Forgotlings

A beautiful return to the world of Forgotton Anne

"Forgotlings" positions itself as a prequel and spiritual successor to Throughline Games' 2018 cult favorite "Forgotton Anne," and reviewers who came in as fans of that earlier game are consistently moved by how it expands on that world. "Forgotlings hit me in the feels much harder than I expected when I started it, I was already primed for a bittersweet story after Forgotton Anne and it did not dissapoint, how it uses the vivid world we already got teased with in the first game, the beautiful hand-drawn characters, the uniqueness of each forgotling and how it dangles us in front of us the hope, faint at it was of setting right what went wrong in the first game," wrote one reviewer. Another returning fan described the scope as a step up: "The scale of Forgotlings seems much bigger & more ambitious in scale than Forgotten Anne, without losing the charm of the original Forgotten Anne."

The presentation draws the most consistent praise across the review sample, regardless of how a given player feels about the gameplay underneath it. "Such a beautiful and charming game. It feels like a fantastic animated movie. Its so refreshing to see high quality, uniquely hand crafted games like this still exist," wrote one player, and a critical reviewer who otherwise struggled with the game still conceded the same point: "Even though Forgotlings has beautiful graphics, a great story, and well-written dialogue..." Full voice acting for its cast comes up repeatedly as a standout: "I discovered Forgotton Anne a year ago and really loved it. Forgotlings is a work of art just like Forgotton Anne was. Great quality voice acting, music, and the animation/scenery is so beautiful to look at."

A launch marred by real bugs

The most heavily corroborated complaint in the negative-leaning material isn't about design at all — it's about the game's technical state at launch. One player who initially posted a negative review updated it after extensive troubleshooting with the developers: "I am changing the negative review to positive, my playthrough was a glitchy ride with over 100 bugs including various softlocks, so I had to make it very clear. To be fair to the devs, they have been on top of it, and I even got a fast fix for a personal issue with a specific softlock. The last 10 patches fixed 90% of the issues I would say." Another player hit a progress-blocking bug directly during a playthrough that was otherwise going well: "The latest patch introduces a bug on the map of the boat. i cant progress in my story unfortunatly." A third reviewer described a specific and severe softlock encountered well into a run: "I decided to return to the bandit's lair after reached the mountain top, met Ezra, and came back to Town to see if anything was happening with that interesting place with the mysterious hand and inscriptions. There's nothing there, but now I can't get back to Town. The elevator won't go up or down, and I can't retrace my steps because I can't jump that high." Even reviewers who ultimately recommend the game frequently mention smaller bugs in passing, making this less a matter of a single unlucky player and more a genuine pattern present across the launch build.

A slow start that costs the game some players

A second, independently repeated complaint targets pacing at the very beginning of the game, where multiple reviewers describe an extended, largely non-interactive stretch before meaningful gameplay kicks in. "The gameplay doesn't really start for nearly TWO HOURS. Once you can play, you're in a huge areas you clunkily make your way through with no map," wrote one player. A second, more pointed negative review described the same opening in exhausting detail: "Watch the cutscene, then move forward. Listen to what the characters say. Jump and move forward a little further. Listen to what the characters say... No, you can't skip it, there's no such button. It's been an hour of play." Steam's own achievement data is consistent with this pattern: 91.2% of players earn the game's first story achievement, "What If...", but that figure collapses to 41.8% by "The Beastborne" and keeps falling from there, down into single digits and below 1% for late-game achievements like "Heartwood" and "Grandmaster." That's a steep, front-loaded dropoff consistent with a slow, bug-affected opening costing the game a meaningful share of its audience before the story gets going.

Combat and structure divide players who love everything else

Even reviewers who are otherwise enthusiastic about the writing and presentation frequently single out the moment-to-moment gameplay as the weak link. "I'm pretty torn on forgotlings tbh, on the one hand you have a game with great worldbuilding, wonderfully voiced characters and beautiful audiovisual presentation. But on the other hand the gameplay is so cumbersome that actually playing the game isn't all that fun," wrote one player. A separate negative review made a related but distinct complaint about the combat's simplicity: "I wanted to like this game, but in the end, the combat is very basic, and you spend most of your time either backtracking to find your way or skipping boring dialogues." One reviewer also flagged a structural choice that undercuts the "difficult choices" angle emphasized in the game's own marketing: "I'm tired of games that lock you into a single current save. If you want to see an alternative outcome, you have to replay the entire game from the beginning. I don't enjoy this kind of gameplay where I'm basically just a passive observer forced to accept random events or conditions with no chance to retry or explore different choices in the moment." This is a single account rather than a pattern repeated elsewhere in the sample, so it's worth flagging as one player's specific frustration rather than a widely shared complaint, though it does echo the broader "the story is stronger than the interactivity" thread running through several other reviews.

Verdict

"Forgotlings" delivers exactly what fans of "Forgotton Anne" were hoping for on the writing, art, and voice-acting front, and that alone accounts for a lot of the goodwill in its reviews. But it stumbled out of the gate with a buggy launch that produced real, progress-blocking softlocks for multiple players, opens with a stretch that a meaningful share of reviewers found too slow and too passive, and pairs its considerable presentation budget with combat and traversal that even sympathetic reviewers call basic or cumbersome. The achievement data's steep early dropoff backs up the sense that a lot of players didn't make it far. Patient fans of the original who can tolerate some post-launch rough edges will likely find the story worth the trouble; anyone buying primarily for the gameplay loop should wait for the patches this game clearly still needs.