Flash Fiction in Video Game Form
Ultimately, this review ends in a Yes recommendation only because it will help this game get de-classified as shovelware, and because there's no Maybe option.
Sayo is a quaint little walking simulator set in a slightly unsettling, slightly charming snowy townscape. You start the game, Sayo admits she can't remember anything and that's it. You're left to figure out the rest of the game on your own. Great for people who really don't like to have their hands held even a little bit. For a 5$ walking sim, the map is actually rather large, so inevitably you'll just start blindly wandering around, maybe stumbling across the odd memory here or there, and perhaps even just kinda lose yourself in the surreal calm the game's world exudes. Eventually, you might stumble across The Door. This is your end game, essentially. You have to collect enough memories for the door to unlock so you can take the stairway behind it up into the sky. I don't believe there's any specific memory you need to find to unlock the door, as I unlocked it after finding roughly 11 memories (the one to finally unlock it being the flower on the barricaded apartment building) and the only guide in existence on a japanese website got it to unlock after finding the school desk. And then you climb the stairs, and you get your ending! And that's that, right? Well, yes and no. If you're just here for the one time experience, this is where you can probably get off, and as a one time experience, it's honestly fine, even if Ending 1 is a little bit of a downer.
What's that? Ending 1? There's multiple endings? Yes actually, there's 2 endings! And I'll admit, I love ending 2. It's cute, it's lovely, it's sickeningly bittersweet. I'd have probably cried if this game had more story to invest myself in. However, if you want to get ending two, I am going to have to warn you that doing so will probably cost you some sanity, some brain cells, and the cost of getting a nice wig and fixing a hole in your wall.
There are 15 memories in total in the game. Now, you don't need all of them to get Ending Two (though there is an achievement for finding all the memories). In fact, you only need one specific memory to trigger Ending Two: You gotta find Pun, the dog. Now, as there are achievements for both endings, I would definitely recommend you get Ending 1 first, and then try for Ending 2, as meeting the requirements to get Ending 2 will lock your file out of being able to see Ending 1 at all, forcing a reset, but if you're ready to find Pun, buckle up. Pun the dog is, from where you spawn into the world, more or less directly to your back left out into the snowy wasteland around the city. So, easy, you think. I mean he's a little white thing out in a vast blanket of equal white snow, but this should be fine right? Just head in that direction and, oh, look. It's a tower made out of children's shape blocks. It's a jumping course. In a walking simulator with some of the worst actual jumping I've ever had the displeasure to see or deal with in a game before. This wouldn't be the end of the world if it was just a bunch of cubes and cylinders, but there's spheres and cones as well. Cones with the points facing UP. Meaning you now have to try and fight the awful jump physics while trying to get enough speed to actually make your jump go far enough to land on the next block. At least half of my play time was spent banging my head into a wall just trying to fight this damned tower. But, if you persevere, it can in fact be conquered and Pun found. This unlocks the achievements both to find Pun, and then, when you go back to the end area, getting ending 2. Oh hey, that just leaves one more achievement right? Finding all the memories? There's only 15, depending on which ones you found, this might not be that bad!
It is that bad. Between the mind numbing sameness of all the buildings, the completely lack of stairs up to the rooftops (there's maybe 3 in the map, total?), and a FoV so miserably foggy any landmarks you might have are functionally useless, you are looking at possibly hours more of time spent just trying to find what memories you could be missing. Couple this with the fact that Sayo has exactly 2 speeds of movement: inexcusably slow and, when "Sprint" is enabled, a normal walking speed and any amount of time you spend on is going to feel like a complete drag. It doesn't help that there aren't really any guides out there; the only one I know of a friend found on a Japanese blog site, but if I'm being honest it's hardly much of a help. The tips are minimal and the Google auto translate probably isn't helping much either. When I finished with ending 1, I had 11 out of 15 memories. The only ones I was missing were Pun, the school desk, the bunny plush, and the bunny tea party. Pun was a nightmare up the tower, I got exceedingly lucky on stumbling across the bunny plush on a rooftop, and the tea party was a pain but ultimately I ended up figuring out to work the hint on the Japanese blog and was able to find it. The school desk? Took me another hour on its own. I knew where it WAS, the problem is that it's up on the rooftops, and there's neither a staircase that close by nor a direct route from the closest staircase to the building it's on. Meaning you have to try and navigate this dreary, snowy hellscape with all the buildings looking extremely similar to try and find a way AROUND. In a world where if you blink or look away for two seconds, you will probably lose your sense of direction and have to start over. And your reward for finding all of these things? It ain't much.
This is where I think Sayo is probably at it's most controversial, and how I ended up coming to the conclusion that I did. There's not really much story here, like at all. You get the opening line about not remembering, a few lines here and there for the different memories, and then the wrap up bits in both endings. There's no explanations, no deeper lore to uncover, no further tangents or endings or even other characters. If you walk into this game expecting some kind of closure beyond a girl and her dog reuniting, you are going to leave disappointed. But you know what, I think that's all fine. I don't think this game needs to have a deeper or more expansive story to be compelling in its own right. This is, as I said at the beginning, essentially flash fiction in the form of a playable video game. It's short and more or less focused on what Sayo is going through right in this moment.
There's a term used in poetry analysis that I can't remember off the top of my head that used to describe poetry that doesn't have a meaning, that doesn't have an answer, but that just exists. Sayo fits that term very well, in my opinion. There is no deeper answer, no deeper meaning to try and attain. It just is. That's why I think people calling this game a scam are just wrong. It's not going to be a game for everybody; if you struggle with the game's jumping, or you struggle with abstract stories that rob you of closure, you aren't going to get a lot of enjoyment out of this game. In fact, I fully believe that most of the people who play this game are going to bounce off of it to some degree. But, I also believe that the people who will find resonance with this game will feel that connection deep in their hearts. So can I really recommend this game? Yeah, kinda. Maybe. I can recommend you give it a try at least. See how much you resonate with it.
