Welcome to our review of Jusant, a game that is all about climbing your way to the top, puzzle style!
Jusant is a brand-new action-puzzle climbing game and a meditative journey to the top of a tall tower. Challenge yourself at your own pace, explore different paths, and unravel the secrets from a bygone civilization.
Master your climbing tools and watch your stamina meter to successfully navigate this mysterious and changing tower. As you go higher and hone your skills, you’ll have to figure out how best to use the tools at your disposal to get to where you want to go. Explore alternative paths to find clues about what happened here.
Jusant is one of those games that either click with you or it really does not. I personally felt very little for the game in itself, climbing a rock to the top, luckily it involved a lot of puzzles and various other options to at least make it more interesting… What I really did not enjoy at first, the controls. It really took me a while to get used to them and in a 4/5 hours game, this is not the thing you want to read.
While the controls did make sense eventually, it just poses the question if you should make them easier to use or even go deeper and more hardcore. In short, when you climb, the right shoulder button uses your right hand and the left one is obviously the left hand. But at times, your body is hiding the hands. Yes, this is a weird comment to make, but I assumed there would be some way to still show this on screen.
Another thing I found weird, some things like attaching a safety rope, that is done automatically when you start climbing, but when you arrive at the top of your small climb, you have to keep a button pressed to unleash it. Why not automate this one or make the other one manual? I know I am nitpicking, but it just took longer than I wanted to really get used to some of the quirks present in this game.
While Jusant did not click with me personally, I can, however, see that it would be a fan favorite. Set at a very decent price point for its quality, it does look really good for a game in a genre that is almost non-existent. The funny thing, its soundtrack is by far one of the better ones I listened to in ages and if you are ever interested, the developer made it available for purchase through Steam. That is in my humble opinion a nice touch.
In conclusion, Jusant will be a great game for the right player, while I did personally enjoy the puzzle aspect, I also struggled with the controls and it kind of ruined a great potential.
6.5/10
Played on PlayStation 5
