For this week’s critical play, I (unfortunately) decided to play Year Walk, originally released in 2013 by Simogo games. This walking sim x mystery x puzzle game (with a little eerie horrors twist) is played in first person as someone exploring the mysteries of a snowy forest. Narrative is woven into the mechanics of the game as you must solve the puzzles/mystery as you walk throughout the forest, and can only see what’s in front of you at any given time.
The mechanic of a limited field of vision greatly allows for the puzzle and mystery (challenge aesthetic) to fully develop. Since the player can only see what is directly in front of them, they are forced to explore the forest to find more clues or objectives to solve the puzzle or overarching mystery (Discovery aesthetic). As the player walks from side to side or forwards/backwards to new regions, more clues/locations are found. The first thing the players stumble upon as they walk is a locked box which they have no access to and thus begins the mystery of what is inside. As they continue to explore they find more characters, puzzles and locations that build into the emergent narrative and will eventually solve the puzzle (hopefully revealing what is in the box).
It is also of some importance here to note that the fog/eeriness of the forest builds the game’s sensation aesthetic as it feels like you (the player) are alone, walking in a forest. Overall the artwork is beautiful.
The lonely cabin in the Forest contributes to the isolation sensation
However, there is one glaring issue with the way the game presents these puzzles, there is no feedback or clues as to how to progress or discover solutions. For example, there is a dancing windup doll halfway across the map hidden in a shed and the game expects you to use the doll’s dance to solve an owl password after following a ghost’s song to said owls. This puzzle was nearly unsolvable without several hints.
The doll would lift its arms, spelling out the owl password
The very next puzzle was a series of songs with which you had to enter the path that harmonized (audio) with the song being played. Not only was this never explained but all of the notes sounded similar, and the songs were nearly indistinguishable from one another. Additionally, there was never any player feedback that the path you chose was correct or incorrect, meaning it essentially devolved into a frustrating and infinite series of paths with no real goal or way of gauging progress (a wrong path reset you to the beginning). This is where I stopped playing. The game’s puzzles were incredibly far-fetched with little connection to their components/solutions and there was no player feedback to ensure you were on the right track to solving the puzzle (which I would argue is significantly more important for the playability of the game than having easier puzzles).
The enraging harmony puzzle has absolutely no feedback. this is one of the audio choices/walkways
This game certainly has audio barriers as several key components to puzzles require audio cues (following the ghost’s song, solving the harmonizing path in the dead tree). However, not only is there no feedback or way to gauge your progress in the puzzle, there is no way to solve the puzzles without the audio unless you aimlessly wander through the game until you happen upon the solution by chance. This would make the game nearly impossible to play if one was hard of hearing, and therefore not accessible or ethical. To test this, I not only looked for audio accessibility features, (or the lack thereof) but attempted to play the game without audio, and it fit my hypothesis that the game was nearly unplayable.
For all the reasons listed above I so incredibly strongly disagree with the overwhelmingly positive reviews of this game. The puzzles have no solution without using hints, there is no feedback on whether or not your actions are correct, and there is no accessibility for those hard of hearing. Adding feedback for doing the right thing or solving steps/puzzles would make this game infinitely more playable, and fun.
-Noah Leibert
