Power Hour Review: Year Walk

For this week’s Power Hour Review, I decided to take a look a Year Walk. Year Walk is an Swedish indie horror game that was released last year on IOS and came to Steam this month. The game originally caught my eye because of the muted graphics, which give the game a surreal, creepy feel. Right up my alley, and the game does not disappoint graphically. It is beautiful.

The premise behind Year Walk involves the ancient Swedish phenomena of Year Walk and using the ritual to see the future. Year Walk is a point-and-click adventure, but it is a strange point-and-click adventure. The game is in first person, and as you move around, you have to keep an eye out for cursers to appear to help guide you along the way. The cursors are actually somewhat outside of the gameplay screen, which makes it a bit difficult to follow. It took me a bit to get used to the format. I kept feeling like I was lost or continually visiting the same places. I finally figured out there is a map, though, which helps a lot. After that, I was able to get my bearings pretty quickly. The first person you talk to turns out to be a girl you are in a secret relationship with. She is evidently on a deadline to tell some man whether or not she will be with him instead. The first hour didn’t tell me the significance of this, but I suppose this is why I want to see the future. I’ll keep playing to find out. 

Overall, Year Walk’s gameplay feels isolating and creepy. You spend most of your time walking these paths, which are covered in snow. I can tell you from living in Indiana this winter that the designers got the sound of walking on snow exactly right. (So, if for some reason you feel like you haven’t gotten enough snow this winter, this might be the game for you.) The game also uses puzzles that I haven’t encountered much in other games. For example, one part of the game requires you to listen to parts of a song in order to determine the correct path. This was hard for me because the game is asking you to detect the right pitch, and I’m not that great with music. Lucky for me, the game also includes hints, which in the case of the music puzzle tell you which one to pick. I did try to solve it without hints, but after about the fifth time, I just had to admit defeat. I’m not a music person.

For about the first half hour to forty-five minutes, I was thinking this game might be good for people who want to play scary games, but don’t actually want to be scared. During the initial gameplay, the game seemed atmospheric and somewhat creepy, but definitely not scary. However, that started to change somewhat around the forty-five minute mark. I won’t spoil anything, but the game does seem to escalate as far as scary goes. Along with the maps, Year Walk includes an encyclopedia, which gives more backstory and describes some of the characters involved in the game. I had been ignoring the encyclopedia, but right at the forty-five minute mark the game sort of highlighted it for me, so I checked it out. Some of the stories in there might give me nightmares.

If you’re into horror, this might be a good game for you. It’s no Outlast as far as fear factor goes, but it’s pretty creepy, and seems to get creepier as you go along. I’ll keep playing mainly for that reason. If you scare easily or are bothered by violent stories, this might not be the game for you. If you like a lot of action in your games, this is probably not a good pick for you. Year Walk is slow moving. The game is also pretty cheap at $5.99 on Steam right now. Because of the price and the limited map, I expect this is a short game. So, if you’re just looking for a creepy game for a snowy day, this might be a good buy for you. I’m trying to limit my spending on new games, so this was a fun one for me.