Review: Lake – have a rest

The Lake game immediately fascinated me with its idea and fascinated me with its visuals, but, unfortunately, it came out at the beginning of last year’s pre-Christmas season, when there were a lot of such games, so I managed to finish it only now. While it’s not a dizzyingly long game, you do need to be in a certain mood to play it. In particular, they should have a desire to slow down and perform relatively “boring” activities. In this regard, Lake has much in common with the Magnificent Truffle Pigs. If there you had to patiently comb the area with a metal detector, then here your patience will be tested by a two-week mail delivery to the town by the lake. But, perhaps, just such a rest you need, as well as the main character of this story.

• Platform: XSX (peer-reviewed), XSS, X1, PC (PS4 and Switch planned)
• Publication date: 1. 9. 2021
• Producer: Gamius (Netherlands)
• Genre: adventure
• Czech location: Not
• Multiplayer: Not
• Data to download: 2 GB
• Game time: 7 o’clock
• Price: 499 CZK (couples)

So a little different holiday

The year is 1986, and Meredith Weiss is a successful computer company employee in a big city. Her parents will be disturbed by busy working lives and the hustle and bustle of the day when they decide to take a real seaside vacation years later. But someone has to guard their house in the town of Providence Oaks by a picturesque lake for two weeks, and besides, they have to catch dad working as a local postman. Although not as helpful, Meredith takes a vacation and travels to Providence Oaks. Here she meets her friends from her youth and new faces in the city.

When you deliver mail in a small town, it’s actually quite a pleasant day to day routine. You’ll pick up your shipments at headquarters, have your morning coffee, and jump into the mail van where you’ll find out what the weather is like today and what’s on the locals’ minds at the moment on your favorite local talk show when you turn on the radio. You will then be accompanied by pleasant country music as you drive through the city and its environs as you deliver individual envelopes and parcels. You’ll run into cuddly oddballs like the local fisherman or the cat lady, as well as adversaries like the game-lover at the local hotel reception.

It’s actually quite a pleasant daily routine.

Before you have time, the local lumberjack will start packing you up a bit, or you will find that you have quite strong feelings for the girl who opened a video store here and can talk about films for hours (plus, of course, I recommend the best ones). You will have to come to terms with a childhood best friend who feels like you pushed her out of your life. And you will come across unexpected acquaintances like itinerant hippies with a caravan. In many situations, you will have the choice of how to react to individuals or situations, so you can decide who to bet, whether to try to hide an illegal bet from the authorities, or whether you experience real romance during these events. two weeks.

Being a postman is not for everyone.

As with the second game mentioned in the introduction to the article, you should take note that the game will indeed do exactly what it promises: in this case, this means ten in-game days, after which you will actually be traveling the same route around a small city ​​and deliver mail. If you don’t have the patience for this kind of activity, you should avoid arc play. However, if you work for some hectic corporation in a big city as the heroine of a story, you might want this postal delivery accompanied by pleasant country music as the perfect relaxation. But you definitely shouldn’t underestimate that the game really is, at its core, what it appears to be.

But if the core game design and loop suits you, then the second layer of the game is much more traditional: a non-linear dialogue adventure very reminiscent of games from the Life is Strange series. Here, too, you will be an active member of the community in a small town, and your decisions will determine who and how you will or will not spend your time, whether the local vote against deforestation will succeed or how illegal stakes will turn out. During these two weeks I had many pleasant moments, I even found love, and when, in the end, they decided whether to stay or return to a busy life in the big city, I was clean. What is your history in Providence Oaks?