Kind of an average game, but one with a very emotional story.
The game bills itself as two parallel stories, that of a fox trying to find her babies and a man talking to his wife, sharing stories about his relationship with his father, though the former is a dream the man had, and the latter is him finding parallels and symbolism in the fox dream and applying it to his own childhood memories. The end result works, but it's a little clumsy in its execution.
The gameplay, is not very deep, and in some ways is detrimental to the story. You play as a fox exploring large, open environments, as the narrator describes her actions and what she finds as the dream he had. As you explore you'll find strange, out of place locations and structures from the narrator's childhood, and examining them will prompt him to remember something about his past. For example, finding wooden toys will cause him to remember his father handcarving things for him and how much he loved them, until the other kids teased him and accused him of being too poor to afford proper toys. The environments themselves are very pretty, and exploring them is fun and the stories are interesting enough that you'll want to seek them out.
Unfortunately there's a collectible aspect to the game, with each area having a certain number of stars to find, and you'll find yourself spending delaying the story to find all of them, particularly since there's no backtracking and it's very easy to wander too close to a certain location, unaware that it leads to the next area, and then find yourself being automatically to the next area without any way to return to the previous one and find the last couple of stars. Accidentally walking too close to a path and then being forced to the next area is basically a rite of passage for this game. The first area is particularly frustrating, since it's a beautiful location with lots of white, sparkling snow, and the stars are white, sparkling objects that will blend in perfectly.
The game's endings (plural, based on your actions) are also awkwardly implemented. They're both too weighed to the different stories and instead of tying things together and giving both a sense of closure you're going to have to choose which one is resolved, and I would argue that one of the endings is much more satisfying and does a closer job of resolving things, especially because light spoilers one of the endings is chosen by ignoring something that everything up to this point in the story is telling you that you should be doing. It's counterintuitive to a fault.
Having said that, the story has a lot of emotional weight and very much worth hearing. The voice acting is amateur in the best way possible, making it actually feel authentic and not just acting. The stories you hear feel real and fill you with a sense of nostalgia and empathy. The story is inspired by the writer, developer, and narrator's own experiences with loss and birth, and you feel that weight with every word. The fox's story isn't quite as deep, but an animal lover will certainly feel the emotional beats and that alone will make this game unsuitable for a lot of people. If the sight of the fox finding the lifeless body of her child in the trailer gave you pause, you should probably consider skipping this one because the stories will put you through an emotional wringer.
All said, it's a fun enough game provided you don't mind the stress/distraction that comes from trying to do the achievements, or at least don't mind them enough to not let things detract from the story. The game itself is clunky, but the story shines and is worth hearing. Just make sure you have a few moments afterwards to sit in the dark and compose yourself after.
