Playing through
Bramble: The mountain king.
I picked this one up a few weeks ago when it was brought up as a game set within Swedish folklore. When I first that I thought of
Year Walk, a game set in a part of Swedish folklore I wasn't even aware of and I haven't played but which was very light on the graphics department. At the time I figured it made sense, it is treating such a niche subject that using a big budget treatment sounds excessive. I was therefore blown away by the
Bramble: The mountain king's trailer because HOLY MOLEY they put some actual effort into it and I hadn't even heard of it! The reviews weren't glowing and I worried there would be segments that would induce simulation sickness but I figured I wanted to see it anyway.
Based on the walkthrough I am 5/8's through now and my impressions were correct: it is the visual department that is the game's strongest suit. This extends to having the camera itself guide the direction the player is meant to go by changing the focus of the frame to indicate where the scene is meant to proceed. They also have various [interact] segments where you switch to first person and in some of those there are in-game storybooks that are very well illustrated. The rest of it - well it could be a lot better.
We are firmly in the dark and twisted fairytale where 8 year old Olle must go out to save his sister Lillemor after they went out during the night and ended up in the land of gnomes, and was then taken away. I think. See, as far as the plot goes it feels like it is mostly a progression of "And then this happened, and then this happened" so I don't remember what happened to Lillemor or if I even know that. The same is true of the gameplay: there are some standard gameplay loops but the effort is firmly in making those fit into the various set pieces, or levels, where they have though up a major setting or enemy which is the current predicament.
It is also extremely linear. And directed to the degree that I'm not thinking of how to proceed nor considering what Olle might think, I am just thinking of it in terms of "I guess the game wants me to do this". The most telling moment was when I was in an enclosed room without knowing what to do and I was given the option to [interact] with various big books, which when I did lead to Olle stacking them into a pile. "I guess I'm supposed to build a platform" I thought without knowing what the purpose was, but once I did I reached a higher shelf and didn't know what to do. Eventually I checked up a walkthrough which told me that I had to crouch to get out the window at the top shelf, a mechanic I had almost forgotten about at that point, and I didn't see that the window could be walked through. I repeat: there was problem in a game with a solution and the game's design precluded me from actually being the one experimenting my way to a solution.
As far as its' Swedishness goes: once I found out the protagonist was named Olle my name immediately went to the children's song
Mors lilla Olle, about a kid picking berries, encountering a bear, happily feeding his newfound friend under the mistaken notion that it was a dog, until his mum appears, shrieks in horror whereby the bear runs away. I think the developers thought of that song when making the game since the first line in the song would in English be "Mum's little Olle walked the forest" and "Lillemor" literally means "little mum". It makes sense, since they are firmly in the making children's stories macabre and scary territory. There also was a beautiful segment where Olle arrived at a beautiful flowery meadow and the soundtrack turned to
Den blomstertid nu kommer. As far as folklore goes... well there was one segment there that I was actively disappointed in: Näcken.
Näcken is a water spirit that can take the form of a human violin player or a beautiful horse. In horse form the story goes that he tempted children to ride him, extending his back to accommodate all the children, and then ran into the water to drown them. As a violin player he was apparently supernaturally good, and one could go out and try to get a lesson from him by listening in, but he would be dangerous and try to kill you afterwards, unless you were prepared. The story that I remember as a child as the most captivating was someone that had managed to learn a tune from Näcken which he played at a dance which compelled everybody present to dance and to keep dancing until presumably they would've danced themselves to death, it was only solved by a deaf man managing to cut the violin's strings off.
So what we have here is a spirit that is a tempter, and who already in his lore has a quite disturbing way to die, so why on earth was his level one where he at fixed intervals send out a single note which if you are not protected you are immediately ragdolled to death? His music is meant to be alluring, not a direct assault. And this also sounds like it could be implemented more in accordance to lore without changing the level: have his music play continuously during the level and at the attack segments have it be a distinctive note which would then allure Olle to walk off of the path into the water.
Currently I'm in a segment where I must rotate the camera in four directions to play whack-a-mole, and I'm getting simulation sick.
