Game recommendation: Dread Delusion

Dread Delusion is a relatively little known indie game that was one of my favorite games I played last year, and I wanted to recommend it as I think it deserves to be more well-known. It's a choice-heavy fantasy RPG with retro-style graphics. Like Disco Elysium, it has extensive worldbuilding that includes its own history, locations, cultures, political factions, and even physical laws.

One of the central factions of the game is the Apostatic Union, which I chose to play as a supporter of. It believes that political and technological progress requires the elimination of all Gods, who in this world are powerful really-existing creatures who would often serve humans in exchange for sacrifices, in some cases appearing almost like non-human feudal lords. Gods as materially existing creatures makes the Apostatic Union's struggle against religion really interesting, kind of like the Age of Enlightenment if Gods were an independent material force.

My favorite place in the game was the Clockwork Kingdom, which is clearly inspired by Russia, and is kind of like a fictional mix between both Tsarist and Soviet Russia, permanently stuck in winter. On the one hand, it's a kingdom with a king at its head, and there are underground activists (called saboteurs) who seek to destroy the king. On the other, the king is a programmed machine which centrally plans the entire society, and produces various miscalculations and strange bureaucratic demands. As with all other places in the game, you can have an effect on this society's future, as a quest allows you to either destroy the machine or reform it.

There is a recurring theme throughout the game, appearing among several different factions: the utopian desire to radically change the world and the great risks that always come with it.

I'll stop there before I spoil anything. If you enjoy choice-heavy story games or RPGs, I highly recommend you try it out, and if you do, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!