Your name is Frank; a too old for this, bloodshot-eyed, mohawk-wearing, cigar-chomping asshole living in the dystopian noir hell hole streets of London. You got kicked out of the Jolly Hangman pub and deserved it.
Rain pours down as you lift your head from the neon-soaked pavement. The connected alley echoes the bloody sound of someone late on their payments. You owe a lot of quid too; the alley falls silent- he’s coming for you next.
Down, but not out, you’re tasked with getting Frank back on his feet again. It’s been two years since the failed heist left him here, and it’s time to get a new gang together in a classic criminal fashion.
Thursday, October 13th will see the release of Sunday Gold, a point-and-click turn-based RPG that houses an eclectic cast of characters with absolutely nothing to lose. The accomplices include Sally, the brains and brawn of the operation, and Gavin, a jittery, sometimes hallucinogenic, tech-savvy genius.
Gavin has a bone to pick with his ex-employer Hogan Industries, and this is where it all starts. What could go wrong?
Life In The Slums: Sunday Gold’s Aesthetics
Everything goes wrong, but that’s not to say there aren’t bright moments in such a dark and desperate world. The team at BKOM Studios has lovingly crafted one of the most beautiful games of the year, with an art direction so well realized that it sets itself alongside cult classics like Max Payne and Disco Elysium.
The storyboard-styled comic book aesthetic is filled with onomatopoeias and elegantly animated scenes that will leave your jaw unhinged throughout its 25-hour playtime.
If you have an OLED or HDR-capable display on hand, this is how you’ll want to experience Sunday Gold. Contrasting colors pop and seep through each shadow and dimly lit set piece to full effect, bringing a beautifully ugly cohesion to the setting and story.
On an RTX 3080ti, the game runs at a consistent 110-120 fps at 4K with max settings, and while this genre of the game doesn’t need to push that many frames to be enjoyable, it’s a welcome addition considering most modern PC games are plagued with performance issues.
Exploring The World Of Sunday Gold
Sunday Gold’s point-and-click gameplay is essentially an ode to the 90s in exploration and puzzle solving. You’ll enter an area and have several options; search objects for items, explore other rooms and use specific characters to interact with computers, locked doors, or other environmental objects that need to be destroyed or moved.
Unique interactions tied to Frank, Sally, or Gavin will start one of three minigames you’ll need to complete to obtain special items or progress to the next area. Most interactive actions require action points (AP) to perform; once you’re out of AP you’ll need to end your turn, which replenishes your party’s AP.
Each time you end your turn, there is a random event that may increase or decrease the alert meter, spawn enemies, or do nothing at all. Over time the alert meter will inevitably fill up, and in return, the enemy’s difficulty and encounter rate increases.
Sunday Gold Gameplay
Combat in Sunday Gold will be familiar to those who have played a turn-based RPG. You’ll have your team of three on the opposing side from left to right, anywhere from one to four enemies. The tried-and-true rock, paper, scissors formula is present here with weaknesses and resistances to exploit.
Once per turn, a character can move in order of its “initiative” stat, and you’ll choose from a large variety of unique attacks and skills that can be unlocked through each character’s skill tree. Each skill-based attack is once again complimented by a visual flare that oozes with style and is just as satisfying as the effort you put into building the character in the first place.
Sally is the tank/medic, Frank the DPS/support, and Gavin, the debuff/cybernetic specialist; however, you can mold each character to fit many different roles as you see fit. Luckily, if you royally screw up a party member’s skill tree, you can reallocate the entire build in between chapters at the pub. Now that’s something I’d cheers to.
Each party member can hold two weapons, one melee and one ranged, that can be swapped out for more powerful ones you find as you progress. Additionally, a slot for armor, gear and ammo will compliment your skill tree for each member.
Here’s where things get interesting. Every time a party member attacks or uses a skill in combat, it uses AP; by using “guard,” a character can replenish their AP. At the end of the combat encounter, whatever AP is leftover is transferred to the exploration portion of the game.
If you leave combat guns blazing, you’ll have no choice but to burn a turn outside of combat to replenish AP for interactions, raising the difficulty of subsequent enemy encounters.
But wait, there’s more. Party members have something called “composure,” which will be pretty familiar to those that have played Darkest Dungeon. There are three tiers of composure, and as it’s whittled down through exploration and combat as each character becomes less sane.
The drawbacks can quickly become debilitating as party members start interior monologues with themselves, hallucinate, attack themselves, attack others, suffer massive debuffs, and disobey commands. The effects of composure aren’t just statistical deviations either; exploration will become a visual trip, minigames turn into a confusing hallucinated nightmare, and the darkest inner workings of the party’s minds will surface.
Fortunately, there are several ways to recover composure through consumable drugs that you can find throughout the game.
What?
Did you think these fine members of society would eat fruit snacks to feel better?
Voice Acting In Sunday Gold
It must be noted how excellent the voice-over work for Frank, Sally, and Gavin is. It sounds so good that someone at BKOM studios must have pulled the cast off the set of Peaky Blinders and plopped them into the game. It’s pure ear candy that fits each character, Frank’s raspy smoker voice, Gavin’s nervous stuttering, Sally’s calm confidence. Each performance takes a turn stealing the show.
The OST also needs to be commended, ranging from mystery-inspired background tracks to dark synthwave that help push the narrative forward. Of course, even the best performances can’t alleviate lousy writing. Luckily, the scripted banter between our heroes is just about as good as it gets and ranges from consistently hilarious to convincing.
The narrative on display here could comfortably fit somewhere between mystery, detective, and horror, and while the ending may be a bit cliché for some, it doesn’t detract too much from the entire package.
What I Didn’t Like About Sunday Gold
During my time with the prerelease version of Sunday Gold, I encountered a few nitpicks and a few bugs throughout my playthrough.
I couldn’t find an option to turn off closed captions during cutscenes, nor could I find a way to disable or hide the “skip” notification applied to all cutscenes and dialog. Scrolling with a mouse wheel seems too slow, and the UI can be a tad cumbersome when switching items between characters.
As far as bugs are concerned, sometimes the enemy portrait’s skin color or appearance doesn’t match the enemy on the battlefield. Occasionally, speech bubbles wouldn’t contain dialog or mismatch the VO’s dialog.
Other times, mainline quests can be bugged and don’t update properly. In one instance, I collected all the necessary parts to create an essential item before being prompted to do so in the quest log, effectively soft locking my playthrough and forcing me to revert to an older save. I spent an hour trying to solve a puzzle until I realized something was amuck.
Issues aside, none of these things ruined my experience and will likely be ironed out for or shortly after release.
Final Thoughts
Sunday Gold is something special. There is a certain level of cohesion between the art direction, exploration, combat, voice-over work, and soundtrack that fuse in a way that I cannot recommend to all fans of turn-based RPGs enough.
The puzzles won’t hold your hand, forcing you to spit out your gum and pay attention. Each chapter will expect you to build on what you’ve learned before, raising the complexity and requiring thoughtfulness both in and out of combat. Every gameplay action has consequences as you balance on a tightrope deciding whether you should sprint or run a marathon to avoid falling off. This is the bee’s knees.
Sunday Gold is golden.
