The Wake: Mourning Father, Mourning Mother offers us a stirring look at the tangled feelings we have for those who’ve passed on, exploring the complexities of grief.
The death of someone we have difficult feelings around makes for a strange journey in grief. Guilt, anger, sadness, and dozens of other feelings can all come into play, winding our emotions into a confusing jumble as moments in our past swim to the surface. Memories take on different shapes and meanings, sometimes conflicting in ways that made the experience exhausting and crushing. It’s a trial just to exist in these moments, and it can be hard to find truth – or what truth means to you – in what we know of that person and our shared time with them. Our memories become a literal puzzle at these times – one that may have no solution at all.
Somi, developer of Legal Dungeon (a work that blew us away at BitSummit last year), has created a puzzle game of ciphers and mysteries that draw upon those tangled memories to figure out what’s happening in the present. By combing through the past, we move on through the story, getting a little closer to understanding how we feel in the present. These puzzles grow more and more complex as we try to move forward, symbolizing the challenges the characters face in sorting through their memories and making sense of how they feel now. It’s arduous, yet fulfilling work. You feel a little better at coming to an understanding.
That this complex puzzle box can also help me come to terms with my own challenging feelings toward some of my family members is incredible. The game tells its own lovely story, but through the emotions the characters face, it’s hard not to think of the family members who’ve brought pain and confusion into your life. It may not give you the answers you want in your own life, but seeing someone else going through a similar pain in the game’s narrative made me feel a bit better as well.
As a pure puzzle game, The Wake: Mourning Father, Mourning Mother is devious, requiring a sharp eye for detail and a curious mind in order to see through to the end. As a whole, the puzzles and story create a familiar sensation of that whirlwind of feelings that come in death at times. It does a fantastic job of capturing that snarl of sensations and emotions through its puzzles and story, making for an unforgettable, important experience this year.
The Wake: Mourning Father, Mourning Mother is available now on Steam.
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