When I first embraced my inner-demon in medieval tactical RPG Beast, I was not expecting to become a kind of satanic, horned Wolverine, ripping enemies to shreds with razor-sharp claws. My foes were equally surprised, as blood spurted out of their veins with comic book exaggeration. As I dashed around the gridless map, the miserable setting—a dimly-lit village ravaged by plague and war—and grim violence was undercut by my character’s howls and barks. “Woof woof woof!” I yelled as I cut down another soldier.
Despite the laughs elicited by the barking protagonist—a war veteran returning home after a decade of Ottoman slavery— is a deliberately miserable game. Anti-hero Anton is a gloomy, scarred and vengeful lad, and after a hellish ten years he’s come back to Carpathia during what’s basically an apocalypse. Nobody
