MOLDRISE PC (Goldberg-Final)

Make bad trades. Every ascent teaches you what you should have done differently. The building has thirty floors. Your body has problems – hunger, thirst, exhaustion. The infection doesn’t care. It only wants altitude. The building is not haunted. The people in it are not monsters – and they want things. Junk. Food. Favors. Someone to do something mildly humiliating to their neighbor. A few of them know things they shouldn’t. None of them know they’re describing the same thing. The building is the same every time you climb it. The neighbors are the same. The trades are the same. The vending machine on the ground floor has the same stock.

What changes is what you know. Every run, you learn something. A shortcut. A better trade. An item you didn’t know mattered until the floor you needed it on. The building slowly starts to make sense. And again. You’ll know what to do next time. But your foot isn’t waiting. Moldrise is a solid little game that doesn’t overstay its simple premise. It has a trial-and-error approach to its gameplay, with players piecing the narrative and objectives together as each run makes it increasingly clear what needs to be done next. The atmosphere is well crafted, and the people that populate the journey are interesting.

It is fairly short but worth the experience. A bite-sized blend of I’m Not Human and Don’t Look Outside, its scope is smaller and simpler than it could have been, but what is here is executed well and scratches a very particular itch left unsatisfied by Obenseuer, whose development has felt like it’s been in gridlock for years. This is a tightly structured experience that does an excellent job of balancing horror and humor.

It plays like a mystery game because, apart from the numerical code to a specific keypad, nothing changes between runs. Once everything is figured out, MOLDRISE can be completed in about five minutes. The real joy lies in exploring the tiny, disgusting world you’re trapped in while juggling physical needs and completing various quests to obtain the next essential item. Along the way, players learn about the disease and uncover fragmentary information about the effect it’s having on the world outside. Even when played blind, Moldrise is not a long game, but it’s all killer, no filler.