CESSPOOL - The Weirdness and Wonder of Hidden Gem Indie RPGs

When I first ran across CESSPOOL, the game had two reviews - one from the composer of the game, and one in French. The store page has very little information on what the game even is - all I really had to go off of was the screenshots. It could have been a write off, an easy “next” in the endless sea of Steam releases.

But… but. Something about how cool those screens looked drew me in, sticking the game in the back of my mind, like the beat of a pop song stuck on repeat at your local shopping mall. At such a cheap price, it was hard to resist this GameBoy-ass looking indie RPG. Having finished its “neutral” play through, I’m back where I started - with the beats of this really cool little indie RPG stuck on loop in my mind.

Turn based RPGs have spent decades tweaking a well-trodden formula, popularized by the Final Fantasy’s and Dragon Quest’s of the early console era. Most of the advancements of the form have resulted in complicated compounding systems and elongated play times. CESSPOOL balances these ideas incredibly well, with a handful of systems that make battles feel interesting while keeping the pacing incredibly tight throughout. 

Battles follow a Paper Mario style setup: basic attacks and defending are turn based, with timed button presses determining effectiveness. The skill system - where the combat truly shines - on display here is fascinating in its apparent simplicity yet clever depth. Dubbed “Psyche”, every character - both your own party and enemies - are always set in some state of mind, whether that’s joy, sadness, scared or more. This effects not only damage output and defense, but also other factors - a surprised enemy can attack twice in a row, for example. 

Each party member has their own wildly different skill set, all of which are helpful in different situations. When using a skill, a quick mini game will determine how effective it is (I particularly enjoyed crushing opponents with a Pong-based attack that frantically escalates the longer you go). Layered on top of this is a “Flow” system - a type of overdrive that is built up with regular attacking and defending, allowing access to devastatingly helpful ultimate abilities. Throw in something every RPG should always let you do - allow any of the 3 party members currently in battle to tag in others from the sidelines, without losing the turn - and you have yourself a battle system that stays fresh and fun for the entirety of your 5-6 hour play through.

Before we go further, we need to bring up a literal bug-bear. This game isn’t for those that need polish in their experiences - it is quite rough in several places. This is the result of this being the first game by a solo dev - who, to their huge credit, has done an excellent job building out an excellent RPG - but it needs to be said.

There are bugs aplenty (many of which have been smoothed out since launch, but work continues). In what what will be the most noticeable to newcomers, it appears the dev is primarily French speaking, making the English translation pretty rough. Imagine taking an English script for a game, parsing it through Google translate into French, then running it back the other way again. You get the gist of what the text is meant to say, but your mind really has to work to get you over the threshold of understanding at times.

Despite this, it’s still very charming. Playing through the game, I can’t help but imagine this is how our elders felt when they imported JRPGs in the 80s, self-translating enough to figure out where to go and what to do.

Crucially, the game is not just playable - you’ll catch on enough to work out everything you need to - but incredibly compelling. It’s a testament to the design, world and characters that despite bugs nearly soft locking me multiple times - I nearly had to face the final boss with just one character, but thankfully reloading the game entirely reset me to an earlier point - I still pushed through all the way to the end as I was enjoying it so damn much.

It really is the world of CESSPOOL that is the driver of curiosity here. Even with minimal setup, it’s incredibly evocative and mysterious. Why is one of your party members a monkey? Why is the currency of this world salt crystals? Why does “will”, the mana-adjacent stat needed for using skills, seep from the land in small volcanic openings? I don’t know! But it’s really cool!

The actual through-line of the capital P plot is almost generic, but the ways in which it makes familiar elements feel alien breathes life and mystery aplenty to the proceedings. The kind of broken translation happens to only add to this - having to put in the work to re-interpret the interpretation drives connection and comradre.

Your party members are easily the stars of the show, with every single one of them feeling well fleshed out, having their own personalities, motivations and inter-personal conflicts. They very often do not get along at all, but have very strong “I guess we should work together to achieve similar goals… for now” vibes. Mystery, tragedy and emotion drive decisions, rather than “because the plot says so”, which is refreshing.

One final quite cool feature worth mentioning is despite being a small RPG, there’s multiple (quite wildly different, I believe!) diverging paths the story can take, resulting in not just different narrative outcomes, but wildly different stories and even party members. My play through was the “Neutral” route, with at least - as far as I can tell from the discussion boards that only a handful of people have used - two other “Toxic” and “Weird” routes. There’s no explicit Bioware style “choose 1 of these 2 obviously opposing options” choices to make anywhere in the game, so how you actually proceed down these paths is determined in much more naturalistic ways. There’s some cool stuff to dig into here for people that like picking apart indie RPGs like Undertale. 

Despite butting up against some decent buggy headwinds, CESSPOOL is one of those exceedingly cool, interesting and downright fun indie RPGs out there. The battle system and characters very quickly got their hooks in me in a way that made me have to see things through to the end. At such a cheap price and with a very passionate and active solo dev continuously improving the game, CESSPOOL is an easy hidden gem recommendation.