Posted on: September 3, 2023
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Edith Finch has grown up (too much)
"It happened. Life happened. But I'm still a human being. I'm still me." - In What Remains of Edith Finch (2017, also on GOG), you play the titular teen returning to her abandoned family home to explore her family history through environmental narration, interior monologue, and minigames. In Lost at Sea (2021), a woman named Anna travels to a mysterious memorial island to do much the same, and by the same means. In four biomes, you work through as many stages of life, each holding four memories you need to complete. To do so, you need items which you earn in minigames spread across the surprisingly sizeable island. Completing biomes gradually unlocks access to the mountain at the centre of the isle, whence you'll be whisked away to the epilogue I quoted from above, ending this 2,5 hour game. Some aspects of it work well: The 2D art is beautiful and evocative; the voice actress somehow manages to bring even the worst platitudes to life; and some of the minigames (more rituals than actual games) succeed in translating general life experiences into compelling interactive vignettes. Still, where Edith Finch scores with quirky charm and magic realism, Lost at Sea aims to be this austere circle-of-life empathy game, resulting in a lot of pathos and commonplaces. The "youth" biome, for instance, is an absurd jumble of American school buses, with Anna proclaiming: "As a teenager you always have these romantic ideas..." So that is your essence of youth? Ouch. Like Edith's, Anna's story revolves mostly around the deaths in her family, but instead of a fatalistic hunt for the sublime, you get a game desperately tugging at your heartstrings: "I don't want you to die alone, do you hear me? [...] Mummy is here! Where are you?" Oh, and the island is mostly unattractive visually, to say nothing of the woeful soundtrack. - Tellingly, Studio Fizbin make no mention of this game on their website. There is some good material here, but on the whole this game feels empty and generic.
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