we can talk in circles about the art that may have inspired fallow, we can waste time talking about the long lineage of story-driven rpgmaker games that led up to this behemoth; that won't stop fallow from haunting me.

it is infinitely more than another sob story or moody indie game. it is the metaphorical place where all of us who have been outcast from society reside, brought to physicality. stroll down the dusty hallways of the fallow residence and relive memories that are not yours - and yet they are ours.

when i hear the credits theme, "shame", i do not feel the remorse i so often do for characters i've loved or fictional worlds i had to leave behind; i feel something watching me over my shoulder. a comforting kind of sadness that will cocoon me even as everything i loved crumbles away.

on the wall above my desk rests these words: "my sisters and i had a secret wish to die in a place that cared for us". i think i will remember them in those final moments.

If you have played this game and have not finished the sealed door/red squares areas, DO IT. They feel like Fallow's Hand in Killer7 - dubiously canon, but still painting a clearer picture of the world. There's a guide on Steam if you don't know how to access them. On that note, the first bit of this review will be free from major spoilers for Fallow and its hidden areas.
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When you enter the hulking door to Fallow's hidden areas, the text onscreen tells you that these areas are outside the boundaries of the story. Although they may be literally "out of bounds", I think they are 100% necessary to the full experience of Fallow. I don't know what I was expecting from cut content, but it certainly wasn't something this thorough.

You find yourself dropped onto a small island, a misty refuge from the crushing depression that's built up by the third day of Fallow. There are no objectives (at least, not at first). There are no directions. You just... walk, and the game opens up around you. Fallow is a game that often relishes in its quietness, which makes its busier moments (like Alburn Manor) stand out sharply. Outside of its boundaries, Fallow gives way a mesh of jarring textures and abrasion. We delve deeper into Isa's mind, the lines starting to blur, seemingly disconnected set of spaces bleeding into my perception of the world they surround.

OK SPOILER TIME DO NOT READ BELOW IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED PAST THE SEALED DOOR PLEASE

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I won't pretend I fully understand every scrap thrown at me by the (surprisingly cohesive) cut content in Fallow, though I understand the story more than when I went in.

This is gonna be kinda all over the place because I have about 200 thoughts in my head right now.

It's so strange when you're exploring and you find yourself on the other side of the barriers of the main game. Little paths of trees or rocks that I assumed were just normal video game boundaries. The map Ada created for Fallow is far larger (and more complicated) than you think. What a wonderful surprise! I LOVE when developers put effort into shit even if most people will never even know it's there. There's a whole world crumbling and abstracting around what you can see in the main game, which is a hella meta way to play on the themes of the main story.

Speaking of surprises, the dancing ghost room. It's the only time in Fallow that you hear a voice. That alone makes for an unforgettable moment, nevermind that song. AND IT'S ENTIRELY POSSIBLE TO MISS IT, EVEN IF YOU GET ALL THE RED SQUARES.

The very, very blunt final note to mother that you find in the Abandoned House feels like a real message to someone's mother. I wonder if it is.

So much of this area exhibits a mastery of subtextual storytelling. Each vignette is littered with evocative things, from NPC dialogue to the notes, or just rooms with eerie atmospheres. Don't even get me started on the music. These unused tracks get me in my feels.

Can we talk about Angel for a second? The brief interactions you have with them and Paige in the city (which I am confident is part of the city where Isa used to live) are so true to the uneasiness of revisiting people from a place where you were traumatized. Confiding in and yearning for Angel for only a moment to have her disappear like that, it's horrifying. Real-life horror. No scares, no monsters, only the unrelenting fear of a world without someone who loves you. My stomach hurts.

Listen to The Tower of the Furnace II from the soundtrack. You can find it on Bandcamp, along with all of Ada's other tunes. Let it soak in. Maybe listen to it twice.

The dialogue between the Fallow sisters found in the red squares is some of my favorite in the game. It hits on a few themes and leitmotifs that reminded me of Ada's lyrics. I can't help wondering why they were left out, along with Vivianna's message to Isa before the final day.

These were the couple hours I needed to fall all the way in love with the world of Fallow. When I finished up, I exited to the main game with as many answers about the ambiguous fate of Isa and her sisters as I went in with. Hell, there's hardly even a "finish", only a final room that unlocks when you collect all the seven red squares. That final room is a VERY Fallow conclusion: a contextless mysterious machine with faint ghosts of the Dynen spinning overhead. It hit me weirdly hard. I want to play through the game again with a new perspective from the cut content. Yeesh. The only thing this content is cutting is my heart, wide open.

I'm going to break down crying if I talk about this game more, so I'm gonna end this here lol

Fallow is beautiful, every part of it. From the pixels, the music, and every written word. The game is just a beautiful piece of art.

This game gets to me emotionally a lot, I replayed it so I could explore the sealed door areas and do everything there was left in the game.

This is a game about being abandoned and harmed by the world. There's an intense overwhelming and suffocating loneliness to this game that genuinely makes me cry. Every line of dialogue and musical track builds onto this as you explore a vast deep empty and lonely wasteland.

I really love Ada Rooks' work a lot, her work just hits really close to home for a lot of reasons, and this is one of my favorite things she has done.

played oct 30th for rpgmaker october

really wanted to like this more than i do but as it is, the most i can feel for it is that its ok :( VERY deft use of the engine, great visuals n sound (ada rook made this game n did the soundtrack) and i like its texture. and i don't actually outright dislike alot of what the story is doing. it's just that i can't find a lot of enthusiasm in me for it overall. stuff abt navigating memories of a community/found family you feel abandoned by, vaguely alluding to external factors of precarity n marginalization and embattled interpersonal frission; it's fine and pretty articulate in its adriftness, neither overly blunt abt being what it is nor trauma hijacking per se, but i do think i like...wish it took a step back from itself more than it does, rather than favoring the personal experiential side of things. this game has a good voice, i just wished it cut deeper than it does w it. ending is nice tho and some of the postgame stuff is cool, and i could maybe explore it more someday (reminds me of anodyne 2, on this note that is another game not unfamiliar w this i also have mixed feelings abt, but that game has a stretch i think is genuinely stunning, here its just that there's less buildup to be disappointed in)

A game so painfully intimate that it often feels like the screen is bleeding, despite the complete lack of blood. Fallow is a reserved but maximalist RPG Maker adventure game with a very precise sense of time and mourning. Fallow compels you to move and look in claustrophobic ways; it drags your eyes across the digital mud and tries to pull your lids down to cry. Looking and searching for the path forward is such an intense and often discouraging experience, pulling you into a death throes of a world decaying along with our perspective character.

I don't really mesh with the world view here or the relationship to suicidal ideation deeply enmeshed in this game because of where I'm at in life. I also don't like a lot of the prose for the kinds of post-modern and psychoanalytic influence, but those are very narrow points of a much more gestural whole that I really really love for all its unresolved and unabashed misery.