In Scandinavian folklore, a “Year Walk” (also called Årsgång) is a procedure, normally taking place on the eve of major holidays, which starts with an individual isolating themselves for 24 hours in a dark, locked room without food, water, or social interaction. Come midnight, according to the game, the year walker would venture off into the dark forest, alongside the wonders and terrors of the indigenous creatures and spirits that inhabit it, before eventually concluding at the parish church. Here, they would encircle the church three times, which was said to give way to a set of trials which would eventually reveal to the year walker cryptic glimpses of the future. Death, war, plague, and agriculture were common themes encountered in these visions.
Dude, be honest. Do I look stoned?
Developer Simogo leverages the wonderment of this forgotten practice in their puzzle/adventure game, simply titled Year Walk. It is a short-lived, heavily-stylized production which fuses the beauty of a unique art style, atmospheric sound and music, and terrifying mythical imagery to produce an experience quite unlike any other in recent memory. There is no gore or reliance on jump scares; the game’s success lies purely in its effective implementation of these nightmarish conceptions to weigh psychologically on the player, while simultaneously leveraging a pretty compelling storyline, to boot.
Originally released for iOS, Year Walk for the Wii U is being heralded as the “definitive edition”, and though its approach to a few of the puzzles is different and the gyrometer pointing elements are less than perfect, it is indeed a smart fit for Nintendo’s console.
Yep, looks about as exciting as Sweden.
As you might have guessed, in Somogo’s game, you are the year walker, in a story set sometime in the 1800s. You are meeting with a lover at the start of the game; concerned about your relationship going forward, you have decided to try and catch a glimpse of what’s to come through the ancient ritual. Most of the game (under two hours total) takes place during this period, and very little interaction with other beings occurs during this time.
The gameplay is unique in the sense that the camera always faces one direction (which happens to be North according to the map, which is viewable on the Wii U Gamepad). The player spends most of their time moving horizontally through each small compartmentalized “room”, and passes to adjacent rooms in areas indicated by visual cues (and arrows on the map). It all takes place in first-person, and in fact, there is no wandering from the path whatsoever.
It could use some new gutters, but… we can negotiate that before closing I guess.
This seems at first like a terrible way to design a game. However, this constrained approach to exploration carries the dual purpose of both simplifying the gameplay and creating the illusion that the forest is larger than it actually is; since the player can only ever face one direction, they never are tasked with examining any of their other assumed surroundings. It also provides for more focused control on each scene, with the perspectives and environmental elements meticulously planned and arranged to maximize the impact on the player.
The puzzles in the game are mostly pretty simple, though a few of them are a little tricky—primarily in a think-outside-the-box, breaking-the-fourth-wall kind of way. It’s never too much to handle, and just a little bit of thought will generally make short work of the riddles. However, it is helpful to have the Wii U Gamepad at your disposal, the use of which is well incorporated into the gameplay. It functions not only as a map, but also (via easy-access tabs) as an encyclopedia of lore and even a scratch pad—which is incredibly useful when you’re pairing up symbols and numbers and such to progress.
I’m really not sure how to caption this, so I’m not even going to try.
Still, most of what you will be doing is governed by the puzzles: seeking out a few requested items, matching up some symbols, learning some patterns… it’s fairly elementary stuff, but it requires traversal of the environments in the midst of uneasy circumstances. All the while, the music evolves to match the current sentiments, ensuring that trips never become truly ordinary or too tedious. There was one particular spot where I got stuck for a short time, but fortunately, there’s also a hints system (again, built into the Gamepad) if you really feel you’re tired of the current trial.
Overall, the experience is paced well. The drive to continue playing is fueled mostly by curiosity as to what lies ahead, both environmentally and narratively. The game spaces out its major moments in such a way where it almost feels like it’s divided into chapters. Each one centers on a different trial or puzzle, and often these include a fresh morsel of Swedish lore, such as the eerie Brook Horse (supposedly a mythical creature invented to keep children from playing too close to streams) or the foreboding Church Grim (who lives beneath the church and is said to guard it).
“I am the keymaster.” “I am the gatekeeper.”
Just when you think the game has become predictable, however, it twists the pages of its tale and contorts itself into something completely unexpected, finding new and powerful ways to impact the player that are as splendid as they are creepy.
