How many times have you booted up a game and followed the prophecy of the hero? Listened to your elders? Banished Evil without batting an eye?
Mable & The Wood, a Metroidvania with a twist, gives you the option to choose between this well-traveled route or exploring a new, more challenging path.
You play as Mabel, the prophesied hero, instructed to travel across treacherous paths to slay giant beasts and claim their form. The problem is that Mabel can’t carry her sword and has only the strength to drag it. She’ll instead have to use her special powers, awarded for being the chosen one, to transform into slayed beasts. She can then use their abilities to carve her way forward. Perhaps you are hindered by a wall of dirt. You can harness the power of a mole to tunnel through the obstacle. There are many powers to uncover, but Mabel is weak so, in order to generate more energy to use these powers, you must kill more monsters.
But what if you don’t want to kill them? You can turn your back on the cult that instructed you to do so. This is an option, but it will make the game play very differently. Without Mabel’s powers, you’ll have to think very carefully as to how to approach this game. You’ll need to be strategic, nimble (with a heavy sword), and pacifistic. You can clear this game without harming a soul, but it won’t be easy.
With these two very different paths, you will be given different endings depending on how you want to take your journey. Perhaps you will learn much more of the dying world by investigating the prophecy, or maybe the prophecy was right all along and you are destined to kill?
Will you become the monster or save them?
Mable & The Wood is available on Itch.io and Steam.
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