The Yawhg — Happiness in the Face of Destruction
by Frosty
GAME: The Yawhg
TIME TO COMPLETE: 15 minutes
PLATFORM: PC
The Yawhg is a cute little story about the apocalypse. Really.
The game takes the idea of a doomed fantasy kingdom on the verge of destruction by Eldritch horror and slaps softly illustrated, colorful art over top of it. It’s very doom and gloom, very foreboding, but it’s also very, very pretty aesthetically. It’s kind of like Night In the Woodsin that, its art style is deceptive about the kind of game it actually is. And that’s not a bad thing.
The Yawhg is a simplistic turn based game. The goal is to play through six weeks with your characters of choice to determine how they will survive the impending Yawhg, a catastrophic force that moves in from the sea and destroys all in its path.
At the start of the game you choose between two and four characters, then you’re thrown to the map view where you are given the choice of eight different locations to place each character and determine how they’ll spend their time for the week. Each turn is a week in game time, and you need to place your characters in locations that will benefit them most and give them the most skills. Specific events are triggered in each are, and different attributes can be added or subtracted from your characters status depending on how you spend your time and how you react to said events. Repeat this six times, and then the Yawhg destroys the town, and you’re given the final choice of the game: deciding how each character tries to help in the efforts to rebuild. This summary kind of makes it sound like a very dry, boring experience, but it’s really not. It’s just a super simple game with super simple mechanics.
I was initially attracted to The Yawhg by a Polygon overview of the game. In the video Griffin Mcelroy and Chris Plante mention that it almost seems like it was developed to be a multiplayer game. I agree. The Yawhg is probably best enjoyed when played by a couple of friends crowded around one computer. It has a very “board gamey” feel to it, and I can see how its format could be adapted to tabletops pretty effortlessly. I played the game alone, but I’d like to spend time casually playing it with a friend one day to see how our combined efforts might affect the outcome.
That said, I really did enjoy spending time alonewith the game, and I’m glad that that’s the first way I played it. It’s easy to pick up and play a few rounds when you’re bored, and it’s easy to get invested in trying different things to change the ultimate outcome of your town. There’s lots of prompts and events to spice up your playthroughs so each is unique.
However, though the events are random and plentiful, they aren’t unlimited so sometimes replaying the game multiple times consecutively means seeing a lot of the same choices played out. For instance, I played the game three times in a row and managed to get the same event in the woods area of the map every single time. The ultimate outcome was a little different each time, but nonetheless I played through that choice thrice in the span of forty-five minutes. I can see how that might be grating or off-putting for players, but for me it was fine, exciting even. It only takes fifteen minutes to complete one full game, and that’s with four characters active on the map. It takes less time with two. It’s not as if replaying scenarios eats up a lot of your time.
I think the most charming thing about The Yawhgis its overall style. I said before that it’s a cute game about the apocalypse, and it really is. There is some unexpectedly dark and moody writing in The Yawhg, despite its colorful art and its folksy soundtrack. In one playthrough I managed to save my entire town with all four characters, which is notably difficult to achieve, and one character, though they lived a nice life, still got a rather depressing write up that basically said things were bland for them until they died. And that was the happy ending, complete with a dreamy illustration of said character looking out of the window on a sunny day and a little line of text beneath it that said, “You die.”
It’s a nice juxtaposition, the sweet cutesy feel and sound combined with the rough, melancholic writing. It’s bittersweet. I like it a lot. The Yawhg was written by people who are hopeful, but they have some world weariness about them. They know everything isn’t always hunky dory, and that’s something that I really appreciate about this game. I wish more media took this cue. Things can be dark and unrelenting, but also have an optimistic edge. Games don’t always have to be grim-dark and moody to be mature. The Yawhgis a sad game without burrowing itself in depressing schlock, and that’s really admirable to me.
In this story, you’re witnessing a town be destroyed by some sort of unknown Eldritch horror in the span of just six weeks, and though you actively play a role(s) in the town’s destruction, a lot of things are left up to a coin toss. Either you’re successful or you’re not. And the worst part is that it’s all happened before. It’s made clear that the Yawhg continually happens. The chaos is cyclic, and whether you finish on a hopeful note or not there is a promise that the Yawhg will return one day to wreak more havoc. No one will be prepared for it again, and next time the town might not even survive. It’s just a gamble. That’s devastating and surprisingly mature for a pseudo board game.
Yet, as I said, The Yawhg doesn’t steep itself in misery and suffering. Somehow despite all of the bleakness woven into the writing, The Yawhgis a cautiously optimistic game. There’s small moments of reprieve where your characters succeed, and there’s scenarios that, no matter how many times I manage to play through them, bring a smile to my face. There’s a moment where you can choose to give a poor old man some shade under the hot sun and another where you help a poor beggar buy food. You get no reward for “doing the right thing”, but your character feels renewed at those interactions. It’s in those little acts of kindness, of hope and happiness in dire times that I found The Yawhg to be at its most positive and vibrant. Those little glimmers of optimism keep the game from getting too bogged down by its heavier, more melancholy notes.
All in all, I think The Yawhg is a really great little piece of art that does a good job at balancing two conflicting tones. The game can be quite pessimistic and defeatist, but it still has an upbeat feel, and it keeps things hopeful enough that playing it isn’t a dreadful, depressing slog. That’s something I have been in dire need of, so I made a pretty strong connection with The Yawhg.
In real life things feel apocalyptic right now, and it’s not hard for me to become emotionally drained by current social, economic, and political issues. There’s something really soothing about playing an apocalyptic game like The Yawhgand seeing little jokes and happy moments amidst all of the destruction and despair. It’s something I need to work harder to find in real life, these gentle respites from it all, and I’m grateful to The Yawhgfor teaching me that lesson. The end of the world as you know know it isn’t all blood and destruction. There’s also fleeting flickers of happiness and peace and togetherness.
And to me those little moments are worth something, even if they’ll inevitably be threatened by the storm again one day.
