RiME (2017)

I fell in love with the experience, the journey, the essence of what this game entailed, what it showed me and in the end, gave me.

I was astounded by the games beautiful imagery, music and the great wonder brought by exploration. What was unexpected was the emotional aspect. Making this game a rarity in its own right.

I got this game as part of a bundle and didn’t expect anything of it. But shortly after I started playing I became mesmerized. I loved the puzzles and adore this games essence. Superficially, RIME might seem like a game about simple exploration, but within its depths there is more. I found a story, a story without an uttered word. A silent movie if you will. It was a story fueled with wonder, discovery, love and loss.

This game is a true experience. It’s creators should feel proud about giving it a soul, and in its silence, a voice.

Rime is a decent puzzle platformer, not great. In terms of gameplay, it doesn't offer anything you haven't seen before, and the controls and the camera are a bit clunky as well.

But where Rime shines is the art direction. Everything is designed so beautifully and the animations are so smooth. It gives out a vibrant, tranquil vibe. And the music takes the game to a whole nother level. I recommend playing it with a good pair of earphones.

The game does have a story but it's nothing exceptional. It's not explicit and straightforward, so it might not make any sense until the end. But in the end, everything seems to fall in its place and it all starts to make sense, which is good.

Technically speaking, Rime is not a great game. Yet it's a coherent, consistent, beautiful, and enjoyable experience. If you have enough patience to enjoy games like Journey, Abzu, or other walking simulators or visual novels, I think you'll find Rime surprisingly good. Otherwise, it might not be your cup of tea.

This game is simple like Miyazaki movies are simple. And in similar ways, I could tell that the people who made this game really cared about what they were doing. That made for a refreshing experience overall.

If only the game had a different ending.

--The Good--

Some people criticized this game for being too simple, with puzzles easily solved or borrowed from other games. Let that be a warning to you. This is not a challenging game. That's not the point of this title. Overly complex puzzles or mechanics would have detracted from what made this game enjoyable. It would have gotten in the way of the emotions this game was trying to communicate. Through the relatively simple art, the orchestral music, and through the game design itself, the entire point of this game was to communicate emotion to the player without a single spoken or written word. I believe the game succeeded at this and went even further. More than once I actually felt like I was playing through an interactive Studio Ghibli movie. The game felt comfortable and familiar and otherworldly all at the same time.

--The Bad--

Everything was going really well for me until I reached the end of this game.

This game was made up of several different settings, each one set apart by mood. As I was playing through them it felt to me that the game was slowly putting together a vague but interesting narrative about a fallen fantasy city. More than once I thought of the movie Laputa: Castle in the Sky, and the whole concept of an ancient city made up of super technology that almost looked like magic, but without inhabitants for millennia and so slowly falling apart. Perhaps I was exploring Atlantis? Perhaps it was a city between dimensions?

Then all of the sudden the game takes a hard turn in a more literary direction. When the game ended I realized the city I was exploring was all metaphorical. Each setting represented one of the stages of grief, and really it was all about a father grieving the loss of his son. This frustrated me deeply. It felt to me that the game developers were trying to swap out "fantasy" for "something meaningful." Instead of a cathartic ending I was left with a sadness switcheroo. Why do so many modern storytellers have an allergy to satisfying endings? Why is there this push to ground fantasy in "reality" in order to make it meaningful?

I don't have a problem with "twist" endings. I don't necessarily have a problem with sad endings, though I think there are too many of them and they are often clumsily done. Though the ending of this game was not necessarily clumsy, it felt like a big letdown.

--The Verdict--

After I finished this game I spent some time reading about it. I came across a YouTube video that talked about how the game developer was deeply emotionally effected by all the negative (and sometimes abusive) feedback he was getting from the larger gaming community all through development. Even though he is likely to never see this review I want to say that I respect the work he did. Overall this is a game worth playing. I respect what he tried to accomplish with this title. If there was any frustration in this review it was more about the general state of storytelling, in games and elsewhere. I would only suggest, in general, that more thought be given to the endings of experiences like this. Must the ending be sad? Must it be happy? Do we need to be heavy handed in making the experience "meaningful," or can we accomplish that in a way that is more nuanced? In games like this it is the ending that will stick with the player long after they forget the specifics of the rest of the game. Let's spend some real time making sure those last few minutes of a game can bear that weight.