This game ensnared my interest quickly with vivid descriptions of trees being mangled like human bodies, blurring lines of morality and providing a fascinating (and grisly) exploration of your player character's relationship to nature. Unfortunately, this was all undermined in the second half of the game. Like many 'traditional' tabletop RPGs, this game reads 'player choice' as 'ask players to make uninformed decisions with anti-climatic punishments'. Without going into too many spoilers, I often found myself perplexed by how mundane responses to questions led to particular outcomes (Why am I siding with this person? Who is this new character and why should I care that we're friendly?). This culminated in a late-game stat reset where my highly spiritual character who could actively talk and shape nature suddenly lost the ability to distinguish between regular animals and magical spirits. Effectively, I wasted the bulk of my limited resources choosing between questions like "Do you want to chase this creature? [-1 heart] Do you want to KEEP chasing this creature? [-1 Willpower] Do you REALLY want to keep chasing this creature!? [-1 heart]" etc. Suddenly all of the narrative build up fizzled out because of a needless stat reset and frankly terrible writing/choice design. Like playing a game with a bad Dungeon Master, I was treated to pity and judgement from NPCs I hardly knew and entered the finale with no resources. That meant the narrative climax of my shaman / werewolf journey was my character weakly hiding in the background while the grown-ups made all the big decisions around her. Consequence and failure can be fascinating in a good story but frustrating and dull in a bad one. Unfortunately, this is the latter.
Lost Ember presents a uniquely compelling narrative shown through simple yet stylish manifestations of the past alongside (mostly) stellar voice acting. I don't want to tackle the themes for fear of spoilers, but I will say as someone pretty numb to a lot of games' stories this caught my curiosity and kept pulling me further and further in until I was deeply emotionally invested. The game has a knack for bringing forward ideas that seem conventional only to reframe its narrative and change how you think about everything. Lost Ember has a sincerity that easily lets it rise above most of its contemporaries. In terms of gameplay, I think describing it as a walking sim undersells it. You venture between frankly stunning environments by jumping between multiple animal forms, each of which have their own movement styles and cute quirks. One moment you're rolling down a hill as a wombat, the next swooping down on mushrooms as a duck and then wrecking ruins as a mighty mole. Yes, there's a bit of jank involved in the mechanics, but it's well worth it given how ambitious and flexible the game is. Personally, I took great pride in climbing staircases and trying to escape sandstorms as a literal fish out of water. You'd think the strong narrative would sit weirdly against such goofy movement mechanics, but it strangely works. Rather than be annoyed by the strangeness of the gameplay, I found it whimsical and liberating, providing a sharp and poignant contrast against the otherwise heavy narrative. You owe it to yourself to try this game, even if you have to wait for a sale. (As a complete aside, I got this as an Xmas present and played it to completion in Xmas mode on Xmas day - I cannot explain the sheer amount of joy this brought me!)
As others have said, it's a beautiful, calm and strangely comforting experience. The brief but amazing demo hints at a rhythm to the game that I could easily see myself getting lost in. Playing as a cross between Charon and Steven Universe, you find a place for (lost?) souls on your ferry, help them find peace through the journey and ultimately bid them farewell. What little the demo shows is quite touching, with everything from dialogue, quests and the subtle animations during hugs overflowing with character and charm. I already feel like I have a strong familiarity with my passengers, even though I exchanged no more than a few sentences with each. The mechanics are simple but elegant, fitting together in surprisingly clever ways. Platforming and building placement both seems surprisingly straight forward at first, but shortly into your first journey (I won't spoil the details) a new mechanic is revealed that weaves the two together and suddenly has you rethinking the game. I feel the same way about fishing, cooking and sea navigation. If this demo is emblematic of the full game to come, then I have a strong suspicion that I'll have a new favourite game soon.
