farewell planet / おわかれのほし

Farewell Planet is a fantastic and also extremely sad little game. You play as the last remaining resident of a village where everyone has died, and your task is to say goodbye to everyone and put them to rest by fulfilling their final wishes. As you do this, you get glimpses into their lives and the things that used to trouble them. These minimalist snapshots range from the bittersweet to the outright tragic, and they're all emotionally moving and very well written, with the kind of ideas that leave you thinking about them for a while after. The game part of Farewell Planet is very simple (you walk around and do some easy puzzles that can be made even easier with a guide), but the absolutely gorgeous music ensures it never becomes boring, and this sparseness gives the stories themselves more room to shine. Overall, I really enjoyed it it. For a simple game, Farewell Planet is very well done and it's a shame so few people have played it (on Steam).

i played with the guide on, but mostly for reasons of having spent a little too much time in other games going back and forth; if you have time on your hands for a meditative walk where you read all the little signs and placards on the way, guide off is good tone is immaculate; the melancholic music and the simple visuals and the short lines of text that will shatter you with what they hold inside a few people have made comparisons with spiritfarer, and i do recommend that game as well, but this is pretty much spot on with what i look for in a work dealing with death and remembrance and the end of things no extraneous detail, just enough to suggest a vibrant world that had died long before you came, and that you were left behind in the thing about the story that breaks my heart the most is how connected you are with everyone in the village, even before you were ever born, and how distant from them you will be forever, now that they're all gone not all of them cared about you, not all of them even wanted you to be here but in death, even the most isolated ones, their hearts are connected to you now and you will never see them again