One of my favorite types of B-movies is when the creators clearly didn’t bother to do any research on filmmaking before they started. No books were read and no questions were asked; every time these people hit one of the thousand problems that crop up on a film set, they freestyled their solution. Sometimes that results in a flash of genius. More often, someone finds a way to either make new mistakes or unearth old ones.

In retrospect, this is a natural consequence whenever some new media technology becomes accessible to any geek off the street. Eventually it’ll fall into the hands of a driven amateur and the results can get a little weird, independently of the quality of the production.

Speaking of which—INAYAH: Life After Gods is a new 2D action-platformer from the (I assume to be) German developer Exogenesis Studios, which funded INAYAH’s development via a successful Kickstarter in 2024.

According to Exogenesis’ bio, the team includes several unidentified “international game and software development veterans” who previously worked on Rogue Trader and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, as well as a team of artists with experience at Blizzard and Disney.

That’s a stacked lineup for a game that still turned out distinctly off-kilter. INAYAH looks great, has multiple useful quality-of-life features, and is set in a colorful, memorable post-apocalyptic world. However, it’s also plagued by a bunch of mechanical issues that drag down the whole.

Inayah is one of a handful of survivors who live in the ruins of an ancient civilization, which fell so long ago that its creators are viewed by modern humans as dead, unknowable gods. Inayah’s world is full of crumbling tunnels, half-functioning machines nicknamed “iron,” and hostile, mutated plant life.

While exploring the ruins one day, Inayah accidentally reactivates a subway car that carries her to a distant part of the ruins. She quickly discovers that she’s in hostile territory, as the ruins are home to the Ironskins, a band of marauders that orphaned her as a child. They also hold ancient weapons, as well as clues that could lead her to the family she never got the chance to know.

Like Awaken: Astral Blade, INAYAH is a 2D action/platformer that’s got a lot in common with both Metroid and Dark Souls. (I’ve started to feel slightly silly about using terms like “Soulslike” and “Metroidvania,” as they don’t make sense to anyone outside the hobby.) You’re dropped off at one point in a sprawling maze of tunnels and are largely left to explore. As you defeat mutants, you pick up currency that can be spent on upgrades, many of which improve your mobility so you can explore previously inaccessible parts of the map.

You initially get the chance to choose one of 3 weapons, each of which have their own upgrade tree and offer a couple of unique offensive and defensive options. The twin swords let you parry attacks and perform a Zelda II-style up- and downthrust; the fists give you a defensive shield, the ability to climb up certain walls, and an eight-way air dash; and the flail can knock down walls or latch onto magnetic points in the environment.

You’ll eventually unlock access to all 3 at once, which is an interesting overall approach to the formula. Instead of having a traditional double-jump, INAYAH sets you up with some freeform platforming challenges, where you can string your various abilities together to reach new locations. It’s flexible, and the upgrade trees give you a lot of options for customizing your overall approach to both exploration and combat.

However, that also ties into the single biggest problem with INAYAH: it doesn’t convey information to the player very well. It does have a short, basic tutorial that lasts up to the point where you get your first weapon, but you’re never informed about your later movement options or the existence of the upgrade tree. I spent the first hour of the game collecting currency, wondering when I’d get to spend it, then noticed the option to do so had quietly appeared in my pause menu.

The same issue extends to the environments. INAYAH has some incredible art, with an overall style that reminds me of post-apocalyptic stories from Heavy Metal. It’s beautiful, but it’s often difficult to tell at a glance whether something in the environment is meant to be interactive. Whenever I’ve gotten stuck in INAYAH, it’s been because I thought part of the background was a wall or a usable ledge, or because I was supposed to be using new movement options that the game didn’t tell me I had.

It’s the sort of problem that I’ve come to associate with animators or TV producers who pivot to game design. They often create some spectacular visuals or tell an interesting story, but they don’t pay anywhere near as much attention to the mechanics. The result is a game that looks great, but often has a few old mistakes in the mix.

That relegates INAYAH: Life After Gods to the “good effort” pile. It’s a significant achievement as a piece of media, but it’s a significantly flawed video game. I want to like it more than I do, as there’s some real love and effort on display. If its creators get the chance to patch out some of its issues (i.e. outlining or color-shifting interactive objects so they’re easier to see), it could be a decent pickup, but it’s hard to recommend in its current state.

[INAYAH: Life After Gods, developed by Exogenesis Studios and published by Headup, is now available for PC via Steam and Itch.io for $24.99. This column was written using a Steam code sent to Hard Drive by a PR representative for Headup.]

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A brief follow-up:

This column marks the end of Game Night’s first year. I pitched this on a random whim, and am sort of surprised it was allowed to go on for this long. I’d be happy to do this for years to come, or until the nation burns down around me, whichever comes first.

In the meantime, thanks for reading, and here’s to a second year of weekly indie games.

White Knuckle is a roguelite. I wish it wasn’t.

Now available on Steam Early Access, White Knuckle is a first-person horror game that drops you at the bottom of a massive ventilation shaft, connected to some unseen facility. Something has gone wrong and you have to escape, but the only way out is up. You have to scale the walls 50 meters at a time, using whatever handholds you can find or make.

Shortly after you start, the shaft slowly fills with a black liquid called the Mass. If you touch it, it absorbs you and your run is over. The Mass isn’t fast, but if you take too long to make your next move or you miss a jump, it’s always waiting to pull you under. You’ll occasionally reach an environmental seal in the shaft, but that only buys you some time.

There are other hazards, such as monsters that try to snare you with their sticky tongues (the developers admit Half-Life was an influence here), but most of my runs through White Knuckle have been about me vs. gravity, and the Mass.

There’s a deliberate lack of precision to both the game’s physics and systems, and you’re encouraged to stretch them both to the breaking point. If something looks like you can grab it, you probably can. If something might be in your reach, it probably is. You can only maintain your grip for so long, however, and you’ll frequently run out of obvious routes. Sooner or later, you have to improvise under pressure.

White Knuckle’s horror is, more than anything else, about that pressure. It has very little music and its sound effects are used sparingly. Every once in a while, you’ll hear a pre-recorded message from the facility’s PA system about local outages, which only hints at what’s happened. It’s quiet, but it’s intense, especially when some distant hiss or crash breaks the silence.

I don’t ordinarily enjoy this sort of first-person platformer, especially ones where I can’t see my character’s feet, but White Knuckle takes a freeform approach that cuts down on a lot of my usual issues.

You can grab almost anything in White Knuckle that has a distinct corner or edge, such as a railing or a crate, and you can use pitons, improvised rope spears, or chunks of rebar to create your own handholds on the fly. It’s messy, but it knows that and works with it. When it works, it works very well, although it occasionally breaks in unexpected ways.

My biggest surprise was that falling doesn’t kill you unless you end up submerged in the Mass, which takes some of the sting out of missing a jump. The real problem is that if and when you fall, it sets you back far enough that you’ve probably used up all your lead time. Now you get to race back up the nearest wall with a Lovecraftian oil spill on your heels.

As noted above, White Knuckle is launching into Early Access. This is a trip report from the earliest available version of the game, rather than a full review, since the game isn’t complete. According to its Steam page, the developers expect to be in EA for about a year.

With that in mind, I expect that the game’s roughest edges, such as a few under- or unexplained mechanics, will get addressed. White Knuckle does ask you to twist your fingers into the occasional knot, especially if you’re trying to use an item in mid-climb, and a couple of elements like its upgrade system are unnecessarily complicated.

My biggest issue, as I noted above, is that White Knuckle is a roguelite. Once you get past the first seal, the rest of your run appears to be a randomized selection of short hand-made maps. Some of those maps are much more difficult than others, and a few essentially present a hard stop to the run unless you’ve found and kept the right items.

More importantly, dying in White Knuckle is obnoxious. If you get killed, you’re sent all the way back to the beginning, and death can be cheap. While I get that the precarity is a deliberate part of White Knuckle’s tension, I’d argue that it doesn’t pair well with a game in which you can die from a single missed input. I’d be more comfortable with the overall experience if you got a quick-save every time you crossed a seal, or if you could load a fixed sequence of levels at the start of a run.

As it is, I’d argue White Knuckle is worth a look. You have to have a high threshold for both frustration and first-person motion sickness, but it’s quietly creepy with a solid hook. If it keeps up its current momentum, White Knuckle could be a decent sleeper hit, on the basis of doing a few simple things as well as it can.

[White Knuckle, developed by Dark Machine and published by DreadXP, is now available on Steam Early Access. This column was written using a code sent to Hard Drive via a DreadXP PR representative.]