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Video games are primarily a medium for entertaining people. However, in the past decade, developers have shown the ability to push narratives that make people think and feel emotions other than joy. Closer the Distance, by Osmotic Studios, is one of those games. It’s an experience that examines grief and how different people go through it. It shows how people can be empathetic and kind to one another or see a relationship fall apart. It’s a challenging game to experience but an important one.
The Town of Yesterby
The game starts when the police show up at a family’s door to inform them that their daughter, Angela, is dead. From there, you experience the point of view of the rest of the family as they deal with this sudden realization. The mother, Pia, goes into denial, the father, Axel, is in shock, and the sister, Conny, retreats into her own world to guard the pain. Later that night, Angela’s spirit tells Conny that she needs to help hold the town of Yesterby together through this tragedy. The next day, the town is informed about Angela’s passing, which sends shockwaves through the different people of Yesterby. From there, you control various characters and help them deal with their grief and problems.
Closer The Distance plays as a Sims-like game. You have a top-down view of the town and can click on various characters and control them. Each character has different wishes and various stats to balance. You start off by controlling Conny, who wants to help the entire town through their grief. Along the way, you encounter Gayle, the doctor of the town. Zek, who was close with Conny’s sister. Soon, you start to see how different people interact with each other, and eventually, you gain control of more characters as the story gets deeper and deeper.
Close The Distance
Closer The Distance is a challenging game to play through. Living through all these different perspectives of grief is sometimes hard to stomach. I think that makes for a powerful game and story. Juggling each person’s relationships creates a balancing act where you try not to implode the town and its residents emotionally. It’s also about balancing people’s emotions. There was a task I was making one of the villagers do, but doing that task caused them to become more unstable. I had them take frequent breaks to prevent them from ruining their task. I failed to do so, which caused ripples in the character’s story arc.
While the game has a strong narrative, sometimes the gameplay will create long periods of downtime. While there is a fast-forward button to speed up the game, it doesn’t feel like it speeds up the time enough. It creates an uneven gameplay loop, which I found annoying, waiting for the characters I controlled to reach their next destination. I also noticed playing on PlayStation 5 that the controls don’t translate well from PC. So there were points where I was fumbling through, trying to get my characters to do something.
Grab A Tissue
Closer The Distance is a hard game to get through. Not because it is difficult but because of the emotional rollercoaster it took me on. Each character has their grief that the player has to help them through, and the interactions between the various characters in Yesterby are intricate and complicated. It’s a powerful narrative, held back by some clunky controls on the console and some lulls in the gameplay. The game is still vital in pushing game narratives in directions that I don’t see too often. This game is worth checking out if you can handle the emotional journey it takes you on.
