Year Walk Review
Year Talk
Originally published for the
iOS by Simogo, Year Walk got a release for PC in March. The game is heavily influenced by the old
Swedish tradition Årsgång which means year walk. This “tradition” has not been in open
practice for a couple of generations at least.
It consisted of starvation of the body and mind of natural senses for a
full day during certain events. When the
clock struck midnight, the person would leave and go to the church encountering
many obstacles on the way. Once
completed, the person would supposedly see their future.
The
first thing I noticed when I opened the game was the art style. It had a very charming yet creepy aesthetic
to it. It is very simple, but very
telling. It looks almost like everything
was cut out of coloured paper and placed onto the scene, and it was very
pleasing to the eye. It added to the
atmosphere which was itself very unsettling and well thought out.
At its
core, Year Walk is a puzzle game and
quite a difficult one too. The puzzles
themselves are extremely well done.
Everything is given to you right from the get-go. You are then left to piece everything
together. The puzzles seem quite
difficult but are actually quite simple once you figure out what needs to be
done, although some can be quite difficult to complete. For example, one puzzle uses sounds but it
can be quite difficult to figure out what is being asked through simple
notes. There is a hint system, but I
never used it and so I cannot comment on its usefulness. It requires you to remember, so I would
suggest having a pen and paper on hand to write things down rather than trying
to remember them.
The
story elements are surprisingly the strongest part of this game because each
puzzle tells its own story. Everything
in this game is symbolic and it shows that the developers put a lot of time
into this game, despite it being originally made for iOS. It gives the game a new layer that not many
games have and it makes it feel very special.
Some of the places the story goes are extremely dark and quite
upsetting. Yet it touches these topics
with so much maturity that it really feels genuine. It does have some horror elements in it and
made me feel very uncomfortable at times.
The characters are so fleshed out and rounded, despite rarely ever
seeing any of them. I felt actual guilt
while playing this game, genuine guilt.
It left an empty feeling in my gut
when it ended and I wanted more, but after some time I feel that the game would
have been ruined if it were any longer.
It is still quite short. There is
a lot of walking to extend the length of the game, which is a dirty trick but
it is forgivable because the environments are so engaging. There is also a lot of reading, but it is so
worth it to read everything. I did not
regret reading a single word in this game.
The simplicity of this game makes
it easy to suggest anyone buy this. Even
non-gamers will find this something they could get into, especially if you like
to read. For $5.99 it makes it even
easier to call it a must-have in anybody’s library. If it had not been released on iOS a full
year before its PC release, I would not be surprised to see it in the Indie
Game of the Year category.
No comments:
Post a Comment