Year Walk

Of the three games developed by Simogo that I’ve played, Year Walk is the only one I didn’t fall completely in love with. The first stumbling block is its approach to player movement, which functions like a cross between Myst and LittleBigPlanet and is so artificial and unintuitive that it actively impedes immersion. The puzzles are also problematic, as about half of them have very tenuous connections to reality. I have a feeling that the fantastical/hallucinatory narrative was intended to excuse the gameplay’s inscrutable logic, but that only works to a certain degree. The story itself is the highlight of the experience, particularly once it reveals its full scope. Its ambiguity creates a sizeable hole in the plot, but it also lends it an enduring air of mystery. The imagery pulled from Scandinavian mythology is also remarkably unsettling, which, for a horror game, is a pretty big point in its favour.