Year Walk: Critical Play
Year Walk was an incredibly interesting game. I’ve honestly never experienced anything quite like it. There were a few aspects (some of which I liked, others not so much) that made this game unique.
Onboarding
The onboarding in this game was non-existent. The game starts with a short narrative explaining the world you are about to be dropped into. As soon as this preface is over, you are placed in a winter scene in front of a house, with no instructions on how to move or what to do. There are no help buttons, nor a menu to return to. However, I found that after a minute or so of poking around, tapping and sliding my finger on the screen, I was able to figure out the controls. I would imagine an older or less tech-savvy audience would have trouble jumping into this game, but for it’s target audience (gamers already familiar with iPhone controls and capabilities), it was relatively straightforward. My only concern is that I never learned that there was more you could do than the initial controls, so it took me a very long time to figure out that there were some objects you could interact with. That being said, I thought the abrupt start to the game worked really well for the game’s aesthetics, and ultimately didn’t prevent me from learning the game mechanics.
Graphics
The graphics of this game were also very different from other contemporary games. The combination of a static background and a slightly dynamic foreground gave each scene a mysterious, creepy vibe. The characters, too, were designed quite strangely — a very artistic interpretation of a cartoon of a ghost of a dead animal or human. Seeing these characters, of course, did not make me feel comfortable or calm.
However, what made it the most creepy was the constantly flickering lights The screen was always slightly dimming and brightening, not enough to distract the player from exploring the world, but enough to create a very tense feeling while playing. I was always on edge playing this game. This was also aided by the “jump scares” that occurred every so often. I put jump scare in quotes, because these moments were never actually scary, but they were sudden and often gory, and so I was left with unease and discomfort after they appeared. Because of all these elements, the game did a great job of always making me feel on edge, which was absolutely their goal.
Pathways
One of the most interesting elements of this game is that a lot of the pathways were very circular. I am used to either open space (where there are no defined paths, you can move almost anywhere on the board) or pathways that branch out from a central point. However, after wandering around the board a few times and finding myself back where I started, I began realizing how circular the map was. However, even at the very end of the game, I still didn’t have a clear idea of what the pathways looked like. There were so many branches that led to one another, or long areas with many different pathways, or areas that looked the same, it was very hard to keep track of where I was and where I was going. This definitely added to the mystery of the game, but I also felt myself getting frustrated often as to why I couldn’t find the places I was looking for. Have I been down this path before? How do I get back to this area? While it definitely was intentional, I think it would cause some less patient players to give up on this game early on
No Menu
As stated before, there was no menu to ever return to. Most times, this was nice — it helped me feel more immersed in the game. However, there were a few instances I wish I did have a menu. If I felt like I needed a hint, or wanted to go back and play a certain part again, I didn’t have that option. The hint aspect was especially frustrating, because I am not a person with a lot of patience, so I was quite often annoyed that I couldn’t get any help from the game. I was also surprised there was no way to turn the game volume off, although the music worked very well in helping set the scene, so maybe the designers purposefully chose to make the player listen to the music.
Plot [spoilers!]
Unlike the previous four categories, the plot was not different or unusual, but I felt like it was worth mentioning. The plot was one of my least favorite aspects of the game. For starters, I didn’t completely understand it. The preface explained that I was in the woods to hopefully glimpse the future, and I might encounter strange beings, but never explained why I wanted to see the future, or who I was. At the end, my lover is found dead, which I guess was my future vision? After doing some research, apparently if you download the companion app, enter a code from the ending credits, then replay the game with new knowledge from the companion app, you unlock the real ending to the story. While I think this scavenger hunt idea is super fun, the fact that it made the entire plot not understandable on the first time around was annoying. I would have been much happier if I understood more of the plot by the end of the first game, and then if I liked the game and wanted to put in more work, I could discover secret hidden details, but this was too much concealed information in my opinion.
