Next of Kin: Fidelity Review

Onto the Next One.

Next of Kin: Fidelity is the second of three Next of Kin titles by Spelkväll Games — the follow-up to 2024’s Next of Kin. Marketed as an emotional journey of a man haunted by his past, it’s the type of game that I love to cover most — a short indie experience with a heavy narrative focus. Loss, trauma, and grief are not uncommon subjects for games to touch upon, and while exploration of these subject matters is certainly welcome in games, I always find it a bit more interesting to look for what’s revealed between the margins. What does a game say about the other stuff it touches upon, even accidentally? What can we find beyond the grief, beyond the trauma, and beyond the text? How does the way we play, and what we can (or cannot) do affect the experience?

There’s always something a little nerve-wracking about taking a game like Next of Kin: Fidelity at face value. People pour their hearts into the work — what if I just don’t understand it? What if I just don’t like it? Unfortunately, at least one of those is true.

Publisher: Spelkväll Games

Developer: Spelkväll Games

Platform: Played on PC (Steam)

Availability: Released on September 18, 2025 for Windows PC (Steam, Epic Games, GOG), PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox X/S, and Nintendo Switch.

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But maybe I’ve gotten ahead of myself there. Let’s talk about the game as it is, not as it is intended to be. Next of Kin: Fidelity is an pixel-art adventure game set across two distinct eras, following the lead character Bjorn throughout both. We get to explore both how he lives now and how he got there, reliving his childhood memories and exploring his dreams all while Bjorn the adult tries to go on dates and navigate daily life. 

Starting off in an intense space sequence, we quickly learn this is a dream — one that Bjorn has had before. As Bjorn wakes up to his blaring alarm, he realizes he’s late for a date and rushes to meet a woman he doesn’t even know. From here, the game darts back and forth between a series of dream sequences, memories, and contemporary scenes in order to give you a clearer picture into Bjorn’s mentality. However, I find it odd that we’ve landed on making this into an adventure video game in the first place. 

I understand that seems harsh — there are millions of visual novels and story-driven games out there — but Next of Kin: Fidelity doesn’t use the medium in any way that couldn’t also be served as a novella, short story, or kinetic novel. There are a large number of very basic grievances I have with playing this title in any capacity, especially when we eliminate the story from consideration. I think much of it boils down to the fact that not only do you not really do anything engaging, but also that the imagery on-screen does not convey anything interesting.

I understand that seems harsh — there are millions of visual novels and story-driven games out there — but Next of Kin: Fidelity doesn’t use the medium in any way that couldn’t also be served as a novella, short story, or kinetic novel.

The first hour or so is especially rough, in this regard. There are no immediate narrative hooks, and it is further distracted by multiple asides in the forms of dream or memories. The dialogue and overarching text is quite bland, as well. You can interact with many objects and NPCs throughout the game, but much of what we get is just the main character, Bjorn, telling you that he doesn’t care about the thing you’re looking at, or doesn’t have pressing action to take. The interactability is wasted. The text for these situations is also repeated — no unique identifiers or wording regarding that examination per object.

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Additionally, the art is disjointed, with objects and figures seeming to have distractingly variable levels of quality. At one point there is a toy ship model on the screen that just looks like it was ripped out of an entirely different game. Objects have varying levels of “pixelation” to them, with some objects appearing low poly and others smoothed out. Asset reuse is rampant, with trees and boulders haphazardly and frequently copy-pasted next to one another. The buildings are all plain, and much of the scenery is repetitive. Assets frequently clip through one another as well, such as when a character is walking through a small passage or between objects.

If that weren't enough, the environs and area layouts themselves are quite dull. There’s no real sense that anything here was placed deliberately, with those cloned objects seeming to fill space rather than tell a story. Embarrassingly, there was a cave early on that actually put me to sleep, as every inch looks exactly the same, with a single set of rock tiles replicated over and over. The cave is not even that long — it’s just a stretch of time where nothing is happening visually with no music. The lack of sound effects is also quite glaring, save Bjorn’s footsteps.  Most of the game is structured this way — uninspired areas with no sense of purpose or identity.

Next of Kin: Fidelity is marred by technical inadequacies, as well. I’ve been met with overlapping text and clipping multiple times. Navigating menus is a huge pain because there is a significant delay, and you can't cycle through options quickly as the game simply will not register your inputs if you put them in too fast. 

Of course, Next of Kin: Fidelity is built around its story, so how much can any of these matter? Quite a lot, actually. Especially when you combine all of it together. As a single entity, maybe the lack of cohesion in art style would be more forgivable, but if every part of the game is lacking except for the story, I inevitably circle back to my initial question: why is this an adventure game?

The rampant asset reuse combined with frequent visual glitches makes for a bad experience.

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Frankly, the story is effective. It offers an exploration of Bjorn’s grief that is interesting enough to keep you going, taking a look at what that grief does to a person, how we live with it, and so on. It also takes a smaller look at subjects like abuse and sexism, and how those things might affect the lives of people around us. However, the scenery and gameplay take away from what is being presented.

There’s a real lack of humanity and cohesiveness to the presentation element of the game. I understand that it has been developed with combined sets of free assets, and that it is building on a prior title, but everything in this world that isn’t the text feels like an afterthought. If this story was one that was vital for the author to get out, I fear it may have been better served as a written work in whole. On the page, there’s an opportunity to offload some of that visual work to the reader, to let the mind take the reader to places the art team cannot.

Video games are such a unique medium for many reasons. Interactivity may be the single most important, but it is a mistake to dismiss the value of other elements when creating a game world. The way your trees look or even how they are placed can shape a player’s perception of the setting, the music you play at integral scenes can set or enhance the mood of any given moment, and even the color palette or lighting used can dramatically alter meaning. There’s no limit to the stories you can shape with the tools at your disposal, so for a game to be so bereft of it all is disheartening. Games excel at telling stories in-between the lines, but for Next of Kin: Fidelity, the margins are blank.

Verdict

Next of Kin: Fidelity has a story to tell, but holds no mechanism of delivering it in an interesting way. It’s a shame that the environments and assets used are not up to the task of creating something that serves the game better, as the story can hold up as something worthwhile on its own.

Image Credits: Spelkväll Games

Disclosure: We received a free review copy of this product.