Lake

Lake is a slice-of-life, choices-matter story game developed by Netherlands-based developers Gamious and published by White Thorn Games. Released in September 2021, the game provides a lovely bit of escapism from our present times, and shows a lot of promise as a potential format for subsequent games should the developers intend to build upon it.

Plot Synopsis and Gameplay

It’s September 1986 and you’re Meredith Weiss, a successful computer programmer from the big city who’s looking for a reprieve from the office culture grind. She has booked off two weeks from work to return to her childhood home of Providence Oaks, a small lakeside town set in the wilderness of Oregon. While there, she volunteers to fulfil her retiring dad’s postal rounds, and through doing so she reconnects with the locals; some from her past, along with a few new faces. Over the next two weeks, she will come to know more about them and possibly, more about herself.

The core gameplay loop is the daily delivery of both letters and parcels to the residents of Providence Oaks. To do this you’re provided with a mail van which is your main mode of transportation throughout the game. You can either have the game drive for you, or you can control the vehicle yourself, and using your trusty map you can fulfil your rounds in whatever order you wish and at your own pace. Having used a controller, I can say that the controls are simple and comfortable enough to use repeatedly. The game really delivers on this simple construct, and it provides a really relaxing and straightforward experience, especially after a busy day.

Over the course of these rounds you interact with a small but colourful cast of characters who represent the townsfolk, and when doing so you have the opportunity to make dialogue choices and even make a few commitments for events taking place after the main workday, which you keep track of using a journal. Through these interactions and commitments, you can grow closer to the townsfolk, two of whom are romanceable options for Meredith. Despite being identified as a “choices matter” game, I found that there are few moments where the outcomes in dialogue change very much. Nor did I find myself ever particularly pressed for time in terms of the commitments, so there was never any real reason to say no. However, I don’t consider this too terrible of a thing: Lake’s core aim is to provide a relaxing experience, and so it makes sense to avoid too much tension over the course of the game.

The writing is nothing groundbreaking, but the story is very pleasant and certainly one worth seeing through to the end. There’s also plenty of great humour sprinkled throughout, and while none of the character’s are particularly deep, there’s enough there for each of them to feel real and appreciable in their own ways.

The game overall is quite short, lasting from 6 ~ 9 hours depending on how long you decide to take in completing your rounds and whether you decide to take any detours along the way, either in the form of just seeing the sites, playing the minigame in the form of an arcade game cabinet in the Diner, and so on. Aside from the three potential endings to the game, there’s not much that changes throughout the course of the playthrough, so there’s not much on offer in terms of replayability. But again, I don’t consider this to the game’s detriment too much: I think it suits the overarching theme - we all must inevitably make a choice, and move on - and reminds us that, like Meredith, we came here for a good time, not a long time.

Visuals and Sound

The minimalist, stylised 3D art style of the game is another one of its biggest selling points. You can tell that a lot of effort went into crafting the world of Providence Oaks to make it feel like a believable, small American town, and the character designs are also charming. It really is nice to wander around and appreciate the layout of the town and the appearance of the houses and other little details here and there. The weather effects are also nice. The character models themselves are nice, though the lack of animation makes the cutscenes where character’s talk to one another a little janky. The game also fades to black whenever Meredith leaves the van and enters it, or skips ahead in a cutscene to them entering or exiting places, so it’s clear the developers wanted to avoid some animations. I also encountered a few minor graphical glitches during my playthrough - textures popping in and out, camera going in and out of focus, AI vehicles and townsfolk getting stuck in the terrain. A little immersion-breaking, but nothing too egregious.

The sound design and soundtrack for Lake is also very strong. The voice-acting more than makes up for the lack of expression on character’s faces, and the soundtrack - while small and repetitive by the time you reach the end of your playtime - is nevertheless very well-suited to the setting, and adds to the experience. The radio’s songs are especially catchy, and even as I’m writing this review I’m finding myself humming along to them. Occasionally I found that dialogue would cut a bit too early, leading to a very janky conversation between Meredith and whoever she was speaking to, but other than that I didn’t experience anything audibly that was too broken.

Conclusion

Lake is a perfectly enjoyable slice-of-life game with some minimal but interesting choices to be made, with a charming yet brief story along with warm visuals and sound design. While there are one or two snags here and there, it’s nothing that has ruined my experience of the game, nor deters me from recommending it heartedly to others. If you need a brief reprieve from the world, this is the game for you. I hope that if they intend to return to this style of game, the developer’s build upon the strong foundations that Lake has given them. I look forward to seeing what they come out with next.