Walk with the Living
Tof Eklund, Contributing Editor
"Fire Emblem but make it gay… and by 'gay' I mean intersectionally queer" is both a necessary and a deeply insufficient description of Cole Brayfield's Walk with the Living. This is a game where even the reanimated skeleton is gay. The only funny thing about that is how he is now being persecuted for being undead, rather than for being gay or committing regicide. Been there, done that.
I emphasize the queerness of Walk with the Living because it's one of the things that drew me to this free RPG Maker game. In my initial playthough, all of the characters in my band of outsiders were queer. Brayfield's story draws them together into a found family and this opens possibilities for them to grow closer as friends, comrades in arms, and yes, lovers.
But queerness isn't the only thing that characters have in common. The game is set in wartime. It’s not a clean, Good vs Evil Fantasy War, but a real war, a messy, needlessly destructive power struggle. The game's principal characters have all lost loved ones. Many of them are refugees who can't go home or have no home to return to. Some, like Rowan, the aforementioned gay skeleton, have lost everything.
Brayfield's realistic depiction of the pain these characters are holding makes it easy to want them to find some happiness. Unlike the "which one will I choose?" dating sim mechanics of recent Fire Emblem games, in Walk with the Living you get to play cupid, gradually encouraging dispossessed and traumatized characters to open up to each other and (maybe) start to see their future together.
All of that is contingent. Permadeath and new options that only open up if major characters die is another classic Fire Emblem game mechanic into which Brayfield breathes new life. On "Challenge" difficulty, Walk with the Living is fair but unforgiving. It successfully creates the feeling that loss is inevitable. But that’s not pre-scripted: it’s in your hands. In my playthrough, I was betrayed by a member of my crew. That betrayal felt believable and preventable. Their death felt truly awful and carried with it a sense that I was responsible. I've since learned of a way to prevent it, but only at a cost.
Walk with the Living is short, with excellent original character art but few other frills (no attack animations, for example). It offers a serious tactical challenge if you want it, and varied scenarios at any difficulty, and it deals honestly with loss and trauma (no grimdark posturing or Game of Thrones-style wallowing here). Perhaps best of all, it's a believably hopeful story about queer people.
Walk with the Living is available free on Steam, and if you like it, Brayfield has recently Walk with the Living II, a premium game several times the size of its predecessor. I'm only a few scenarios into that one, and it drops the permadeath system for an injury system with permanent stat loss. It still delivers on the depth of character and the original (optionally hardcore) tactical challenges that make Walk with the Living great. And yes, it's gay AF.
GwG Recommends provides a spotlight for games that catch our interest, with short explanations as to why the author is intrigued. We prioritize self-published, short-form experiences.
