Year Walk by Simogo
Year: 2013
Platforms: Steam (played), iOS, Wii U
Can a solid, ritualistic walk at the right time of the year change who you are? Who you were? Can it change the past as well as the future?
Year Walk is a bit of a gem of a game, a small but lovingly formed parcel of delicately aged delights. Brought to us by Simogo (of Sayonara Wild Hearts and the imminent Lorelei and the Laser Eyes), I played through it for the first time about 10 years ago.
And now I’ve finally got round to finishing it up – as well as 99%ing the Steam achievements (the last one requires, well, a specific day of the year). And I’m so glad I did.
The charm of Year Walk is in its subtlety. The premise is that you’re undertaking a night time walk at the end/start of the year, following careful fasting and isolation, in order to see glimpses of the future, in a shamanistic kind of way. I’ve no idea how much of the game’s Scandinavian lore is plucked from the real world, but it’s a fine selection of mysterious tales and other-worldly creatures that chime with similarly old stories from England, Japan and other countries.
Year Walk weaves these into a light puzzling journey that stands out for its style and its atmosphere. The quiet, crisp crunch of footsteps in the snow lends itself perfectly to the ominous ambience hanging over the landscape. Pale patches of blood foreshadow key components and critical moments, framed by the white innocence of the snow. Any slight movement demands investigation.
And so you pick your way through the hills, you must piece together the grim story hidden within them. The mix of the unnerving and the abstract will appeal to fans of Rusty Lake and Lynch fans like myself, and the overall style means the game doesn’t feel at all aged after all this time.
Once you finish the game, it becomes apparent that there are further mysteries to unravel – without venturing into spoiler territory here, this is the part I went back to finish up a decade later.
And without saying anything more, I definitely recommend a playthrough of Year Walk – with bonus points for picking it up in the middle of a cold, dark winter. It remains a timeless classic by being rooted in a century past, with a design that remains fresh. Well worth a few hours of your time.
Note: if you play it on a Steam Deck like I did, you will need to hook up a keyboard for some sections, I believe (or I never found a workaround, at least). I wonder what the Wii U version does instead.
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