Take on Henry David Thoreau's classic adventure in living simply in nature as you explore this epic open world game based on the story of Thoreau's life in the woods alone at Walden Pond.
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You are Henry David Thoreau. You have just moved into a cabin by Walden pond. You fish, you observe nature, and you explore the woods you now call home. After a few days, you walk down the path to your family's house in Concord, where your mother has done your laundry.
I don't want to relitigate Thoreau's laundry habits. The critics and angsty English students have done that plenty without my input. More interesting is the mere presence of the word "laundry"—a word that doesn't appear once in the source text, here presented matter-of-factly to the player— which is an early signal from the game that it has a deep understanding of its source and an awareness of its criticisms. That makes it probably the best direct book to game adaptation I have played yet (and not just because of the lack of competition).
Walden is not a book about survival, and neither is this a game about survival. The punishment for failing to manage resources is minimal. Like the book, it's a game about becoming intimately familiar with a small slice of nature, about exploring and reexploring the same areas until the specific trees become memorable. Like the book, it's also about continuing to exist in society, not reject it. Concord itself is a significant enough hub of activity in the game that the player has the option of beginning the day in it instead of in the cabin. The game approximates Thoreau's visitors from the book with brief anti-slavery missions that serve to anchor the time period to a historical context but ironically lose a modicum of humanity. I imagine this was to get around the constraint of having to model and animate more humans. If that was the choice made in order to have the humans who are in the game look as good as they do, then it was the correct one.
That mission the game inherits from the book is somewhat counteracted by the attempts to make it a more typical video game. Points of interest are marked on the map, which resulted in a couple days of my Thoreau min/maxing his stamina in order to sprint to each. Shortly before winter I realized I forgot to buy an important upgrade and spent a full day grinding out money. Those moments seem antithetical to Thoreau's experiment but I suppose that's the nature of making it a game. Perhaps it's a different kind a fail state, one where the player failed to maintain Thoreau's narrative.
On the technical side, the game has exactly the amount of jank you'd expect from a game that launches with multiple arts endowment logos instead of corporate logos. Thankfully they never impede the experience except for one area where the jank overlaps with the artistry: the voice acting. Thoreau is played by Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild, Speed Racer) in a performance so inert I was surprised to learn from the credits that not only is he professional but a voice I should have recognized. The other performances, most notably Jim Cummings as Ralph Waldo Emerson, are serviceable at worst, so there's a stark, grating gulf in emotion when the bulk of the narrative sounds like it's being sight-read off a page yet attributed to a character for whom "inspiration" is a resource in need of active management by the player.
But you don't need to engage with Thoreau's audio or even his writing, which is the beautiful part of adapting this as a video game. I'm not a particular fan of Walden (the book) but it does irk me to see people criticize it for what it was never meant to be. I worry the same will happen to Walden (a game). This is not a survival game or an exploration game. It's a re-re-re-exploration game with some survival elements included, for you. If you want.
I don't want to relitigate Thoreau's laundry habits. The critics and angsty English students have done that plenty without my input. More interesting is the mere presence of the word "laundry"—a word that doesn't appear once in the source text, here presented matter-of-factly to the player— which is an early signal from the game that it has a deep understanding of its source and an awareness of its criticisms. That makes it probably the best direct book to game adaptation I have played yet (and not just because of the lack of competition).
Walden is not a book about survival, and neither is this a game about survival. The punishment for failing to manage resources is minimal. Like the book, it's a game about becoming intimately familiar with a small slice of nature, about exploring and reexploring the same areas until the specific trees become memorable. Like the book, it's also about continuing to exist in society, not reject it. Concord itself is a significant enough hub of activity in the game that the player has the option of beginning the day in it instead of in the cabin. The game approximates Thoreau's visitors from the book with brief anti-slavery missions that serve to anchor the time period to a historical context but ironically lose a modicum of humanity. I imagine this was to get around the constraint of having to model and animate more humans. If that was the choice made in order to have the humans who are in the game look as good as they do, then it was the correct one.
That mission the game inherits from the book is somewhat counteracted by the attempts to make it a more typical video game. Points of interest are marked on the map, which resulted in a couple days of my Thoreau min/maxing his stamina in order to sprint to each. Shortly before winter I realized I forgot to buy an important upgrade and spent a full day grinding out money. Those moments seem antithetical to Thoreau's experiment but I suppose that's the nature of making it a game. Perhaps it's a different kind a fail state, one where the player failed to maintain Thoreau's narrative.
On the technical side, the game has exactly the amount of jank you'd expect from a game that launches with multiple arts endowment logos instead of corporate logos. Thankfully they never impede the experience except for one area where the jank overlaps with the artistry: the voice acting. Thoreau is played by Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild, Speed Racer) in a performance so inert I was surprised to learn from the credits that not only is he professional but a voice I should have recognized. The other performances, most notably Jim Cummings as Ralph Waldo Emerson, are serviceable at worst, so there's a stark, grating gulf in emotion when the bulk of the narrative sounds like it's being sight-read off a page yet attributed to a character for whom "inspiration" is a resource in need of active management by the player.
But you don't need to engage with Thoreau's audio or even his writing, which is the beautiful part of adapting this as a video game. I'm not a particular fan of Walden (the book) but it does irk me to see people criticize it for what it was never meant to be. I worry the same will happen to Walden (a game). This is not a survival game or an exploration game. It's a re-re-re-exploration game with some survival elements included, for you. If you want.