Lost Ember

I'm sure you're all familiar with the saying 'more then the sum of its parts'.   if your not, then it simply means something is better then it's individual combined parts.  I mean, I kinda get it when applied to, say, a car engine or a digestive tract.  Individual organs or parts of the engine would do little on there own, but when combined, you get a thing that does amazing things.  

I get it less when applied to something like a game or even worse, a story.  This is a review of Lost Ember, a game that is most definitely more then the sum of its parts.

The game is bloody beautiful.

The games premise is simple: You're a wolf with a spirit guide investigating the world and trying to find more about both your and your spirits guide former human lives.  To do this the wolf is gifted an ability to possess other animals, and uses these to travel and solve very simple puzzles.

That's it gameplay wise.  It's pretty much a walking, flying, and swimming simulator.  The levels are fairly linear, but there's collectables in the form of artifacts and special mushrooms to find. There are also very rare quick-time events, roughly three in the entire game that require you to just press the same button five times in a row.

So it's just you walking through the ruins of a post human world, in many different forms, including wombats, moles, and hummingbirds.  You learn more about the cultures and certain people in the past, but really the story boils down to the journey of a young woman across the land and her interactions with people.  That does not sound like something that would keep my interest, in either gameplay or story.

And yet it did. 

Now, full disclosure, I did not in fact play this game, but watched and guided my mother through it, and had a more active role in it then just watching despite what you may think.  But both her and I were mesmerized by the game and played it for weeks (She plays for half an hour each day, or tries to).

While the story gets more complicated in Lost Ember then what is just said, and there's several twists and turns in it, I got really intrigued by it and I loved how it went.  The ending sadly faltered slightly from the rest of the story, but, it was still a very enjoyable ride.  

Overall, I give Lost Ember 4 stars out of 5.  Yeah.  I -really- enjoyed it.  Yet, the description I would've given it of 'walking simulator about discovering more about an ancient person', would not have interested me, and I am still baffled by how it managed to.  But hey, I'm very glad I bought it for both me and my mother.

See you all next time.