Year Walk — Critical Play: Mysteries
Year Walk is an adventure/mystery game developed and published by Swedish mobile game developer Simogo for iOS devices in 2013. It successfully balanced the narratives, mystery elements, as well as a sense of horror.
Narratives
As it is named, Year Walk is a walking-based mystery game, and through the mechanics of moving forward and backward, the player can explore the places gradually. The marks on the map indicates landmarks (mostly wooden houses) to explore and interact with. Meanwhile, sometimes there are NPCs waiting in those houses, with some of them having conversations with the player to support the narratives, and some of them helping to unfold or solve the puzzles.
Year Walk can also be considered as a story-based game, with a lot of the story pieces are hidden in the dialogues. Moreover, there is also a “true ending” after the normal ending of the game — players would need to follow the instructions(the Journal) and “walk again” to unfold the historical events throughout the year, as well as important photos hidden. Sometimes players even have to go to Wiki for more truth. All of these settings undoubtedly would make the game more mysterious.
Mechanics
The core mechanics of the game can be considered as a loop of: to walk and explore — find puzzles / NPCs — solve the puzzles. During this process, the following mechanics/elements successfully helped in adding mystery and horror to the game:
- The puzzles themselves, as well as the spooky background music and sound effect.
- The interactions between NPCs and the player. Sometimes there are dialogues that create a mysterious atmosphere; sometimes there is no dialogue between the NPC and the player, with only the NPC leading the player to unfold some parts of the game. For example, a path to a hidden puzzle.
- The way that NPCs give hints to solve the puzzles.
- Exploration of the game itself.
- There are also hidden horrible elements as the game goes on.
