Warm welcome

The sepia tones of this quiet, gentle goat-farming sim help tell an intimate story of life and loss that will linger in the memory

Behind the gentle sepia tones of The Stillness Of The Wind

There’s a wonderfully inviting air to The Stillness Of The Wind. You’re put in the shoes of elderly goat farmer Talma as she goes about her daily business on her isolated homestead. Leaves blow through golden fields, where animals graze contentedly. “It was important for me to make this feel warm and welcoming, in order to create a place that people wanted to be and for the player to instantly settle in,” creator Coyan Cardenas says. Characters come and go as you tend to your farm, bringing you tidings from your family in the city. The life sim is the ideal genre to tell a more personal, intimate story, Cardenas says. “Peeking through a window to catch a glimpse of a quiet day in the life of someone, especially if they live in a different world, is something I think videogames as a medium are perfect for exploring. Asking the player to enact their daily routine, live inside their skin a while, seems to me to be the ideal way to build empathy for a character.”

Indeed, your simple little life doesn’t stay that way for long, trouble brewing in the watercolour skies above. “As the narrative develops, things aren’t as cheerful and quaint as they first seem,” Cardenas says. “Things get tough, resulting in a meta-nostalgia for how things were – a kind of literal manifestation of ‘golden memories’.” A brief period of rural bliss followed by a heart-wrenching tale,

The Stillness Of The Wind will release on PC ‘when the goats are ready’, apparently.