If you’re looking for a new story rich, narrative game, then you may have been looking at Arctic Awakening on Steam. The game is created and self-published by GoldFire Studios, and has us play as Kai, a pilot who crash lands with his companion therapy bot Alfie. We can expect to make hard choice and survive harsher weathers.
You can survive anything with the right mindset.
Arctic Awakening is out now on Steam, with an introductory 10% off until 25th September. Have you been keeping an eye on this game, if so, let me know in the comments below.
Gameplay
Arctic Awakening is at its core a walking simulator game. Players are able to pick up items, but besides food to stave off hunger, there isn’t much need for carrying anything. Which is a shame since you can pick up almost everything that isn’t pinned down. A good example is when I had to remove some boards with a hatchet, but I had found a crowbar much earlier on in the game and had that stashed about my person. Rendering the hatchet a bit pointless. Besides that aforementioned hunger, players will manage Kai’s mental wellbeing, which is done by performing breathing exercises at Cairn stones found around the environment.
At times, the player can select a choice from four options when they appear on-screen. You do have a limited window to respond, but this is adjustable via the settings in game. Some choices will impact the story, although the only one that comes to mind was when I saved a character only for them to save me later on. But without another ply through, I’m not actually sure if this is a scripted event or not.
Graphics & Audio
The visuals and sounds of Arctic Awakening are pleasant but simplistic. The voice acting doesn’t feel too cheesy or poorly executed. I didn’t really notice, nor was I grasped by, any of the in-game music.
Graphics wise, the textures were all very minimalist, but not too harsh on the eye in terms of flat colour. I enjoyed the sparkly particles in the snow. However, despite how simplistic the game felt, I had numerous frame drops and stutters, and multiple times the screen would flash black during dialogue for no particular reason.
Longevity
Arctic Awakenings story spans over five episodes and each is expected to last roughly two hours to beat. My playtime clocked in just a couple of minutes over nine hours, and this was mainly due to some issues I had while playing. There are multiple ending for you to get if you wish, with them depending on the choice you make with Alfie. While you can also find some collectables in the form of mugs, cereal, and stuffed Dino toys.
Final Thoughts
To put it simply, Arctic Awakening was really boring. The story does little to improve as the player completes each episode. Never do I feel that Kai is actually bothered by anything going on, but instead he comes off bored himself. With each episode feeling like it gets worse and even when uncovering information, it left me feeling like nothing actually happens. Big government facilities, why are they here? Who cares? What happened here? Ah don’t worry this doesn’t need explaining. The ending plays off like it was added in last minute with even less explanation, especially with the random reveal. This might be due to me not selecting the decoder that translates drones for Alfie, but nothing really gets expanded on, and that annoys me.
On the gameplay side, it’s what you’d expect of a walking sim, but only thanks to a good few moments such as the cliff climbing or elevators. Even then I would be forced to replay a scene as Kai wouldn’t be able to move. Another large bug I came across was me finding a massive area you could fall through. In fact you saw it in the gif in the previous section of this review. This wasn’t just a small layer issue. This bug causes the player to fall to a later segment of the game and then become stuck. Which doesn’t exactly make you want to continue playing.
In the end Arctic Awakening suffers with a dull story, one-dimensional characters, and dragged out scenes. So it’s the Thumb Culture Bronze Award from me.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
