Sapling

-Graphics- Simplistic but serves its purpose. Way too much going on with the duck pond though. It was distracting and took away from the experience. The pond needs to be brought back down to the same level of simplicity as the rest of the area. -Mechanics- WASD to move. You can't get much more simple than that. 'H' just opens a quick menu to quit and show a reminder of what WASD does. -Sound- The music is a short and repetitive set of cords. It's a calm accompaniment to the narrator. Otherwise, there are no other sounds and that is disappointing. It would have been nice to hear some footsteps, maybe a bit of a breeze rustling the trees nearby. A few, quiet quacks from the duck. Just some ambiance. -Gameplay- It's a walking sim. You walk to the highlighted areas to trigger the narrative. The walking animation is smooth. -Story- The narrator tells the simple story of an oak sapling and a flower sharing the same living space for a while before mutually agreeing to go their separate ways as a larger living space becomes imperative. The story honestly sounds like the developer is saying they are ok after a sad but agreeable goodbye. The end of a friendship, a divorce, a separation...who knows? I could see this being a nice short story for kids to teach them that endings, while sad sometimes, shouldn't be seen as bad. -Overall- The story itself is nice but could be developed a bit more and be longer. Narrator, you have a wonderful voice and a longer storytelling would be in your favor. It would have been nice to be taken around the garden more and really make use of the available space. There needs to be more ambient sounds to make the scene come more alive. It is extremely short as everyone is saying. The whole thing takes less than five minutes. The game size is 1.49G which is insane. Looking at the game files, the developer seems to have added in VR support capabilities but the game itself is not VR compatible. Someone would need to test this to confirm it but there seems to be unnecessary files included in the game since it honestly shouldn't be such a large download. I believe the water graphics are also a culprit in this. All-in-all though, while it really has no replay value and is excruciatingly short, it was not a bad experience. I neither recommend nor do I not recommend giving it a try. It is a neutral recommendation but STEAM makes me choose. I'd say my feelings about this experience are more positive than negative.