The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest kicks off with a premise that might hit a little too close to home for some: our protagonist, Fletcher, is a game developer suffering from severe mental and emotional burnout. Seeking help, he visits a psychologist and unloads about his workplace woes and the bizarre, wacky dreams haunting his sleep. The doctor’s solution? Hypnosis. Fletcher is sent deep into his own subconscious dreamscape to confront and defeat his fears.
What follows is a descent into a genuinely weird rabbit hole. The game wastes no time throwing surreal imagery at you. You’ll see a guy rising from a coffin wearing an animal skull, a merman chilling in a fishbowl carriage being pulled by a cart, and a lady in a swim cap casually sitting on an oil barrel. Eventually, Fletcher is shown sleeping inside a strange cocoon or egg-like structure. He cracks it open, falls to the floor, and the game officially begins.
Gameplay & Exploration
After hatching from the egg, the core gameplay loop begins: you explore the map, navigating various rooms filled with platforming challenges, traps, and enemies. Initially, Fletcher is completely exposed and vulnerable. While finding clothes offers some coverage, they don’t serve as a health system. That role is reserved for a cowboy hat, which acts as your lifeline and grants you one more chance if you get struck by a trap or an enemy. Taking a hit causes you to lose the hat; a second hit without it results in death. True to the game’s strange aesthetic, death sends you back to your last checkpoint, a food stall run by an NPC, where you bizarrely respawn out of a vending machine. There are other weird instances in the game as well,l but it’s best to leave it to your imagination.
Your primary weapon is a simple gun that starts with a single shot, though you eventually earn more bullets as you progress. You’re given free rein to explore Fletcher’s very disturbed mind without a lot of handholding, though the first hour or so is fairly linear. As you gain new abilities, like an action slide and a double jump, the world opens up, thus allowing you to explore areas you couldn’t access before. However, the Metroidvania elements remain very light. If you enjoy hunting for secrets off the beaten path, you won’t find many collectibles or hidden upgrades here. I learned it the hard way.
Combat: Fun at First, Repetitive Later
Combat in The Prisoning essentially boils down to shooting horizontal bullets as quickly as possible. It’s undeniably fun and carries a nice wave of nostalgia. At first, the enemy variety feels great as you rush in to blast flame-launching wizards, charging little gnomes and snakes, and multiple cannons.
Unfortunately, this excitement dwindles. While the game does introduce a few new enemies when you move to different themed areas, it mostly relies on recycling the old ones. You’ll quickly notice the same familiar foes spawning in slightly different shapes, colors, and outfits. It’s a bit of a shame; the initial combat encounters are engaging, but the heavily overused enemy designs end up feeling stale by the late game.
The Bosses: A Masterclass in Frustration
If the repeating enemies are a letdown, the boss fights are easily the most aggravating part of the experience. These massive foes feature multiple phases and screen-filling attacks that are incredibly difficult to dodge. Because of the game’s health economy (where you can only take two hits), these fights border on masochistic.
It is beyond punishing to die over and over again, especially when the game gives you barely any time to practice dodging a pattern before that second hit wipes you out. Instead of feeling like a rewarding test of your skills, these encounters just come across as cheap, bringing the otherwise fun platforming momentum to a grinding halt with tedious trial and error.
Real Talk
The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest has the bones of a good game. It features some genuinely great platforming mechanics, a weird but unhinged, visually striking opening, and entertaining core shooting. If you just want a new platformer to double-jump your way through, it might scratch that itch.
However, outside of the basics, it lacks the punch needed to be truly memorable. The recycling of early-game enemies, a lackluster overarching story after the initial setup, and deeply frustrating boss design hold the game back from reaching its full potential.
FINAL SCORE: 65/100
