They seem cynical, tapping into those traumatic and miserable parts of our lives to make players shed a tear rather than say anything meaningful. I find that games that want to present you with a story that tackles dark and human themes often come across as ham-fisted and blind to the realities they’re trying to portray. With the different chapters exploring some of Kay’s close relationships, there’s something that will strike a chord with everyone.Īnd what I admired about that part of the game is that it wasn’t doing it cheaply. Despite the abstract and bizarre setting, the characters explored are just…so painfully human. I don’t give this warning lightly but when playing Sea of Solitude you need to be in a good headspace because this game is frighteningly dark. It’s a tale of change, loss, guilt and above all, recovery. I’m not going into spoilers because you really should go into this game blind, but Sea of Solitude isn’t just the story of loneliness the developers wanted you to believe it was. It’s simple stuff, but it all adds up to an experience that is not only unique but incredible powerful at the same time. You’ll be sailing a dinghy, avoiding enemies and making timed jumps over treacherous ocean gaps to avoid the sea monster begging you to slip in. A game that doesn’t use it’s visuals, sounds and mechanics as a means to turn your brain off for hours on end but to rather present a handful of controls and let those do the talking whilst drawing you into the world it’s creating. Sea of Solitude is a game that should be labelled as an experiential metaphor. You’re not gonna sit down with Sea of Solitude expecting open-ended and expansive mechanical design, and if you do intend to play it for that reason I think you’d be missing the point.
There’s platforming and some very light puzzle solving in the mix, but they feel largely inconsequential to the game. All she has is a backpack and a boat to make her way around a flooded city while constantly being pursued by gigantic demons always belittling and demeaning her. You’ll play as Kay, a twenty-something young woman who’s trapped in some form of insidious sea. About taking the emotions and experiences of the game’s writer and distilling it down to mechanical interaction. Sea of Solitude is a game built on selling a metaphor. I suppose it’s difficult to describe if you’ve never actually experienced the difference first hand, which is why I’m so pleased Sea of Solitude exists because it is perhaps one of the most expressive, vulnerable interpretations of depression, loneliness and anxiety I’ve ever come across. A way of being that one gets used to, even when they don’t want to. One comes and goes while the other… it’s more permanent. There’s a difference between “feeling” depressed and “being” depressed. But “being”? That’s a state of existence. There’s an aspect of time to things that are felt. When something is “felt”, it’s often fleeting one feels warm, sad, hungry. Look, it’s a silly semantic difference, I get that. Yet despite how easy it can be to feel lonely, I don’t think many people have been lonely.
It can be from just staying at home by yourself for a day too long, or maybe all your friends at school were homesick and you didn’t know who to sit with during lunch. It’s not exactly a difficult emotion to experience.
I think nearly everyone on earth has felt lonely before.
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