TITANIUM COURT
- Hubert Spala
- 7 minutes ago
- 5 min read
I am an abstinent. I am sharing this factoid about me simply because it feels like the proper way to even start a feeble attempt to describe what TITANIUM COURT is about would require a tiring day and a visit to a bar to nourish a cold glass of some hard liquor when venting your ordinary frustrations to a kind, but not entirely interested bartender. I am not saying this for dramatic effect – the matter of fact is, that this… is a weird game.
And it is a very refreshing kind of weird! See, we have a few creators dabbling with the strangeness, with new ways of shaking a player out of a stupor. People who stretch the boundaries of interactive media to new limits. We have Daniel Mullins with his PONY ISLAND and INSCRYPTION, games that throw the player in most outrageous twists and turns, blending narratives and genres like a mad scientist. We have Edmund McMillen, with BINDING OF ISAAC and MEWGENIC insane mechanical depths with irreverent crudeness and zero fear on grossing you out. Or Davey Wreden with THE STANLEY PARABLE – a unique journey where a narrator is a very active participant who messes with your experience.
TITANIUM COURT doesn’t really go that way; it doesn’t wrench you out of the game premise to toss you in a twist or show you some deeper layers beneath the surface. No, instead it presents itself honestly as a peculiar blend of aesthetics, premises and setups that get you to scratch your head from the get-go. It too is a blend of so many things that out of this gumbo of mechanics and narrative comes something completely fresh and unique. Let me try to describe the baseline so you can see what I mean here…
At its core it is a simple Match-3 game. But then, of course, it turns into a tower defense that is also an auto-battler. And yet, each round can be at any moment interrupted by some utterly impossible event that modifies your current run. Heck, you can skip a boss battle because the creator wanted to sing you a song. Your warriors might heed the siren call of a giant Pickle Jar. Extorting goats might smash you to bits because you were a dirty fee dodger. One of your courtiers leaves for a business school to return with a new profession to aid you – somewhat. Oh, and there’s a deep narrative roleplaying game here between the endless magical war and your seemingly oblivious court of regular humans with mundane jobs that, inexplicably, are also Faires with mystical abilities – most mystical of them all is lack of any common sense.
You getting this? If there was a sentence I could use to truly encapsulate the experience is this: TITANIUM COURT is the king of out of the left field ideas. A constant, unyielding barrage of “wait a minute” and “what just happened?”. Even deeper in, when you think the game showed its hand, it keeps spilling cards out of its sleeves, and they aren’t even aces. There will be a chance card from Monopoly, Uno Reverse and a stamp card from a local café loyalty program.
And that’s not even the best part. See, this isn’t just randomness tossed in for the sake of sowing confusion. There is a strong narrative here, a proper story. And the writing, while often a bit surreal, abstract and zany, still managed to inject some seriousness into its levity. Meditation upon the concept of self. The concept of metaphors and their utility. Power of language and magic that lies in words. There are some real mind nuggets here, ready to be discovered in ever-shifting collection of peculiar activities.
And the way you dive into it is equally interesting. One of the best twists this game has to offer is that its story doesn’t much care for your overall progress. This sounds counterintuitive, but it is just another strangeness about this title ramshackle, yet very well thought out structure. The beauty here lies in progression that happens no matter if you fail or triumph. Every failed escapade brings new information, new events, a never truly feels like a loss. Every victory, in same fashion, grants you more insight into this shattered, scattered realm and its hypnagogic inhabitants. Difficulty scaling, using Comfort or Strife feels so perfectly natural that it hardly even feels like an adjustment of the challenge – the game never judges you for picking one or the other, not really. It is as organic to its presentation as nothing else ever managed to achieve.
And then, there is the presentation. I already used a word here – hypnagogic – and I am sticking to my guns here, because the game feels exactly like that state of mild hallucinatory experiences that mix reality with fantasy in strange colours and sparkles. It’s like watching a game through that haze you can see when you rub your eyes too hard. It’s a blend of things that feels at odds with itself and yet… yet somehow it all works. Magical castle, characters from a Midsummer Night's Dream, constant talk of magic, all interwoven with mundanity that becomes unusual and uncanny through this lens of radiant pink and toxic cyan. Street Signs as powerful spells. Cars as mythical beasts. Power of the Market as a godly entity with its besuited followers.
If you’re a glutton for the zany, if you’re hungry for the unusual, this game will never bore you. Each day exploring your court can bring you a fresh encounter with one of your courtiers, learning something strange. The power of belief is the power of magic, and you – a character from the real world who became an erstwhile Queen of this mess – is a perfect vessel for stumbling through the unwritten, ever shifting ruleset of this domain where only constant is impermanence.
If there are any hiccups here that might leave a sour note, it would be in the randomness of things. It is a crucial part of the whole premise – every day is different, every war in this eternal struggle a mix of unpredictable bits and bobs you’ll have to somehow storm through. Wrangling the variety on display might be tedious and frustrating… Even though the game seems to be aware of it and never truly punishes failure in any way. Bah, it often rewards it! But still, if swift progress is what you hope to achieve, if mastery of the mechanics is your primary chase of joy, some mechanics here might drive you crazy. And while some will embrace the lunacy with a smile, some others might scoff at it, call it unfair and unfun. Tis’ the natu
re of the beast.
I must applaud TITANIUM COURT for its boldness. It doesn’t even matter if you like its formula or not. If its garish colours attract or put you off. It is an undisputable fact that this game steps on a path none travelled before. Am epitome of the very idea of Freshness, a concept that might be mixing already existing components and ingredients, but in a truly outrageous way. This is how we invent a pickle stuffed with a Snickers bar or grilled watermelon with mustard slathered on. It is one of those games that I vehemently and with fierce passion recommend everyone to go in as blind as possible. I tried my best to not spill too many cans of beans here about its content – what I mention is merely contained within the first few hours of play, out of courtesy to you, dear reader.
Jump into it and witness High Strangeness as it was supposed to be served: without being ready to what can come next.
