The End of the Sun is a first-person perspective Adventure game set in a rural landscape dominated by ancient Slavic beliefs. You play the role of an ashter, a Slavic sorcerer gifted with fire magic, who seeks to repair the threads of human destinies.

You will do a lot of walking using WASD keyboard movement, left shift speeds up getting around. As you explore more areas open up, and you become able to time travel between spring and summer and autumn and winter. You will cross fields visit ruined castles enter waterfalls and in one memorable sequence have a psychedelic trip thanks to some mushrooms. That sequence was magic, one of those moments that make playing games so worthwhile.

The M key brings up a map which is very useful (I only realised there was a map well into the game). The map could have shown where you were. The map also shows your inventory, but the game automatically uses inventory items for you. Most of the game’s puzzles involve finding missing objects, a few puzzles involve finding the right order for things. The game is not difficult but there is a lot to do and see. You can drown in the lake, or do things too slowly at one point, but you get restored to just before. There’s no real timed sequences, this is a traditional Adventure game set in a traditional world.

The game automatically saves at points but you can manually save. For each profile there is only one automatic and one manual save slot. Speech is voiced with subtitles. The many cutscenes use the game engine to display in the scene you are in which works well. Most of the time there are ambient sounds of birds etc a few times there is subtle orchestral music.

I enjoyed playing this game, through it getting immersed in a time when people believed in nature spirits as much as modern man believes in protons and neutrons. As you play you come to understand the stories being told (and untold) here. The mushroom trip is the icing on the cake.

Map of the game world

One of the all important fires

The special place between the seasons

The lake

Mira at the lake

The waterfall

One of the nature spirits a leshy

End of the game