Sometimes a gaming experience doesn’t have to be long to be good. A game like Sayonara Wild Hearts is merely an hour and some change but it is a definable and repeatable experience. That Annapurna classic proves that it’s better to feel and connect with a game than it is to count the minutes you have spent with it. And maybe that is an underlying message that has a deeper meaning that we all need. Savior the moment before it’s gone.
A good chunk of gamers out there are young and still shaping how this world and its wonders can be used and spent. They count the moment by how long it lasts, an outside-looking-in perspective that seemingly robs them of the moment and what that moment means. Even older gamers who have been around forever still have a hard time enjoying the experience and tend to dissect it more than engage with it.
Sometimes we need a reminder to let the minute-counting go and just enjoy the experience when it is happening. For me, it will always be Sayonara Wild Hearts, a blueprint narrative about loss, heartbreak, and ultimately redemption of one’s self and soul. There aren’t many games I would connect to like that one, but it did teach me an echoing lesson of how to see and be within the gaming experience as much as possible because it’s all gone too quickly.
So, here we are with Simpler Times from developer stoneskip.. It’s a game about being and seeing, as much as it is about preparing, growing, and moving forward with life. Its simple message is so generalized that it’s bound to fit the bill for all that go through its hour-long gaming experience. And trust me, there is more content there than just its simple puzzles, calming dialogue, and multiple underlying messages.
Let’s get right into this review.
It’s all about story
The story has you play as Taina, a college-bound young adult who is reliving meaningful parts of her childhood while embracing and working through tough times that she met. While the story is mostly positive, the game has hints of tragedy, coping, and a large dose of Taina figuring out who she wants to be. You get to see Taina’s good times, and growth, and understand why it’s so difficult to say goodbye to your younger self.
The story might seem a bit watered down and all over the place, but that seems to be by design. There is a hodge-podge series of emotions wrapped up in memories during Taina’s adventure. Moments in the story include her working on a birdhouse for birds looking for a house in the Spring. There is also a piece of the adventure that has her working on an art project, and a portion of the story that has her building a rocket for the sake of science. These pieces of the story help to build up who Taina is and what type of person she becomes later when she leaves her house.
The memories you play through in the story are complicated with how they function and at the same time simple enough to put pieces together to understand why they exist. All the memories combined bring together the emotions of joy, heartbreak, and eventually having to say goodbye to what she was and say hello to who she is going to become.
Ultimately, the story might be a linear journey but it’s also letting the gamer experience what they believe they should be experiencing. It’s kind of like saying to someone that they should go to the park. If that person decides they should go to the park, then maybe you assume they are going there to play basketball. Someone else might assume that they are going to play tennis. Regardless of assumption, the person is going to the park, and whatever you believe they will be getting out of that generalized experience is yours and yours alone. It’s unique for everyone and that is how Simpler Times seems to work.
It’s a good, simple story that caters to a lot of gamers and their assumptions.
Keeping you there
While the story is mostly narrative and driven by linear actions, the puzzles you are presented to keep the adventure interactive are mostly good. For example, building a birdhouse is probably the hardest part of the game. You have to connect dots on several pieces of wood in the right order, because they are jumbled, to form cuttable lines that form the pieces of the house. Out of all the puzzles, I think I spent about 20-30 minutes total getting this done.
The point of that birdhouse build was to shift the game into an interactive experience. While I love stories, and I love games with impactful ones, playing games means you’re involved in some capacity. The good folks at stoneskip. understood this and paired interactive puzzles with connections to the narrative. You’re not doing something for zero reason. You’re going through a brief puzzle to progress to the next part of the story. It’s a simple concept that bridges the story with interactivity, and it’s welcomed in this short game. The birdhouse’s meaning is providing a new home for new residents, something that I believe Taina is experiencing with her departure from her childhood home.
The variety of interactive requests the story has you go through is good. You do things like find objects in a room to pack up for your college journey, put together a diorama for a school project, and even go as far as building a rocket ship. These main interactions you’re presented with are very much driving your progression in the game, which seems relevant from beginning to end.
In addition to these main bridges between narrative pieces, there are also some additional tasks you can complete that will help you fully complete the entire game. These tiny little side quests will keep you in the game longer but offer no value to the narrative other than keeping you going with the game. These can be seen as extra quests but are not necessary to complete Simpler Times.
All of this is kept track by a scrapbook that tells you what you have to do with each season of the game you experience (you are taken through all seasons, each containing different quests), and helps guide you through the entire adventure. Without this book, the game would be too open without any kind of linear-direction. It’s a well-placed piece of the gameplay structure that fits perfectly in the world it was born within.
Length might detour
While I do appreciate a good ambiguous ‘make of it as you will’ type of narrative with some interactive puzzles that fit snuggly into the mix, I can see that some might be turned off by an hour or so adventure. Again, going back to my original statement at the beginning of this review, for a game like Simpler Times, you have to be in the moment and not count them. It’s going to mean something different for each gamer but it will certainly mean the same thing to those who want their $9.99 to equal out to X minutes.
Whoever that type of gamer might be that can’t look beyond money and minutes, they might be turned off by the purpose of Simpler Times. I’m sure someday they will turn that around and see the game for what it is, but there are certainly going to be those types that just won’t appreciate it.
It happens. Not everyone loved Sayonara Wild Hearts. Of course, not everyone is right. Make that correlation.
On that note, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
Simpler Times from developer stoneskip. is a short narrative with simple interactive moments holding up a melancholy adventure. The value of the game comes with the translated experience where the gameplay can mean different things to different gamers with varying perspectives from where they might be in their life. Its interpretive structure makes the gameplay and story far more meaningful than the minutes it takes to complete it all.
