Year Walk is a first person adventure game released by Simogo in 2013 for iOS platforms. It has since been released for Windows PC, macOS, and the Wii U. Year Walk puts the player in the shoes of a man experiencing the titular year walk, an ancient Swedish phenomena that challenges men to endure the trials of supernatural creatures to receive visions of the future. Year Walk utilizes repeated exploration set within a tightly bounded area to prime the player to notice small changes in the environment for the purpose of showcasing embedded narratives.
The mechanics of Year Walk create a dynamic where the player has to look around and explore to progress the game. These main mechanics are walking around to different rooms and clicking on things in those rooms. There are about 20 distinct rooms to walk around in this pursuit, and an average playthrough will likely see the player visit each of these rooms at least two times at minimum, with connecting rooms receiving even more traffic. The player has no choice but to do this to complete the puzzle solving objectives the game hands them. A smart addition from the developers here was to utilize a mainly black and white color scheme for most of the rooms, which also pairs well with the wintry nighttime landscape the game’s narrative is set in.
Aside from an optional in game encyclopedia the player can read, there is minimal text in the game past the prologue and opening. The encyclopedia also provides minimal guidance to the player; it only establishes the initial objective of the game and gives background on the creatures in the game. Between the minimal text and the dynamic of the game, a player naturally ends up immersed in exploring the game world and experiencing that fun of discovery, and this extends to discovering elements of the narrative as well.
For example, at a certain point in the game, I found myself wandering around attempting to discover where and what the next puzzle was, when I began to hear singing. I followed the singing to find a ghostly woman singing, who began to lead me to a large tree, flowers growing in her wake. Who was this woman? To find out, I had to follow here. But from the changes in the environment of the flowers growing in her wake and the tree she seemingly made her home in, I could determine that she was some type of nature spirit. And the in-game encyclopedia confirmed that for me, telling me that she was a creature from Swedish folklore: a Huldra.
Later on in the game, wandering around in much the same situation as before, I noticed that the snow in an area was now stained by blood. Following the source of the blood led me to a house, where a safe that was previously clean and empty was now locked and bloody. Once again, questions naturally arose about why the blood was present. And within the safe, I found a wailing, ghostly child. As I traveled around and found more of these children, I was spooked and hounded by a screaming ghost lady, who I was able to quickly theorize was the killer of these children with the help of the in-game encyclopedia once again. The children were known as Mylings in Swedish folklore, and their killer an “angel maker”.
The fun of discovery created by the repeated exploration in the game made me acutely aware of the environment and how it was changing. And through these changes, Year Walk was able to not just tell me about Swedish folklore and mythology, but have me experience aspects of it as a player. This unique type of storytelling can only be done through telling stories embedded within spaces, and it is a type of storytelling “walking simulators” such as Year Walk excel in.
