Review: Judero

I’m not sure where to begin with Judero. To quote Marty MacChicken, “It’s so ART, I’m scared to have an opinion.” I was going to take a pass on it entirely after recognizing that it is heavily Scottish, and I know very little of Scotland. But I can, at least, tell you that I didn’t have to know anything at all.

It’s not about Scotland. I’m not even entirely sure what it is about. It might be, quite literally, about reaching the Glass Mountain for some reason, but it’s laid beneath cryptic, ornate dialogue about life and living. But while I’m somewhat embarrassed that I didn’t quite grok Judero’s meaning, I don’t think Judero would care. Judero knows what it’s about, and it’s not afraid to have fun with it.

Judero (PC [Reviewed])
Developer: Talha and Jack Co
Publisher: Talha and Jack Co
Released: September 16, 2024
MSRP: $17.99

Front and center with Judero is its art style. I’ve said before that I hate the sudden trend of games that use a stop-motion style where frames are removed to make it look like the physical animation style. It’s something that cropped up in the wake of Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, and it doesn’t work well unless the entire game has a diorama aesthetic. But Judero isn’t stop-motion in that style. Judero is literal stop-motion.

Every 2D object in the game has been hand-crafted and animated. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of photographed models in front of a bluescreen and animated a frame at a time. When you walk indoors, this, for some reason, switches to hand-drawn figures. It creates a very surreal and unique look, and I can honestly say I’m not a fan. 

I saw videos of Judero pop up quite a few times while it was in development, and I found the aesthetic off-putting. It has a sloppy, uneven quality to it. It may be intentional, as the lighting isn’t even consistent, but that doesn’t make it easier to look at. Many of the characters are dolls with visible joints and ugly piles of clay for faces, and others are hastily hand-drawn. They clash against the simple 3D backgrounds and there is no thought given to perspective correction. It looks horrendous, and I really wouldn’t have it any other way.

Judero reminds me of the argument some AI grifters have about generative AI “democratizing” art. That’s idiotic. Art is already “democratized.” There are no barriers to expressing yourself. If you wanted to tell a story, you could draw faces on your thumbs and film them acting it out. Don’t have a camera? Then just perform for your friends. Or even just yourself – art has nothing to do with popularity. You don’t even have to be good, and you don’t need to learn a thing or practice; you just need that spark of creativity. You need something to say, but if you were tragically born without a personality, then I’m sorry, a robot won’t replace that for you.

Judero is a game made of programming, crafting supplies, and something to say. The developers had an idea, and they ran with it. The fact that the visuals are so repulsive not only gives the game a surface identity but also lays bare the intention beneath. What exactly it’s trying to say, again, I’ll admit that I don’t really know.

There is potentially a lot of Scottish folklore here and maybe some history, but I wouldn’t recognize it. However, as I mentioned, you don’t need to be familiar to get absorbed into the world. It takes place in an undefined time period in a placeless area that can only be defined as “Scotland.” Walk into any house, and you never know what you’re going to get. You might discover three women singing “House of the Rising Sun” while sewing. Maybe there’s a freakish person outside who tells you about microdosing hallucinogenic mushrooms. Other times, you’ll hear a fairytale or just an unprovoked sad story.

Much of the time, it’s poetic, but not always. Much like the art style, the writing is uneven and lackadaisical. It just tarries wherever it feels, fulfilling whatever whim seemed to be on the artist’s mind at the time. It’s unmoored, which makes it difficult to ever feel fully invested.

And don’t look to the gameplay to save you. The world is sparse and full of invisible barriers. Judero can possess creatures to solve puzzles, but you’re often just whacking them with a stick. There’s perhaps less depth in combat as, say, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but without the interesting world and puzzle design to hold it up. It’s never uncomfortable to play, but it’s hardly a foundation to build a tonal miasma on top of.

At the very least, it’s paced well. Each of its four acts is comprised of a large, open environment, usually with each objective branching off in its own direction. The third is the largest and has you sailing a ship from island to island with an orangutan at your side. The variety and rate at which it changes does a lot to ease getting through the 5-6 hours that it will likely take you to see the end.

That’s rather key since the narrative doesn’t have enough comprehensible depth. There aren’t really any characters that you can get to know, aside from the hyper-competent Judero himself, a practical Scottish Kazuma Kiryu. The world is so bizarre that it’s difficult to really find grounding. The main conflict is someone straight-up telling Judero what he should be doing and him going to do it.

That makes it very difficult to really tell you why Judero is such a successful game and why you should play it. It might be because its anarchic and chaotic design is an antidote to the impersonal and overly polished games that make up the largest sector of the market. There are enough “inspired by” games that try to replicate the successes of others and few that are as nakedly human. Judero says a lot in its tumultuous mix of sadness and whimsy, thoughtfulness and playfulness. What it’s saying is a bit of a mystery to me, but I hear it talking, and I could listen to its voice all day.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}