“Baldur’s Gate 3”, “Dredge”, “Chants of Sennar”… Hodgepodge to put under the tree – Libération

2023-12-10 17:15:00

Selection for all tastes and levels.

The Christmas holidays are approaching and are you on the lookout for gift ideas? Find Libé’s recommendations here.

Certainly, from afar, the label “role-playing game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe gives it the surly air of an object reserved for a fringe of bearded irredentists who swear only by turn-based play. But the surprise popular success of Baldur’s Gate 3 de facto extracts it from the niche in which it had to wisely place itself, the general public recognizing the creation of the Belgians of Larian Studios at its fair value: quite simply one of the most popular games crazy in recent years. By its scale, by the richness of its narrative, extremely modular, by its game system of dizzying depth, by its way of respecting the player and their choices. A dream game.

But let’s assume that we want to turn to something else (terrible mistake) or that we don’t have a PC or the latest console. We can then advise venturing into the waters of Dredge which, beneath its trappings of a harmless fishing simulation, develops a poisonous Lovecraftian tale. Or to go play Champollion alongside the Toulouse residents of Rundisc whose beautiful Chants of Sennar consists of climbing a Tower of Babel by unraveling the mysteries of its hieroglyphic languages. A great humanist puzzle where the aim is to lay the foundations of a communication system, that is to say, to learn to read others and appreciate their way of seeing the world. Yes, but it’s a bit boring for children, isn’t it? Certainly.

And video games are also a thing for kids. In a year marked by a Zelda (absolutely brilliant), a Mario (impeccable), we recommend taking a look at Tchia, an ultra-colorful and eco-friendly escapade nourished by Kanak folklore. And for those who don’t play video games because they don’t have the time or a console, there remains an escape route, which can be played with a child on your lap: the brilliant Storyteller, available for free if you have a Netflix subscription and a phone. A delicious puzzle where you have to reorder the sequences of a story. Formidably intuitive, the creation of Argentinian Daniel Benmergui reinvents the comic strip into a video game. It’s short, and simply brilliant.