Arise: A Simple Story

Arise: A Simple Story

and a simple game

2023-12-31

Welcome to the last game and blog post of the year. Today's game is Arise: A Simple Story on the Nintendo Switch.

The description calls it "an emotional journey" of "love and loss". It looked interesting and was only a couple bucks. It's a 3D platformer where the main mechanic is changing time so that ice forms to create bridges or melts to raise water level, or in another level to have the sun move to make plants follow it to move them to reach other places. And of course the main component is the story and there's a little explroration to get more story.

The graphics are good, but has this standard look of a lot of Switch games which must come from Switch games being developed with the Unity game engine. They have this not low-poly but still kind of uniform block look where things are more solid colors and not many textures are used.

Looking at the game publisher's list of games on the Switch, there's plenty of games you would have scrolled past in the game store as just more of the same cruft it gets filled with. There's a couple more named "Aspire: Ina's Tale" described as "a journey of self-discovery", and "ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree" that has a "heavy emphasis on narrative". So you can tell they really go for the feels when it's called "A colon Something". And try to get to the top of alphabetical lists by starting them with "A".

And that does it for all the games I have on my Switch that I haven't played. Well, except one, it had an end user license agreement which I can't ever recall seeing when starting up a Switch game. It gave me the option to refuse so I clicked it so that's the end of playing that game for me. Done with the Switch and the year 2023, onto Steam and 2024.

I'm having a last minute New Years Eve party tonight, had no plans so told some friends I'd bring out the old consoles and they can come over. I used to have what I call Nintendates every so often before the pandemic, I think this is the first one since which I'm glad I'm finally doing again because I've been meaning to. I have NES, Sega, SNES, N64, of course Switch with party games, an old PC, and an emulator, all with plenty of games. A handful of people that didn't already have plans sound like they're stopping by. Should be fun.

Have a fun and safe new years.