A life’s ups and downs
Arise: A Simple Story Techland Publishing
Available on PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One
Arise: A Simple Story is an accessible, mostly satisfying platformer that’s filled with easily readable symbolism. It envisions the afterlife of a man whose body has been placed atop a funeral pyre. In the wintry realm of the hereafter the anonymous fellow, who has the look of an old woodsman, journeys through portals into episodes that reflect pivotal memories in his life from early childhood to advanced old age. These adventures are a showcase for the game’s art direction, which emphasizes simple forms and striking colours — like something out of an old animated feature.
The through line that binds the various chapters together is the man’s relationship with the childhood playmate who eventually became his lifelong spouse. During the game’s opening section, She, the old man visits a grassy area where he comes upon a statue of himself sitting on a rock as a solitary toddler. In the near distance, separated by water, are other small green fields. Tilting the controller’s right stick forward and backward accelerates and rewinds time, causing the water levels to rise and fall. Thus, a simple early puzzle in the game requires you to stand on a piece of beached driftwood and manipulate time so the water gathers beneath the wood, allowing you to float to a previously unreachable small land mass.
By roaming through the levels and peeking into odd corners, players will discover shiny shards of light or memories that flesh out the context of each level.
One of the first of the memories you’re likely to come upon shows the old man as a toddler watching a group of kids busy themselves in activity without him. Further into the level one comes across a memory that commemorates the first time that the child, who would mature into the love of his life, befriended him.
It’s the next stage, Joy, where Arise truly begins to shine. The level, which evokes the bliss of childhood, teems with oversized plants and docile insects that sway and move as players manipulate time. In later levels that reflect more difficult periods of the man’s life, tinkering with time will lighten up and darken the screen.
Arise is almost completely devoid of adversaries and is none the worse for it. The enemy the man encounters is a legion of shadows that will consume him if he tarries in their presence. Checkpoints are generous, while death from a fall, the cold or drowning results in a quick restart, and the platforming sequences are of light to moderate difficulty. Everything in the game is tuned so players can get lost in the overall journey as opposed to having to cope with difficulty spikes.
Frankly, I wasn’t particularly moved by the man’s ups and downs as much as I was in the developers’ use of platforming mechanics and level design to tell a universal tale about the stages of human existence.