Closer the Distance Review (noktalivirgul)
It makes me wonder if the writer (or the entire dev team) has ever experienced profound loss in their lives, because the way the mom and the dad react to the untimely death of their daughter is completely unrealistic. People lose their minds when they hear something like that. They can't contain their emotions, even the most stoic person will be at a loss for words. They won't just go to a different room and act like nothing happened. This is seriously unrealistic and weird. The way they initially react to these horrible news took me out of the game entirely. This is not how people act when someone dies unexpectedly. They wail, they get angry, they collapse physically. It takes them weeks, or even months to put together a coherent sentence.
One of the most memorable moments of my entire life was when my father received a call from my uncle telling him that my grandfather had passed away. It still remains the only moment that I have ever seen my father broken down like that. And he was expecting it! Grandpa had cancer and genuinely wasn't doing well. Yet my father was bawling and desperately hugging my mother like I had never seen before. Can you imagine what his reaction would be if I, his young and healthy son, were to die unexpectedly? And like I said, this is not a personality thing. Literally everyone loses their minds when a loved one dies.
I don't think I can fully immerse myself in this game because it doesn't seem like the characters' daughter or their sister or their girlfriend etc. died; it's as if their two-week-old pet fish died. Sorry Osmotic, I liked Orwell but this is just badly written so far.
Will update if I change my mind.
Edit: The writing doesn't get better an hour in, and I got spoilers that an even more immersion-breaking character appears in the final act. If you care about believable characters in a story, this is not the game for you.
Also, the gameplay is lackluster, it's basically simplified Sims that had the potential to focus on the themes of the story but does not. For example, it's difficult to take care of yourself when you're grieving, but here the gameplay is very inconsistent. It would've been better to simply focus on the vitals: e.g. making dinner for a character who was close to Angela while playing as a character who wasn't as much affected. This is what real people do for their community when someone dies.
Every character has their own bars to fill and it isn't entirely clear why they care about these abstract things when it hasn't even been 24 hours since their daughter/sister/girlfriend/patient died. I am sure this makes sense to somebody who saw a grieving person (which is why I don't understand how hard the ball was dropped by the devs, no disrespect intended). I was lucky enough to never experience such grief, yet, but I have seen many people go through it. Like I said before, they shut down. You have to help them.
The concept is solid with this game but it's just... the atmosphere is not there. Why am I going around as the sister of the deceased and asking the little boy across town if he's alright? His parents should be asking ME if I am alright. And why doesn't anyone tell me to rest and grieve while I'm going around town asking if the 80-year-old grandma if she felt bad about my own sister dying? It's just weird. It rips me out of the setting. The asshole who cares too much about his project is a nice touch; that's good writing, I have no issues with that. The wife of the doctor who is gleefully obsessed with making a wreath for the deceased? Weird.
For what it's worth, the graphics and the sound design is nice but games like these depend on the writing and the atmosphere; this game just does not have it.