Yup, you're looking at the gameplay. That's about the long & short of it. There's no combat, no action, no physical confrontations, no danger, and no twitchy reactions required. There's technically a "sprint" button, but it's more like Meredith just walks slightly faster. It's 1986 and you drive the mail truck around Providence Oaks, Oregon to deliver packages & letters as part of your daily tasks. There are specific, key characters that work or live at locations where you'll be making deliveries, and that's where the other half of the game takes place. It's you interacting with the people of Providence Oaks and navigating small conversational and commitment-making options.
Here's my biggest warning: the gameplay of delivering packages is not interesting. If you need gameplay to get you through, this won't be the game for you. But it works. If you've had a stressful day of work or if you're just burnt out from playing games at 4K60 with particle effects all over your screen and having lightning-fast reactions to gameplay in high-stakes single player or multiplayer experiences where a moment of losing focus could mean a game over ... it's time to boot up Lake and cleanse your palate. Listen to the same few songs on the radio. Drive down the same, small streets in town, and enjoy the peaceful, tranquil, idyllic views of the eponymous lake that the town encircles while you just take a chance to take a deep breath and not be inundated by visual stimuli of your normal gaming experience.
The narrative beats are simple, but they accurately capture themes that people in their 30s and older might be all too familiar with:
Returning to a smaller hometown that you left a very long time ago to see it stuck in time
Midlife crisis of deciding which direction to take your life as you're semi-established in your career
Work-life balance in turmoil as work constantly creeps into what should be an idyllic getaway
Revisiting friendships lost many years ago and trying to pick up where you left off
The constant topic of "should I stay or should I go" that these small, frozen towns evoke in people
Exploring the concept of a relationship between yourself and another person when your futures are unknown
Your parents reaching an older age and making their own "retirement crisis" decisions of relocation, adventure, and checking off bucket list items
And of course, the little oddities that small town life brings. It's not a perfect game, and again, the gameplay itself is boring. But I find that the themes that are covered in the game hit quite well if you're at an older age and you've navigated these same topics as well. I'm about halfway through the game, and I'm already heavily invested in the choices I've helped Meredith make, and I feel those same adult feelings that she's going through as you question whether or not you (or others) are where they should be in life and what even is the right place to be in life? Is it to stay stuck in a small town like this? Is it to branch out and pursue a career of being busy and making a ton of money?
It's a simple palate cleanser, but it's also deeper than it appears on the surface. There's something calming about stepping back into time, stepping out into Smalltown USA, and exploring the concepts of what it means to pursue purpose in your adult life.
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