The Man Came Around is a stylish and intriguing role-player from independent developer Thierry Brimioulle. Exploring themes of fascism, repression, protest and exile, it's currently crowdfunding and has a free demo.
Before we continue, have a gander at its Kickstarter trailer:
As mentioned there, Occida is The Man Came Around's fictional settings that's said to be the "most powerful nation of the world", but has been "shaken by mass protests met by brutal repression". An internal war has broken on between activist group The Many and the government, which has in turn forced the country into a dictatorship.
From here, you assume the role of five nomad citizens aiming to cross the North Border to freedom. Naturally, this proves no easy feat as you're forced to manage scarce resources, make life-threatening decisions, and battle both the heavily armed guards scattered across the mountain and the elements themselves.
In my brief playthrough of the demo, I sent one character away from the group to create a diversion with a flare. She was spotted by a nearby group of soldiers and instantly shot dead. Later, I managed to successfully bribe a different gathering of guards to let us pass through a checkpoint, however lost two comrades due to exhaustion. Using permadeath, these friends are sadly gone for good—and a trauma system governs your characters' stress and guilt along the way.
The demo is free and totally worth checking out, however here's the developer talking through how some of that works:
If you fancy any of that and feel like throwing some money at The Man Came Around, its live Kickstarter campaign can be found over here. The game's demo can be downloaded over on itch.io.
