Old Man’s Journey
Papa don’t preach
Developer Broken rules publisher Broken rules price $ 14.99 AvAilAble At steam www.oldmansjourney.com
The past ten years or so have seen video game development move through a period of what has come to be known as Dadification. That is to say, from Sean Bean in Fallout 3 to Lee in The Walking Dead, from Red Dead’s John Marston to various BioShocks, The Witcher 3, The Last of Us and countless others, there has been a heck of a lot of dads in video games of late.
When I spoke with Rime creative director Raul Rubio a couple of issues ago, he cited the birth of his first child as an inspiration for much of that game’s sensibility and thematic exploration. It’s easy to imagine that as developers reach a certain age, the games they make might reflect their life experience. The teenage fantasies of space ships, robots, dragons and really, really hot elves might start to recede as serious, adult responsibilities, like being a parent, draw ever nearer.
Old Man’s Journey can be seen as the next logical step in the Dadification of games. It’s the Video Game Dad taken to the next level, you might say, if you were still obsessed with the aforementioned teen fantasies.
You play as an old man. You can tell he’s old because he has a big grey beard and carries a walking stick. His journey, as referenced in the title, is both literal and figurative. With walking stick and rucksack in hand, he sets out for a stroll in the countryside. At the outset his destination is ambiguous, but it’s not long before you realise where it all might be heading.
The 2D landscape is composed of numerous layers, each typically representing a hill or a road or some other platform you can traverse. By clicking on a layer you can move it up
you can tell he’s old because he has a big grey beard and carries a walking stick
and down, thus altering the landscape. For example, by dragging the curves of two hills that were previously separated, you can cause them to now touch and the old man can travel between them.
At its core, Old Man’s Journey is a puzzle game. In each of the dozen or so locations, most of which span a good half dozen or so screens, your objective is simply to guide him to the end, manipulating the layers of the landscape as you go. What makes it tricky is that you cannot move the layer he is currently on, and so most of the puzzles are derived from having to work around this restriction. Still, it’s a light affair, and none of the areas left me stumped for terribly long, even if a few of them do serve up some clever variations on the theme.
What I enjoyed most about Old Man’s Journey was its tone. It’s a slow paced game – you’re an old man, after all, and he really does walk everywhere – that leaves you with plenty of time to dwell in its whimsical art and gently strumming guitar soundtrack. Each area plays like a vignette of a man – a husband, a father, a grandfather - looking back on his life, trawling through memories, for better and worse. The revelations aren’t profound, but the mood will strike a chord with anyone who’s lived a life and has regrets. Playing this game won’t be one of them, though. DAVID WILDGOOSE