Spirit of the North (2019)

Since this is a smaller studio with less manpower and lower budget, I'll go a little easier on this game. I was teetering between 2 or 3 stars the entire game. It would get lowered to 2 when I was frustrated with controls and/or trophies but get raised to a 3 when some of the more beautiful vistas popped up. I really enjoyed sliding down the snowy mountains in chapter 1 and running through the huge valleys in later chapters. I also really like the concept of the game: befriending a spirit guide, saving the shamans, going to the spiritual realm, and becoming the aurora borealis at the end.. I just wish it was more fun to play through.

The puzzles were fine. However, the controls felt clunky and needed a lot more fine-tuning to justify searching for all of the collectibles. There were tons of invisible walls, and you would have to get a running start to be able to clear smaller obstacles (that you should really have been able to clear just from jumping from a stationary position). Your fox didn't feel smooth when maneuvering, and the speed didn't bother me at the beginning of the game but near the end (especially with chapter 7's collectibles) we really could have used a faster speed option that wasn't just a dash that needed to recharge between uses. I would often miss easy jumps because the controls weren't as responsive as I would have liked.

That said, it's a very chill, quaint game. If you ignore the trophies I would even say it's pretty cozy! I think this game is worth a try, especially if you're in the mood for something shorter!

Why did this game frustrate me so entirely, I just got more mad the more I played. The environments were beautiful, but some of the design choices were just ??? I was so close to just not finishing it, but I have a problem where I HAVE to beat most games I start.

For example, I got stuck at some point because a part of the game that had so far been entirely optional all of a sudden was a necessary to continue so I had to backtrack to be able to continue. Also, things are timed in such a way that seems so uncalled for especially when the controls aren't super great or precise.

Let's just start off with the straight forward bit: I enjoyed the game overall. It's charming, and generally it's fun to run around as a fox.

Now to the boring bit: Overall it feels like this game took inspiration from, and wanted to do a similar thing to Journey. Atleast the game felt like it to me. Sadly, this game is not as polished as Journey is. This is one of those games where it feels like the creators kinda lost faith in their core concept and had to "gamify" it more with timed jumps and things to make it more challenging.

To me these things generally just got in the way of the core feeling of the game. Maybe they wanted to do timed jumps and other things? But it doesn't really fit with what it feels like to be the fox running through the game.

Would be nicer if the developers could have focused more on the experience and exploration, maybe do more for the relationship between you and the side character.

I also experienced a few glitches and misses in game design: at one point textures randomly got a red tint blinking. When starting a new chapter my joy cons got stuck on vibrate. Twice i accidentally dropped the stick next to a password thing and could not pick it up because i could only interact with the password thing, so i could not deliver those collectibles. At one point i did a puzzle out of order and had to restart the chapter.