The First Tree

Nice game with deep meaning.

An indie third-person exploration/walking sim style game that tells two parallel stories about loss, grief and family bonds. You play as a mother fox who wakes up alone in her den and journeys across several landscapes in search of her missing young. The second parallel plot reveals the fox's story is a dream by a man that he recounts to his wife while dealing with his father's sudden passing and his troubled relationship with him. Looks very nice, soundtrack fit well, has voice acting and emotional narrative. Gameplay is very basic, a few limited jumping sections, it's mostly wandering around looking for collectables and narrative points. Could use a bit of quality of life improvements such as manual saving (saves appear to be only at the end of each chapter but they fairly short), a chapter select system and shared collectables (if you miss a collectable you'll need to repeat the game and if you go past the current area's point of no return you're sent to next chapter without warning). 7/10

This game is clearly a passion project and a personal journey for the dev. Art does typically reflect the artist but I don't think I've ever seen a game that feels this intimate with its creator, like literally stepping into his head and seeing all his thoughts, regrets, and fears. It takes a very bold kind of creator to put themselves this much on display and I admire that a lot! The gameplay could use a bit more fine-tuning but this was made by one guy and it is gameplay light and narrative heavy so it's not really an issue. Definitely an emotional experience.

Kind of an average game, but one with a very emotional story. The game bills itself as two parallel stories, that of a fox trying to find her babies and a man talking to his wife, sharing stories about his relationship with his father, though the former is a dream the man had, and the latter is him finding parallels and symbolism in the fox dream and applying it to his own childhood memories. The end result works, but it's a little clumsy in its execution. The gameplay, is not very deep, and in some ways is detrimental to the story. You play as a fox exploring large, open environments, as the narrator describes her actions and what she finds as the dream he had. As you explore you'll find strange, out of place locations and structures from the narrator's childhood, and examining them will prompt him to remember something about his past. For example, finding wooden toys will cause him to remember his father handcarving things for him and how much he loved them, until the other kids teased him and accused him of being too poor to afford proper toys. The environments themselves are very pretty, and exploring them is fun and the stories are interesting enough that you'll want to seek…

very beautiful game, with a nice soundtrack. sometimes the areas felt a bit too massive, and i would have liked to be able to save mid-level, but otherwise i enjoyed it and would recommend if you enjoy narrative-focused games.

Short and sweet narrative game about a fox (or an analogy, in a way). The only question left was - What does the fox say?