Wireframe – Issue 20, 2019

wfmag.cc \ 57

Review

Rated

Review

Rated

For a game about life’s ups and downs, it’s
an exquisite metaphor, and a great base to
explore themes such as bullying, depression,
and, of course, loneliness. Kay feels adrift in her
life, lacking a singular sense of direction, tossed
around by unstable relationships and self-doubt.
As the water surges, she feels flooded, out of
her depth; as it falls, she feels stranded but also
on solid ground. That huge body of liquid is a
temperamental character, threatening to engulf
you one moment, only to recede in the next and
uncover a new path.
There’s complexity here too. Different weather
conditions symbolise different emotional
states, such as the grey fog that turns water
to suffocating mud. And even solitude itself
isn’t always expressed as painful loneliness.
When you’re wandering sunlit streets or floating
under blue skies towards a distant building,
there’s a wonderful serenity.
You also learn that the
problem relationships in Kay’s
life are as likely to require
more space as more intimacy.
There’s no universal answer.
All Kay can do is keep trying and learn to accept
her mistakes.
It’s a shame that Sea of Solitude has a habit of
smothering its metaphors. Kay talks a lot, and
the chatter between her and the monsters is
often needlessly literal. “You only think about
yourself”; “You never do anything,” shouts a
shelled fiend that embodies her inner fear.
Another sad monster, representing her distant
brother, keeps moving away as she draws near.
“Why won’t he let me get close?” Kay asks, in case
you’d missed the obvious. It doesn’t help that
the voiceovers are stilted and unconvincingly
emotive, or even out of sync with the action.
As the game delves deeper into Kay’s
relationships, it relies more on chunks of
overlaid dialogue. These repressed memories
and past revelations depict very real
experiences, and may well touch a nerve with
anyone who has gone through similar problems,
but they start to invade the game space.

VERDICT

A striking study of

loneliness that could have

done with a lighter touch.

62 %

Whereas some sections cleverly represent

themes through environment design and forms

of interaction, others fill time with generic tasks

while the monsters work through their issues.

It would miss the point to want greater depth

or challenge, but certain areas need something

more meaningful to do. It’s symptomatic of

a rawness in Sea of Solitude that conveys its

passion, but could still do with some refinement.

An ability to interact with objects, for example,

is completely forgotten for long stretches of the

game, when it might have been more gainfully

employed. And there’s some clumsy objective

design, like when you’re left free to explore an

area before you’ve activated the trigger that

fills it with stuff to discover, which drains the

game’s fluency.

What you’ll hopefully remember most

is the town, the sea, and the monsters.

The combination of the

changing geography and

the distinctive forms of its

shadowy inhabitants gives

each part of the game its

own emotional note. In its

forms of communication, Sea of Solitude can’t

match the quiet understatement of Rime or the

dense craft of Celeste, but there are times when

it comes close, and it’s a heartfelt exploration of

difficult themes.

“A heartfelt

exploration of

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 A clean visual style with blocks of

colour helps create the game’s

dramatic contrasts in atmosphere.

 Kay’s family members appear in

forms that match their personalities

and relationship to her.

 There are few actual dangers in the

game, so the presence of this toothy

creature is especially alarming.