Proton/Linux: Lake

Providence Oaks, main street

One more "walking simulator" type game, comparable to The Long Dark, Firewatch, Virginia... oops, it seems I've tried more than a few of these over the years.

Of the above, Lake from 2021 might be most comparable to Firewatch. There's just a story that kind of unravels through reaching different map positions, which also serve as trigger points for cut scenes and discussions. With more characters and more locations, there's slightly more to "play" and explore here. But only slightly.

The story is told from the perspective of Meredith Weiss, who after 22 years returns to her home town of Providence Oaks, to take over her dad's mail route for a couple of weeks. It's 1986.

Is Addit'87 going to be a big hit?

A MIT graduate with career in computers, she is part of a soft-co about to launch a new DOS-based home organizer/diary software called Addit. Meredith hasn't quit this job, on occasions choices need to be made regarding Addit. These are handled via telephone calls and mail from "Steve".

Despite a potential story-telling device, the software isn't really seen often at all.

Although the laptop/luggable concept appears credible for 1986 (think IBM model 5140 or Toshiba T1100), the high-contrast color screen is far too good. A glowing orange display or a non-backlit LCD with a few greyscales would have been more likely. Artistic licence, and all.

Let's not forget the focus of the blog...

The mail route is repeated each day. For this Meredith drives a van, but for delivering the mail to the boxes she has to leave the car. Parcels are hoisted out from the trunk and taken to the door. Pressing the doorbell may result in further interactions, but most often not.

But make no mistake, it's not Eurotruck or any kind of car simulator. The game stays firmly in the walking genre. If anything, the car just helps make the larger environment of the Lake a little more functional. Looking at it cynically, it's just there to add to the game time.

The mail delivery premise allows for Meredith to meet various people around the town and the lake surroundings, leading to discussion-tree type interactions. It's unclear from the first play how much these affect further events, but perhaps the social routes might not be radically different. 

Am I being dragged into a romance part

Firewatch had some ingenuity in overlapping the walking with the (radio) dialogue choices, but here the driving and the social interactions are two quite separate elements of the game. 

The year 1986 is wisely approached from the perspective of different communications technologies. No internet, no mobile phones. People rely on letters and passing on information. Obviously land line telephones are much in use. In the evening, there is often a phone call or at least a phone message. Meredith has to choose whether to watch TV or read books... 

The decade is fortunately not exaggerated, no synthwave with neon grid Lamborghinis here. There's an understanding that much of mid-eighties was still based on decade-old cars, surroundings and mixtures of older fashions.

The game still has a fair share of film/game/tech references, making things relatable to today's video game player. On one hand it can be interesting for younger players to see that hobbies of today were already around in the 1980s, but on the other hand less-obvious topics could have been more interesting to explore.

I'm not sure if the point of reference for 40-somethings living in the era would be "the 80s". This is addressed in few occasions, though, and you can sometimes choose to make Meredith appear either hip or ignorant of the times.

Delivering a package. Watch out for those birds. Just kidding.

The radio plays pastiches of generic 1980s feelgood country-style pop, props for achieving this in such a small game, but the few songs do get a little repetitive rather soon.

Delivering the mail in itself doesn't have much variety after a few days. You'll get to see more locations, and you can get involved in more unconventional deliveries too, but these do not play differently. The evolving interactions is what keeps the player wanting to turn the pages further in the story.

I am not sure if it is a Proton problem or something with the original game, but I kept experiencing drops in audio channels. Dialogue would cease and from small fragments it was still clear the speech should be there. The tone of voice is often quite important for picking choices, so it can be a little annoying. ProtonDB only had a mention of potential audio delays, which I didn't encounter.

Aside from audio, the 3D world has some glitches too, and I doubt Proton has anything to do with this. With the focus on mail delivery, I'd have expected the letters would at least fit the mail box models!

"Oregon Trail", heh.

Almost anything outside the immediate roads and buildings is not modeled very richly, which is of course a pity but understandable. There's not much sense in exploring areas on foot. Sure, it's no GTA but the developers have managed to create a reasonable illusion of a small town.

I did find the cars could sometimes get stuck, even without any apparent player intervention. After one car chooses to stop, this creates a growing queue of cars which doesn't move until the traffic is reset for the next day. Usually they are able to recover and overtake cleverly enough.

Lake could be considered a feel-good game and the six hours were just about the appropriate length for the experience. As with Firewatch, I sometimes surprise myself with the meekness of my dialogue choices. It's just a game, what the hell?