#year walk

After playing Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, I was curious about Simogo's other moody puzzle adventures, especially this one which got an enhanced port to the Wii U. Now of course you can't buy Wii U games anymore, but there are more custom ways, and of course I supported the developer by buying a copy on Steam as well!

Year Walk leans into the developers' Swedish origins by portraying the old folk ritual of årsgång, where by deprivation and quest one might catch a glimpse of the future. This plays out as a short horror-puzzle adventure where you navigate a small forest, gathering clues and encountering dangerous creatures from Scandinavian folklore such as the Brook Horse and Church Grim.

Your surroundings are rendered like a bleak but beautiful watercolour pop-up book. Each screen is a simple 2D line with exits above and below, and occasional things to interact with. Year Walk keeps things fairly simple with the controls, but requires some note-taking to match up patterns and symbols. When you find one of the forest's monsters, things go beyond creepy fairy tale into the territory of jumpscares and slightly disturbing imagery, so be warned.

The ending is especially grim, but a post-credits scene hints at a deeper mystery that reveals a new layer to the story, explored via journal entries from a modern scholar of these cultural practices. I found it interesting, especially with respect to Lorelei which expands on similar concepts.

As a bite-sized but evocative puzzle game with some nice cultural ties it's a nice little package, but I found it rewarding to learn about the game's development history as well. Originally teased and hinted as almost an ARG, it arrived on iOS alongside a companion app with more background on the mythology involved, which does also have some gameplay relevance. A year later it received a computer port, which updates some things, integrates the encyclopedia, and adds a handy map. I found it worked well on Steam Deck with a combination of button and touchscreen controls. The Steam release also uniquely has achievements, some of which act as extra bonus puzzles.

The Wii U version came as a result of Nintendo courting indies in that era, with the porting help of Dakko Dakko. This goes all in on Gamepad features, with lots of gyro and rotation for basic actions, which I found strained my wrists a bit. There's an added interaction or two and certain notes and documents are now presented in Swedish with a translation for enhanced verisimilitude, but the use of the second screen is what makes this the definitive way to play for me, as it enables easy reference of the map, journal, etc. while keeping them separate from the context of the action in the forest. It also adds an in-built note-taking function, and an alternate more involved puzzle to unlock the second ending which even makes use of the normally dry Wii U digital manual!