Gods of the Twilight

Gods of the Twilight, even in its Early Access stage, manages to deliver a thrilling narrative in which the supernatural, modern technology and the Norse mythology synergize in some unexpected and exciting ways. At the moment of writing this review, two lengthy seasons of this saga are planned to be released on Steam. The first one will contain twenty chapters and is expected to be fully available in 2025. Out of these twenty chapters, just the first five are currently playable, totaling around 100.000 words or ~10 hours of playtime.

In an apocalyptic world in which the Arctic melted, causing the water to cover pretty much the entire planet, humanity resorted to living on synthetic islands and is highly dependent on technological advancements. On one of these islands, New Reykjavík, a strange chain of events appears to prophesize the impending Ragnarök (also known as “The Twilight of the Gods”) – a catastrophic battle where several Norse mythological figures are deemed to perish, bringing the destruction of the world with it. Still unaware that they are gifted with superpowers or that they appear to be reincarnations of Norse gods, two teenagers, Farkas and Althea, find themselves in the middle of a war between several secret factions, some of which send warriors with ability-enhancing exosuits to kill the two protagonists before they awaken, while others try to protect and help them discover the role they’re expected to play in Ragnarök.

The narrative takes a while to pick up and the current content is oriented more towards shaping the personalities of the main characters rather than towards deepening or expanding the plot. It’s certainly enough to get a hang of the story, but it’s quite impossible to predict at this time what will happen next (especially with Chapter 5 ending in a massive cliffhanger) or what the actual essence of the plot is. The story has plenty of filler scenes that build up the characters and the relationships between them nicely. The writing is so catchy that you won’t be bored reading through it, even if it doesn’t add any noticeable plot progression.

Gods of the Twilight is a choice-heavy game with consequences that are passed on to subsequent chapters. Some of these can add extra dialogue lines or even entirely lengthy scenes. Additionally, the characters react in various ways depending on the options you pick, this in turn opens new dialogue paths. While at the beginning of the game, you are presented with a choice between playing as Farkas or as Althea, this ultimately has no relevance to the story, as it’s used (at least for now) solely to determine the order in which the scenes are shown. The story alternates between individual scenes shown from the perspective of Farkas and scenes narrated from the perspective of Althea, but regardless of what you pick you will end up seeing all of them in a single playthrough. There are romance options for both Farkas and Althea, and same-gender relationships (or even poly ones) are also possible. Although the game is R-rated, there is no explicit depiction of erotic scenes.

The VN is fully voiced and the actors that give life to all these characters are excellently chosen, some of them having previously worked on blockbuster titles such as Baldur’s Gate 3, Genshin Impact or SMITE. Gods of the Twilight has a mixed cast of characters belonging to various nationalities, each with individual personalities. Respectively, the voice-overs also have distinctive accents that represent the cultural background and the spirit of the characters. Farkas is a rough guy with a very kind heart which makes him go to great lengths to protect his friends. His voice actor delivers Farkas’ lines in such a perfect mix of decisiveness and softish-sweet voice that it’s impossible to take any offense from Farkas’ foul language (encountered in pretty much any of his lines). On the other hand, Althea’s tone blends politeness and naughtiness, quite representative of her character which is sometimes flirty, sometimes a bit condescending (due to her intellectual upbringing in a rich family), yet modest most of the time. The rest of the main characters, as well as the secondary ones, are equally well-voiced and the musical score is on par.

Gods of the Twilight is a VN that certainly deserves more attention, especially since the content currently available only scratches the surface of what seems to be a story of great complexity and proportion. The really good writing combined with a slow-burning narration, an interesting setting, catchy music, excellent voice-acting, animated character sprites and beautiful CGs are what makes this VN truly great. As it uses RenPy as its engine, it has menu options for auto-skipping seen (and unseen) text and auto-advancing to the next line. It also comes with a gallery of CGs and a pretty big codex of concepts used by the narrative.

_{Disclaimer: This game is on Steam in Early Access, which means it is still under development and may change significantly over time. The review was conducted based on the game’s current state, and it is possible that the review may not reflect the current state of the game after updates.}