Strangeness and eccentricity can often feel like an affectation, so I cherish it when a game is genuinely one-of-a-kind.
Judero
could have only been made by Talha Kaya and Jack King-Spooner, two independent developers who crafted a vision of the Scottish Borders entirely out of action figures and modeling clay, a game with the kind of rough edges and pleasant surprises that could only come from a genuine artistic vision.
Friend-shaped
Late in the game, one of those goggle-eyed clay NPCs I love so much recalls a strange saga wherein they forbid their lover from entering a locked wing of their shared home—not to protect a secret, but in a desperate attempt to seem like the sort of person who might be interesting enough to have secrets. Every townsperson in
Judero
will wax poetic about their strange, surreal, or tragic lives in beautiful, moving prose, and one of my favorite parts of the game was just wandering through each village, speaking to every single NPC. There's no "I hear the Fighter's Guild is recruiting again" filler to be had: Everyone has something to say, usually in multiple parts.
Staff and sandals
Gameplay-wise
Judero
is an odd mix, with its digressions into different styles and perspectives reminding me of the NieR games. It also has the same core as NieR: hack n' slash brawling and bullet hell projectile dodging.
That melee combat is easily the weakest part of the experience: It has poor feedback in general, with hits on enemies feeling weightless, the perspective often making it a chore to line up attacks, and many enemies having aggravating, multi-part attacks that can stunlock
Judero
and eat through his health bar. At its best, the brawling is adequate connective tissue: Another thing to do while you wander over hill and dale.
Even with those complaints,
Judero
has a real capacity for surprise and whimsy in its mechanics, catching me off-guard in a similar way to its conversations. One of the highlights is the setup of its third act: An open-ended archipelago you can sail around and explore in any order, complete with optional dialogue and a positively delightful poetry reading from your passenger, that talking ape friend I mentioned earlier. I activated act three's point of no return a bit early and probably left some exploration on the table, but the whole thing's a delight, full of oddly-shaped and completely optional islands to explore, as well as more of those NPC conversations I love.
Performance-wise,
Judero
is about as lightweight as they come and even runs fine on Steam Deck, though installing it to my SD card instead of the hard drive resulted in some pretty sluggish load times, particularly in that open ended sailing section. That's something to keep in mind if you're considering this for Deck or are still rocking an HDD for storage on your desktop.
Conclusion
Judero
is the kind of indie game that's really worth celebrating. It's funky and has some rough edges, but that comes with the territory for such a unique labor of love.
Judero
isn't a transcendent action game or a next-level puzzler, but those aspects are good enough to support its real draw: a thoughtful, strange world and incredible aesthetics.