I’ve been looking out for deep, well-written Bitsy games since bumbling my way through John Lee Cooper‘s The Old City of High Walls earlier in the year.
While I’ve not found anything with the extreme depth of the Old City’s deluge of interaction points, like gulls crying at the dawn‘s solemn tale of two individuals who have found themselves isolated and alone is equally memorable and poignant.
When I think of awfully lonely jobs (Read my upcoming Buzz feed post: Top 10 Loneliest Jobs), I feel like lighthouse worker must be right up at the top. Isolated, trapped away from society with the spiraling birds and crashing waves as your only company. Like Gulls Crying at the Dawn focuses on this loneliness, and also how things can bring us together.
Each morning, your character heads out to the shoreline outside their station. There on the beach rests a letter in a bottle, and each day there’s another. There’s a person out there on the waves, equally isolated through their actions. Both of you are alone. As the short experience continues, it becomes more clear how this loneliness haunts your companion. Then, it dawns on you, living there in that lighthouse, that you must feel the same. And just like that, like gulls crying at the dawn starts twisting loneliness into companionship into hope.
It’s an incredibly well written short story, and the music choice – “To Speak of Solitude” by Brambles – is utterly fitting.
like gulls crying at the dawn is available now on itch.io.
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