Before I start talking about I Am Your Beast, the new shortform covert revenge thriller FPS from developer Strange Scaffold and publisher Frostypop, I need to talk about something else first. While I write a lot about video games, the medium that I originally come from is film. And there, when discussing the filmography of an auteur, you will often hear people call out minor and major works. Basically, the essential work of a filmmaker that notably shapes their identity as an artist vs. smaller works that are often more niche and aren’t mandatory to be seen to understand their work. For the record, that doesn’t mean minor work has to be a derogatory term; at least I don’t consider it one. I find those are often some of the more interesting works in a director’s body of work that fill out their oeuvre in an important way.
So I rarely, if ever, see this kind of thinking applied to video games. And I suppose that makes sense given the development times of games these days. If you work six years on every new project, you can hardly allow yourself to make anything but major works. But let’s finally jump to the point where this becomes relevant for I Am Your Beast. Strange Scaffold is a game studio with a game output practically unrivaled in the industry. And so studio director Xalavier Nelson Jr. becomes the rare example of a game director where this minor vs. major work of thinking might actually be applicable. And if they keep going at the rate they have been for the past year, it might even be a necessity going into the future.
El Paso, Elsewhere (2023), the game that put the current spotlight on the studio, is of course a major work. It is an exceptional game, the kind that immediately makes you take note of its creators and anything they might make in the future and therefore shapes the way you think about them. Life Eater (2024) and Clickolding (2024) feel like minor works to me. They’re smaller games by design that experiment with the medium and showcase an entirely different side of the artist. They’re probably not the games you recommend someone who wants to check out Xalavier Nelson Jr. and Strange Scaffold, but they’re more than worthy to be played after the fact. With I Am Your Beast, it seems we’re back to another major work from the team.
In I Am Your Beast, you are the retired secret agent Alphonse Harding, and when you’re asked to complete ‘one last job’ again, you realize you’re tired of this game you’ve been playing and decline. Your boss doesn’t take too kindly to that and sends an entire armada of soldiers into the forest that you’ve retreated into. But it seems they have forgotten who you are, the weapon of mass destruction that they themselves turned you into, and against better judgment they have awoken the beast.
I Am Your Beast is a level-based game, each of them with their own goal. Kill all enemies, destroy all satellites, and maybe just reach the end of the level. These levels are quick; it’s a speedrunning game after all, with scores assigned based on your time and other small bonuses. But for those handful of seconds that you spent in each level, you are in a sandbox designed for the most beautiful and stylish extermination of enemies imaginable. Countless of weapons and interactable objects in the environment, and just enough movement options that allow for your own brand of certain death for anyone who walks across your sight. I think as a sheer action game this actually triumphs over El Paso, Elsewhere (2023), which is no small feat. And with ranks assigned to you after every attempt and alternate goals in every level, there’s plenty of reason for repeated playthroughs and the aim of striving for perfection.
But, and I feel like I say this in every Strange Scaffold game review, their true strength lies in their writing. I Am Your Beast starts out exceptionally strong. Immediately you are established as the biggest badass around, while also making the inherently monstrous nature of the opposing side apparent. And then there’s the way in which all of this information is laid out. Between almost every level there’s a short stors cutscene, though calling it a cutscene would give the wrong impression. They’re more like audio logs with incredibly stylish and bold letters filling your entire screen. It would be easy to write off as lazy, but it has such an impact, and coupled with the striking, lush art style of the rest of the game, it creates a real comic book feeling. This is pure pulp fiction mixed with blaxploitation and post-Vietnam storytelling, and it knows that and owns that to the fullest. On a side note, playing I Am Your Beast on the same weekend I watched Rebel Ridge (2024) made for an interesting little experience.
Unfortunately, once we move towards the very end of the game, the story lost me a bit. The end point makes sense in theory, but I didn’t; it was earned within what we got to witness. The character makes an evolution that feels very sudden, and the character arc jumps over an important part of the development. It’s a bit ironic given that one of my very few complaints with El Paso, Elsewhere (2023) was that it dragged on for too long, but I Am Your Beast might have needed an extra chapter or two for it to really come together in a satisfying way in the end. Nevertheless, for like 80% of it, this is another fantastic piece of writing by the team at Strange Scaffold that triumphs with some outstanding dialogue. I mean seriously, who writes monologues as well as they do?
RJ Lake, who already did the soundtrack for El Paso, Elsewhere (2023), is back here as well, and he delivers another outstanding soundtrack that thumps heavy in the background as you go on another killing spree. In general, the whole design of the game, the soundtrack, the kind of storytelling, the gameplay with the timer on the top of the screen, even just the “kinetic typography,” as they call it, make for an adrenaline-pumping experience in which you can only rush forwards in delight.
I Am Your Beast is another fantastic outing from Xalavier Nelson Jr. and his team at Strange Scaffolding and another major work we will be talking about for years. With every new release, it’s becoming more apparent that they are one of the most exciting studios in the industry right now, and it’s hard for me to imagine that I’ll ever want to skip another game from them.
Nairon played I Am Your Beast on PC with a review code.
