Early Access Impressions: Prologue: Go Wayback! is so far a good idea trapped in its own challenge

Today's video game world is a kind of catch-all, like a sort of infinite simulation in which any experience deserves to be emulated, even those that don't seem so to us at first glance. We are in a panorama saturated with roguelikes, Soulslikes, and Early Access experiments, and Prologue: Go Wayback!, by PlayerUnknown Productions, presents itself as a proposal in this sense with its own personality, although to go into evaluating that in itself is not much to say.

Its mix of demanding action, minimalist design, and a strong focus on player skill is clearly aimed at an audience that is looking for more than light entertainment and wants new things. However, that ambition, riding on groundbreaking technology, is also its greatest enemy. Prologue: Go Wayback! has some good ideas, but it's true that, between its current premature state and sometimes questionable design, we may find ourselves hitting the "go to desktop" button sooner rather than later. Let's take a look.

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A passive-aggressive difficulty

As it already hinted in the spring and from the very beginning, Prologue: Go Wayback! makes one thing clear: we're not here to relax. The game doesn't bother to hide its harshness behind a gentle tutorial, nor does it bother to introduce mechanics in a progressive manner. The player is thrown into a hostile environment where every mistake is costly and where survival depends on near-perfect execution. And if you die, then ciao, bye bye, au revoir, auf wiedersehen. You have to start again from scratch on a new map, losing all your progress. Although the first few times this can be a spur that appeals to our spirit of self-improvement, this feeling is short-lived and leads sooner rather than later to frustration and boredom.

The problem is not so much that the game is difficult (there is a loyal audience that enjoys precisely that challenge), but how it is difficult. The general feeling is not of a fair challenge that pushes you to improve, but of an artificial barrier that punishes more than necessary and, moreover, without a quantifiable or direct objective. Too often, death comes from a minimal chain of errors, with no real room for reaction or improvisation. This leads to weariness, especially in the early hours when the player has not yet mastered the basic systems.

In addition, there is another tricky element: location in the game is based on the use of a compass and one's own sense of direction. A compass is somewhat difficult to use in this kind of terrain and orientation is profoundly limited because what we see is through a screen. Thus, going 200 metres away from the hut may mean that we will never find it again, something that in the real world would never happen.

But what do I have to do in Prologue?

Good question, because as the game stands at the moment, what we are offered is a forest setting where we start in a ramshackle log cabin, with some survival basics. Bad weather, in the form of rain or snow, is starting to set in and we need to get to a weather tower to save ourselves.

Here we have a choice: we can try to fix the hut to survive and wait for a "window" of good weather to try to get somewhere, or we can go straight to the adventure with the few supplies we have and trust in divine providence. Spoiler: you're going to die. Many things kill us in Prologue: Go Wayback!: cold, hunger, thirst, sickness, falls... Just about everything. But we count on what we learn to improve our results in each attempt. Have I told you that you're going to die? Ok.

Steep learning curve... and poorly signposted.

Directly linked to its difficulty is its learning curve, which is excessively steep even by the standards of demanding games. Prologue: Go Wayback! assumes that the player is going to experiment, fail, and learn by trial and error, but it doesn't always provide the necessary information for that learning to be satisfactory, as we will often feel like we don't know where we've gone wrong.

Key mechanics are not well explained or are discovered by accident. Some interactions seem inconsistent until the player understands (through repetition and repetition) what the internal logic of the system is, if there is one. The result is a sense of disorientation that can lead to premature abandonment, especially among players who, while not casual, are also not looking for a deliberately opaque experience.

A more pedagogical design is probably lacking here: small adjustments in the introduction of mechanics, clearer visual cues, or even better structured early challenges could make a huge difference without lowering the overall difficulty of the game. Having said all this, let's remember that this is an Early Access game and there is room for improvement.

Glitches: understandable, but annoying

Being an Early Access game, it's inevitable to talk about the numerous glitches that populate the experience. From inaccurate collisions to animations that don't trigger correctly to physics simulations that fail at the worst possible moment. This is particularly annoying because one of the strengths of Prologue: Go Wayback! is the immersion in the situation it presents, and there's nothing like these glitches to completely take us out and ruin the experience.

It's important to stress that many of these errors are understandable at an early stage of development. However, the context does not always excuse them. In such a demanding game, where precision is key and every failure is paid for with death, any glitch is perceived as a glaring injustice. It's not the same for an animation to fail in a narrative game as it is to lose a game because a jump does not register correctly or because the rock we are walking on disappears (both are real cases that have happened to us).

The accumulation of these small glitches eventually erodes the player's confidence in the system. When you no longer feel that the control responds reliably, the difficulty ceases to be a challenge and becomes an arbitrary obstacle.

A solid foundation under the problems

Despite all of the above, it would be unfair to say that Prologue: Go Wayback! has no virtues. Its gameplay approach is interesting, its visual identity is coherent, and its pacing, when it works, is absorbing. There are moments when the game clicks, when the player enters that state of absolute concentration where every action flows and every obstacle overcome generates genuine satisfaction.

That's where the real potential of the project is glimpsed. Prologue: Go Wayback! could become a cult title within its niche if it manages to better balance its proposal. It doesn't need to become easier, but it does need to become fairer, clearer, and more stable.

Conclusion: raw promise

Prologue: Go Wayback! is, in its current state, a game that demands a lot and gives little back to the most impatient player. Its high difficulty, steep learning curve, and multiple glitches make for an experience that can be exhausting for even the most seasoned player. Early Access accounts for many of these problems, but does not remove them from the equation.

This is a work with a powerful idea and a still immature execution. If the development team can iron out the technical bugs, smooth out the introduction of mechanics, and adjust some of the difficulty spikes, Prologue: Go Wayback! could go from being a frustrating experience to a memorable challenge. For now, it's a journey only recommended for those willing to stumble many times before they start enjoying the journey.