Century of Anticipation

Genre: Misc.

Players: 1

.

Review:

Century of Anticipation, released on PC in 2025 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2026, is a free-to-play game that’s a little like a Graphic Adventure, but ultimately just feels like something odd and experimental and… pretentious.

Very pretentious. The game starts with players taking the role of a brain, selecting various body parts… only to then have to go back and redo the process because the game only wants you to choose one specific set. After that, you’re stuck in a home doing menial tasks, apparently to pass the time before guests arrive.

These tasks aren’t fun or engaging. Mostly they’re simple button prompts or involve moving a cursor. You’ll finish one and then move on to the next. Or often move on to trying to find the next. This game isn’t very clear on what you’re meant to be doing, though you’ll be joined by a flying duplicate of your own head telling you what you can and can’t do, all while judging you and criticizing you.

And as you walk around, very slowly, you’ll quickly grow frustrated and bored… and I guess that’s kinda’ the point? Because this game is apparently about frustration and boredom? Lovely…

The presentation isn’t especially interesting either. Mostly this game has ugly black-and-white hand-drawn visuals that look like a child’s scrawls, though occasionally you’ll have some sort of interesting animation or brief bit of color. These are joined by some surprisingly good indie music that you can set up to play while you flail around helplessly trying to find something interesting to do here.

Look, I get it. Century of Anticipation is presenting us with a game about tedium and boredom that demonstrates this through tedious, boring gameplay. Very clever. But that cleverness doesn’t change that this game is tedious and boring. Even being a free game, it’s hard to recommend this.

tl;dr – Century of Anticipation is an odd, artsy game that seems to tackle the topic of boredom and tedium by being boring and tedious. I suppose since it’s a free game, you can always check it out for yourself, but apart from being bizarre and nonsensical at times, mostly I found this to be dreary to play, and wouldn’t recommend it.

Grade: D+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Jaka, Jared Wark, Gabriel Coronad-Medina, Francis Obst, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}