Walden, a game

I live in a small shack without walls and with most of the roof missing, in a fairly large piece of nature that's mostly taken up by a fairly large lake. I stroll slowly around this lake at a leisurely pace, taking pithy notes about the trees and the plants and the rabbits and the dirt whenever I right-click on them. A short distance from my shack I find Ralph Waldo Emerson. He's looking for a book he left somewhere. I find it and bring it to him, and continue on. I've not ventured far before it becomes dusk, then night, then my day ends and I opt to start the next day from this same spot. I venture farther around the lake. I find another Ralph Waldo Emerson, looking for another book. I am exhausted from the journey, but standing in front of his campfire for a few seconds restores me completely. I find a boat which brings me to the center of the lake, then back to the shore. I explore a new area, but suddenly the season has changed and it's now summertime. I find a third Ralph Waldo Emerson still going on about this book he's left somewhere. Night falls and I opt to start the next day from my cabin. It's a secluded spot, far from humankind, except that someone has left a letter outside the frame I generously call my "front door". That, and there's a town nearby that I can visit for provisions. I set out to find it and I come across a derelict shanty, from which I salvage wood planks as the game eagerly congratulates me for having completed construction on my shack. Nearby stands another Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is at this point I begin to understand Thoreau's yearning for solace, nature, and an Emerson-less existence.

Cannot in good faith recommend this, as much as I wanted to like it. I love walking simulators with light survival elements, I love slow cozy games about wandering outside. I don't mind poor or simple graphics. But the experience of playing this game is incredibly frustrating. Each new skill tutorial requires you to stop, read a paragraph about the skill, press confirm, then do the action with no guidance reminding you what to press. Modern games usually just pop up simple instructions on the hud with no confirm required that you can refer to as you do the action. Digging through the pause menu reveals several tabs that ACTUALLY explain how to play the game. Thoreau apparently gets hungry every 4 minutes, and what I thought was an icon of a lighter is his "food jar", still not sure how to determine if it's full or empty, or how to check on the status of any other needs. Ultimately the UI and gameplay feels like something from 90s, really archaic and borderline unplayable, certainly unenjoyable. The experience of playing Walden is ludonarratively dissonant from the story and message of Walden; rushed, frustrating and frantic. Disappointing because it's a great concept.

A man who plays lives a thousand lives before they die. A man who never plays lives only one. EDIT: I made a mod that fixes the mouse issues. You can get it from nexusmods or the steam discussions

yes.

This is easily the worst game I have ever played. The idea of putting Henry David Thoreau's book into a game is solid, but the execution is unbelievably poor. The camera is janky and jittery (unless you have your lantern out, then it becomes normal). There is very little to do in the game, and what little there is to do is beyond mind-numbing. From the roughly two thirds of the game I played, I spend about 50% of it waiting around for the day to end so I could progress the story and continue quests. If Sophia and Emerson's quests are finished, there is nothing to do each day beyond the absolute essentials. I read other reviews that say the game has pretty visuals and promotes reflection and I can only half agree. The visuals are very poor, it's the same couple trees, rocks, and bushes copy and pasted around the forest. The bit on reflection is a bit more accurate. There is nothing but reflection to do in this game. (That's what lead me to make this review. I really formulated exactly why this game is bad.) Don't buy or play this unless you really want to walk around an empty forest, doing nothing but clicking on bushes.

精致。特别。有意境。是对原书很好的改编。

Until a FOV changing option is present, the game is unplayable for me. Not even 10 minutes in and I have a migraine from the close FOV. The concept seems amazing from what I saw, I just cant enjoy it with the low FOV.