Easier Occasions is that uncommon recreation preview that additionally strains up with goings-on in my private life. At this 12 months’s Summer season Recreation Fest Play Days, I used to be ready to take a look at the meditative Day of the Devs indie recreation from Stoneskip and iam8Bit about packing as much as transfer simply earlier than I transfer throughout the nation in a few weeks.
In fact, making an enormous transfer like that surfaces loads of feelings, and video games like Unpacking, and now Easier Occasions, are eager on homing in on these emotions. What pleasantly stunned me was that Easier Occasions does so with a extra reflective, contemplative, and optimistic tone, giving me the arrogance I wanted earlier than a major life change.
Embrace the transfer
In Easier Occasions, you play as a woman named Taina who’s packing up issues in her childhood house as she prepares to maneuver away to varsity. It was impressed by the non-public life experiences of its builders at Stoneskip, who just lately made the transfer from Berlin again to Transylvania. My Summer season Recreation Fest Play Days demo was for the sport’s opening, which sees Taina packing up issues and likewise eases gamers into the sport’s controls.
Easier Occasions performs from a first-person perspective, though it might really feel like a point-and-click journey recreation as gamers transfer round and work together with objects at predetermined locations. Regardless of that, Easier Occasions feels surprisingly nonlinear. After some brief, in-world tutorials, I used to be free to discover and pack up varied issues scattered round Taina’s bed room. Nearly each object inside the room was interactable, and I may transfer and toss them round as I noticed match.
There are loads of cute, smaller interactions, like taking photographs with a digital camera or choosing up a pencil and drawing on a bit of paper, that add extra depth than anticipated. Think about an immersive sim the place as a substitute of looking for the easiest way to get by way of a room or full a problem, you had been simply making an attempt to discover the area to its fullest. I didn’t even discover the pocket book that serves as an goal checklist of kinds till the top of my demo time.
The primary crux of development is packing, as I needed to discover the appropriate objects to place into sure bins. One can be for childhood stuffed animals, one other for Taina’s favourite books. This not solely felt like good observe for what I’m about to do in a few weeks, however enabled loads of cute interactions as properly. Some objects might be interacted with on a deeper stage, like choosing up a pencil to attract on a bit of paper.
More often than not, although, Taina will touch upon no matter she’s choosing up. That internal monologue is actually reflective, but it surely by no means feels prefer it will get too pessimistic, not less than within the little bit of the sport that I performed. Taina is a bit unhappy to pack away her stuffed animals, however doesn’t act as if she’ll by no means see them once more and as a substitute chooses to consider what it’d be like if she really introduced them along with her. A observe from a buddy that moved additionally paints the expertise as scary, however finally rewarding.
These sorts of interactions make Easier Occasions a recreation that encourages individuals to take management and embrace life adjustments. Taking part in the demo was a really optimistic expertise. I got here away from it with a smile on my face and a newfound confidence that it doesn’t matter what challenges I encounter throughout my transfer, issues will work out how they’re imagined to. Taking part in a little bit of Easier Occasions jogged my memory that shifting doesn’t should be a scary factor, and that made it essentially the most nice recreation I attempted at Summer season Recreation Fest Play Days this 12 months.
Easier Occasions can be launched for PC in 2024.
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