Making the leap to video game development for consoles is always an important step for any studio. And hard. This is precisely what the Dutch company Gamious has had to deal with with Lake, the video game that concerns us today. And it is that after having created several titles for mobile devices (which later have reached PC and some consoles), Lake is the most ambitious work to date of Gamious. A video game that comes with a very curious and surprisingly entertaining proposal, which is none other than that of becoming a postman in a small town in Oregon in the 80s. Does it work? Join us in our Lake analysis for Xbox Series X to find out.
I to be happy, I want a truck
Lake’s story takes us to year 1986, where Meredith Weiss, a woman who works in a technology company that is booming in the sector, takes advantage of the fact that her parents have gone on vacation to Florida to return to her hometown and hold her father’s position in the local delivery company for the two weeks in which they will be out. Tired of her busy life in the big city, Meredith considers her future as she relaxes with the daily life of the town and with the routine of the distribution, which allows him to meet the inhabitants and reconnect with people from his past.
To all this, the town is next to a huge lake, precisely the one that gives title to a game that makes it very clear from the beginning that its intention is to offer us a relaxed experience without excessive stress. We just need our truck, our packages and the radio station that will be broadcasting eighties songs until we finish our journey and we can go home to relax … or meet other characters to make friends or something else with them.
Activities at Providence Oaks
One may wonder what can be done in a game consisting of get in your truck and deliver letters and packages beyond exactly what we just said. The truth is that quite a lot. And it is that although to deliver the letters we only have to approach the mailbox in question, the packages will force us to go to the door of the house or business where we have to deliver them, which will open the possibility of talking with the different citizens of Providence Oaks. Are conversations They have different dialogue options and allow us to forge Meredith’s personality in our own image and likeness if we wish.
Meet an old friend, say hello to the local fisherman or even find love. Everything is possible in this peaceful little town that Lake offers us. In fact, one server was quite surprised to find out that Meredith could have an in-game romance, even choosing between a male and a female romantic option. All this provides the enough variety so that the day-to-day distribution does not become too tedious. Despite their efforts, it must be recognized that the final stretch of the game becomes somewhat repetitive in the phases in which we must deliver letters and packages.
However, it should also be noted that the driving the truck is very satisfactoryprobably the most polished thing in Lake. Not so much walking with Meredith, who gets caught on curbs and suffers with some inaccuracies of the scene.
The beauty of tranquility
One of the best aspects of the Gamious title is how it looks. It is true that it is by no means a video game with spectacular graphics, but it makes up for it with an attractive visual section marked by the colorful of its scenes and for the variety of prints that it proposes. We have the most populated area of buildings and single-family houses, the lake area, a makeshift campsite, a roadside motel, a tunnel, a bridge that runs past a gigantic dam, and a farm. Along with the achieved sound and visual effects weather conditions, all this makes for a very pleasant atmosphere that is a pleasure to walk and drive.
The songs that sound on the radio station and that accompany us throughout our working day (although they are not from the 80s) contribute to that relaxed atmosphere. However, there are very few different themes that the title contains, so after a few days of the two weeks that we must be in Providence Oaks the sound experience could become very, very crush. That’s exactly what happened to us, which “forced” us to end up turning off the radio and simply enjoying the sounds of the truck’s engine and nature.
A half-cooked adventure
Meredith Weiss’s story begins on September 1, so it is understood that Gamious wanted that to be precisely her release date. They made it. But at what cost? A pretty tall one, really. And it is that Lake is too noticeable that a few weeks (or months) of polishing were missing additional. Have little bugs and bugs here and there. Most of them are not too annoying, such as not being able to zoom in on the map, not being able to deactivate the radio when we want or that the game changes to the English language every time we start it. In fact, today you cannot change the language from the main menu. We will have to do it once we have started the game.
However, we must record that we have encountered a much more important bug and that denotes that Lake was not ready to go on sale. We explained ourselves: a new day was beginning and we had to get on the truck to start a new working day. In doing so, our character teleported to the other end of town and appeared in the middle of a conversation. When we finished it, we realized that the teleportation did not include the delivery truck, which is essential to be able to work. He had stayed at the post offices, forcing us to walk back to that point. In total, about fifteen minutes of walking without doing anything. Fifteen minutes wasted for a very annoying bug that was not fixed even by exiting the game and re-entering.
conclusion
Lake is a interesting narrative proposal that invites us to meet characters and do a routine but surprisingly entertaining job, all while we weigh what the future of Meredith Weiss will be after those two weeks are over. However, the game of Gamious it is very green and needs polishing. So much so that bugs not only can, but completely cloud the experience. Most of the time they are simple things that annoy, but do not annoy. But it may be the case that there are bugs of much greater severity, something unforgivable for a title that lasts about six hours.