A solid story-focused experience, but nothing outstanding.
A nice, good-looking first-person adventure game with a ton of optional puzzles that don't hold your hand. All the clues and puzzles are greatly varied and neatly integrated into the extensive environments, slowly uncovering a tangled web of characters, memories and intrigues in a small town.
For some reason, practically all puzzles are optional - in fact, you only need to solve a single one and just walk through the locations to finish the game. In fact-fact, you can skip an entire huge level out of the four available ones, so I guess you can have a pure cut-down walking simulator experience, but I wouldn't recommend it just for that. Both the inventory and clue saving systems are a bit whacky, so you better grab a notebook. There are also a couple of annoying puzzle bugs, so be prepared for the recurring 'Am I too bad at this or is it a bug?' meta game.
You might like this game if you liked the following (or vice versa!):
- Kona: A lone detective investigating a town's story during a supernatural blizzard - not as much puzzling, but more horror.
- The Occupation: A much more intricate world, a whole load of interactions and all of it in real-time. Made by the same devs.
For some reason, practically all puzzles are optional - in fact, you only need to solve a single one and just walk through the locations to finish the game. In fact-fact, you can skip an entire huge level out of the four available ones, so I guess you can have a pure cut-down walking simulator experience, but I wouldn't recommend it just for that. Both the inventory and clue saving systems are a bit whacky, so you better grab a notebook. There are also a couple of annoying puzzle bugs, so be prepared for the recurring 'Am I too bad at this or is it a bug?' meta game.
You might like this game if you liked the following (or vice versa!):
- Kona: A lone detective investigating a town's story during a supernatural blizzard - not as much puzzling, but more horror.
- The Occupation: A much more intricate world, a whole load of interactions and all of it in real-time. Made by the same devs.
My two favorite parts in this game were when I fell through the level walking on the main path and when I fell through the level every time I tried to enter a room I needed to enter to solve a puzzle.
for such a rustic lil village on the coast with a potential intrigue it's so barren and boring, no desire to do the puzzles to piece together what narrative it's trying spin
Solid concept, interesting world to explore, decent puzzles, but it's a bit bare and lacking that extra oomph to carry it through. Story so far is... vague... but kinda starting to take shape? I put a little over 2 hours in and I'm gonna take a break from it now that I have a PS5 at my disposal, but I do plan on going back through and finishing it at some point. Will update when I do.
I've labeled this game as "Abandoned" and the score as such due to a crash in the game that I thought would just set me back shortly, but apparently resulted in my save data being corrupted for the game. It wasn't exactly a thrilling game, either way.