Rime is an explorative puzzle game. You play as a young, unnamed boy who has washed ashore on an island. The island is a giant, weird puzzle and everything seems to react to his voice. He has to figure out what happened to him and why he’s there, as well as find a way to get home. How easy that’s going to be with all the trials and tribulations, who can say, but it will happen eventually… probably.
The game is fairly simple, but it doesn’t really explain anything to you at all. There’s no voice acting, characters just make noises. When you make the boy yell it activates a few different types of things. There’s statues that resonate with his voice, some of which dissolve, and some that don’t, but both open pathways for him. There’s a ball of light that explodes when he yells and the fires, for some reason, get stronger when he yells at them. Also he must have been in the opera because his yell breaks giant ceramic jars. Beyond that mechanic, there’s also these weird viewfinders you find occasionally. When you look through them you can see gold items. You have to move around in the viewfinder to change perspective in order to line up the gold bits, after you do they create a frame in a wall, which opens a hole for you to pass though.
Beyond just basic puzzles that make him yell or drag things around to get to new places, there are also a few enemies. There’s a giant bird that you fight by solving puzzles to finish the level, so you kinda fight it anyways… yeah. There are also some shadow monster people things late in the game that you use the explosive light orbs on to cause light to explode everywhere like a flashbang to get rid of them for a short while. None of the enemies are super dangerous since you can’t actively die in the game. Everything that ‘kills’ you simply sets you back a little bit to the last safe area you were at.
It’s hard to get lost. Even if the puzzle isn’t close to you, a pillar of light beams straight up from the parts of the puzzle so you know their general location at all times. Granted, you might have to use some basic platforming stuff to get to the parts, but that’s not hard or bad since the platforming is basic and solid. You have handholds that you can grab to climb up things by jumping up or dropping off to get down lower. Everything you can climb on has a white moss/chalk-like substance on the top of it so it’s easy to see.
Also, you follow a cute fox creature, which is like all that matters honestly. It’s fucking adorable. This sentence had nowhere to go; I just wanted to make sure you all knew there’s an adorable fox in it. They’re the best and that’s all there is to it. Anyways, moving on, you can beat the game in 8-10 hours. There are a plethora of collectables to find in each level. There’s toys, sea shells that play a tune, white monster shades to find, outfits for the character that you can switch into at any time, parts of emblems, and lastly, keyholes to look through which provide extra story content. So yeah, there’s a lot to collect. Good luck finding it all without a walkthrough.
There are a total of 5 levels I believe, which all deal with stages of grief. The grief is explained very blatantly at the end of the game. The ending is bittersweet, so be prepared to deal with tears. All around, I think it’s fairly basic in terms of gameplay, but the way they do things is fun and sometimes inventive. It was a fairly cute looking game to boot. The only real issue I had with the game is that, while the boy runs the whole time, it just doesn’t feel fast enough. The game feels slow because there’s a lot to traverse, nothing in and of itself usually feels huge. There’s just a lot of small to moderately-sized areas that you just move through to get to the next area, so it just ends up feeling slow.
Rime was developed by: Tequila Works
Point of Sale: X1, PS4, Steam, Switch
$30: What does the fox say?!… Well… not much, but it’s cute so who cares?
A review copy was bought by the reviewer.
darkmikasonfire has awarded Rime The Indie Gamer Team Seal of Approval
Indie Gamer Team 