2023 Video Game Innovations EVERYONE Should Copy

4. Experimenting With Art & The Limits Of Time - Pentiment

It’s becoming very unusual in the ever-expanding catalogue of video games to come across an art style that feels genuinely unique, and Pentiment, with its visuals that feel like they were peeled right out of a mediaeval manuscript, is instantly intriguing.

Pentiment is set in 1518 but tells a story that spans decades. It cleverly balances between engaging you in a linear story while also letting you make choices that impact how your characters change over time and how they can interact with those around them. Pentiment’s main unique qualities are its aforementioned art style and the way the days press on no matter how you decide to spend your time. This isn’t the only title that forces you to choose how you spend your limited time, but there are no right or wrong choices to make, which is especially uncommon in games that let you pave your own way.

You are asked to choose things as seemingly innocuous as who to have dinner with and as life-altering as condemning someone to death.

It’s rare that an adventure game refuses to punish you for any choice, and simply encourages you to follow its characters down the garden path for decades to see how things unravel and learn right along with your protagonists what exactly is going on. As we mentioned earlier, Pentiment also features a version of active time lore where you can click on highlighted terms to learn more about them.

Narratively, mechanically, and artistically, Pentiment feels like it’s doing something we haven’t seen before and that’s something we’d love to see in plenty more games in 2024 and beyond.