The wind whispers softly through the trees as you walk through the muted silence of a winter’s evening. At the game’s opening, you’ll hear brass notes fluttering against a background of keening violins. On top of these unsettling images, sound and music play a large part in setting an ominous mood. This is a world where churches spin around and crystalline tumors sprout on the surface of a rock spinning in space, with lines like “The decision has already been made” floating in the background. Rather than offering you answers, your journey leads you further away from reality and deeper into a surreal, mystical world. Elsewhere, there's a smear of crimson across white snow, a baby wrapped in linen strips with a round black 'O' for a mouth, and a white crow slithering and growing out of the mouth of a black raven. But don’t let the seeming serenity of these mostly empty woods lull you into complacency there are quite a few jump scares throughout that are all the more frightening when playing in the dark listening with headphones (which I highly recommend).Īs you explore, chimerical images swirl about like so many snowflakes, a woodland spirit swarmed by sparkles collapses in on herself like a kaleidoscope, while a wooden doll with blank eyes and a bloody maw for a mouth spins slowly in a dark shelter. You’ll see blood splashes where there weren’t any before, a path outlined by newly sprouted flowers, or a stream running red that you could have sworn was a calm blue only a minute before. This is the strength and the beauty of the game there's an exquisite eeriness in a world that makes you feel as if you’re walking down the same paths, but as you progress further, the terrain transforms before you. You will then spend the rest of the game attempting to acquire the key to the gate, and in doing so will encounter a variety of obstacles, including a large tree guarded by owls, a dreadful horse-like entity that asks you to retrieve a terrible bounty, and always the crystalline breath of death, frozen by the winter air and sharp as ice crystals that bring up droplets of blood on whispery scratches across skin. There may seem to be nothing guiding you in a particular direction, but it eventually becomes clear that everything is leading to a foreboding church guarded by a locked gate. This walk, which seems simple enough as you begin with the sound of your footsteps crunching through the snow, will soon take you past all manner of strange creatures and experiences. But the story, such as it is, isn’t what compels you to continue your journey, but rather the beauty of the experience and the hint of mystery – something you’re searching for, though you don’t yet know what it is. You gather bits and pieces of this tale and snippets of an older mythology as you continue on your year walk. If there are more questions than answers at this point, that is because this story is revealed with no spoken dialogue and very, very little written text. She tells you: “We are not supposed to know what happens in the future.” Her warning about the morality of leaving the future alone doesn’t stop you, of course. You walk because you want to know the future, even if it is unknowable. She promised to provide it at the start of the New Year, and today is the last day of the current year. But she’s also worried: did anyone see you coming? There is another man involved in this tale, and he is awaiting an answer (to what question?) from her. She seems shy, concerned for your well-being, and she tells you to make sure to wear a coat and stay warm. Your travels will eventually take you to a windmill, its sails slowly catching the wind and spinning through the air. The graphics are rendered in a simple, stylized first-person format with muted tones, and you’ll scroll sideways and occasionally move forward and backward to explore. Along with your cabin, an abandoned campfire, a goat’s head, footprints (hoofprints?) in the snow, and a strange wooden box featuring a primitive symbol are some of the spare items that populate this lonely place. It’s a desolate, 19th century landscape with little sign of life other than your own. In this point-and-click – that is, swipe-and-touch – adventure, you play as a man who starts out simply walking through a snowy wood. As you walk, you’ll find yourself exploring starkly beautiful artwork while taking full advantage of iOS multi-touch functionality that will thoroughly immerse you in a haunting journey via a variety of imaginative puzzles. But do you walk to see what will happen in the future? The ancient Swedes did to see if they could pry open a window into the future, and in their new iOS adventure, Year Walk, Simogo asks their protagonist to undertake such a vision quest to discover whether he'll find love. You walk to exercise, to relax, to get from here to there, and perhaps even to meditate.
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