijo is not in the least diminished by the total absence of dialogue or spoken of any kind, managing rather to convey emotions and ideas with a gesture or a melody, without losing their effectiveness. We want to reassure the completists: yes, there are "collectable"But only those who decide to explore more levels will be able to get them.
In closing, an applause to the graphic identity of the game: this was thepivotal aspect of the genesis by El Hijo, on the one hand a tribute to the 1970 film “El Topo”, on the other a clear reference to the spaghetti-western film tradition (and not). During our hands-on Maria even defined herself as “pixel-Nazi”, precisely because of her precise mental image of how El Hijo must look and the strength with which she reacts to the difference between this image and its actual realization.
El Hijo is a pleasant surprise of this Gamescom 2019, a title that is as much a videogame as it is a metaphorical digital son of its creator.
Paraphrasing a powerful mantra, it's developers like Honig Studios who make the idea of "Create the game you want to play", and it is very fortunate to be witnesses.
► El Hijo is an Adventure-Indie-Strategy game published by THQ Nordic for Mac, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 31/12/2019
