Review - Old Man's Journey

You receive a letter. Upon reading it, the only thing that you can do is begin your journey. Old Man’s Journey follows the story of an old man as he travels to a destination unknown to the player. Crossing the sea, land, and even air the player must mold the environment around them to allow the old man to progress forward.
The gameplay consists of dragging the environment up and down to create paths to traverse the environment. It uses an almost parallax effect to allow the player to move multiple layers of rolling hills. I have not seen much like this mechanic in the past. By pulling the mountains up and down, the player can not only move from one place to another, but there is also the potential that the player can reveal new areas in the environment in a mock wipe cut. However, while the mechanic is interesting on some levels, it was not terribly engaging. It was both not complex enough to sustain a roughly one hour playtime and was not used very well throughout the game.
The crux of the misuse of Old Man’s Journey’s key mechanic is that it failed to create situations of any difficulty. Old Man’s Journey claims to be a puzzle game, but in order for that to be true the game must be puzzling. There was not a single situation where I spent more than a few seconds thinking about what needed to be done. Even when a few more complex mechanics were added, like road-block sheep and rolling stones, the solutions were far too simple. The game seems to have focused far too much upon its narrative than any of its gameplay mechanics.
So, if it focused on the narrative then that must be good, right? Not quite. The narrative plays out through memories that the old man has along his journey. Each memory is a slightly moving image that depicts a scene in his past life. Old Man’s Journey is the story of love found and lost, the overwhelming call of the sea, and a need to return home. While this might sound great, there is one big problem: the story is bland. The snippets of story that are given tend to be short and to the point, creating a rather short narrative by the end of the game. Not only is it short, but completely un-nuanced. There is very little, if anything, expressed beyond the plot of the story itself.
There were, however, some good things done narratively. The environment around the player was often changed to reflect the mood of the old man, succeeding in building the mood of each scene. A few of the scenes even did a good job of exploiting the central mechanic to create unease, such as the underwater level. Unfortunately, none of these points actually brought depth to the story.
In terms of aesthetics, the game is okay. I found the visuals to be nothing to write home about. Everything did maintain the same general vibe with nothing being out of place. The only major issue I had was with some of the turning animations. Especially on vehicles, the turning is done quite crudely. Luckily those moments pass by rather quickly, but it remains an issue.
Old Man’s Journey seems to fall into the trap of having each of its elements lean on one another. The puzzle mechanics were clearly not enough to constitute a whole game, so a story was necessary to maintain engagement. However, the story was not strong enough to keep the player going, so it had to rely upon the gameplay. In the end, the game was left with un-engaging mechanics and a bland story. Had either of the elements succeeded, Old Man’s Journey could have made something of itself. Unfortunately, no such thing occurred.
Overall, I found Old Man’s Journey to be a game that dropped the ball on both gameplay and narrative. While some games might be worth picking up just to experience a unique mechanic, that is not the case with this game. You can get all the information you need by watching someone else play the game. I would not recommend Old Man’s Journey. For the time and money spent on the game, you can get far better experiences elsewhere. I do, however, hope to see this group continue their work in the future. If they can expand and nuance the narrative of their next game, there is a potential that they could release a powerful work.

Broken Rules, Old Man's Journey. Broken Rules, May 17 2017.

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