When a game becomes a cultural phenomenon, playing it becomes a language. People get used to it to the point of attaching expectations and meaning to the things that happen within, to the feedback loop of their systems. The Sims was one of those games, and it was (and is) HUGE. It might have become a capitalistic hell supported by one of the worst videogame publishers out there now, but it really was a novel and powerful idea back then. It didn't really have a narrative tho, you just played with dolls and mostly imagined what they might be thinking from their little emotes.

Closer the Distance leverages all of that time playing The Sims (or whichever of its sequels) to get you in the mindset of trying to keep the grief struck people from a tiny (used-to-be) fishing village from coming apart.

Someone very important has died, and some more than others everyone is affected. You take the helm of the "metaphorical but maybe not" spirit of that person to try and guide them back into caring better for each other, using the very well known UI that The Sims popularized, with a lot of simplifications of course.

These people aren't puppets, they don't all have the same 6 needs that you juggle a bit and easily keep them happy and "green". Each of the members of this community have a different set of bars to fill, some more, some less, and each of them might go up, down, or have different overall sizes.

For example, the angsty teen that just wants to leave to the city has a bar of Belonging, that only goes up when having nice interactions with his aloof father, or getting an appreciation for the local virtues he doesn't believe are for him. And the "main character" has a bar for Routine, which felt painfully real, and you try and push her to go back to a normal day to day while carrying this new weight.

I loved this, every bit, I liked the writing, I liked how the projects for each character clicked with the mechanics, and how clever and efficient it is that we only get to control a few people, the ones closest to the deceased...

Until a new character appears. This new character, as I realized when I closed the game first time, is on the cover of the game. He sucks! A wandering guitar playing musician looking for inspiration that comes bearing something important for the deceased, that we can use in a kinda sidequest by having him interact with a lot of people to figure out how he can "help". He has less bars than anybody else, outside of sleep and hunger, only Inspiration and "Help". He makes no sense at all, takes away from the core cast, and feels like an excuse to have the acoustic soundtrack be diegetic. And worst part is, he doesn't fit into the gameplay loop at all, because I literally didn't have time for him... I'm sad I'll never know what he was about, because I fully ignored his presence, but it left a sour note on my mouth.

The game is far from perfect, the systems kinda fall apart by the end and there are still a bunch more days to get through, but it felt VERY real. It felt like someone made an extremely moving Sims animation/mod that really "gets it".

Little moments, like a distraught mother watching over her child while they sleep as I roam around at the 3x speed that you get when everyone sleeps, or focusing on the main character after a while doing something else only to find her hiding and get a positive bump from my attention... It'll stick with me, wrinkles and all.