One of my favorite genres of games recently is the small town, narrative driven story, while making choices to decide on what happens. Lake is the newest one of these were you play Meredith Weiss, who is filling in for her father as she is taking two weeks off from her computer programming job back in the “big city” to come to Providence Oaks. While I think that Lake has some high moments, and I really enjoyed the act of being the mail carrier for this small town, getting to know everybody, the game kinda buckles under the weight of its shoestring narrative, which leans more to the boring side of things.
There are certain things that shine a spotlight on this being a indie game and the main one for me is the visuals. Looking out at the water and the light reflecting on the water, it looks really good, then you start moving throughout the city and it all starts to fall apart. Shadows from the trees retract in weird ways, trees look weird and kinda out of place. You can really tell that a lot of the visual look went to the houses, but areas like the Post Office and most of Main Street look very generic brick style buildings.
The main part of Lake is being a post office worker, and this is where it really shines. Lake does not try to sugarcoat what this job is, and everyday (except on Sundays) Meredith goes around delivering mail and getting to know the townsfolk as she spends her two weeks in Providence Oaks. Once you start getting more involved within the town, you start to become better engrained into the people who live in the town. There are 2 romance options that you can pursue if you want to, and this is where I have a kinda big bone to pick with the game. Robert is the male option, who is a quiet lumberjack who wants the town to stay the same and does not want new apartment buildings to ruin the small town. Angie is the female option, and she runs the Flick Shack which is the local version of Blockbuster.
The game treats these possible relationships VERY differently and it’s kinda weird. When you hang out with Angie, going to movies in Astoria, talking to her at the Flick Shack, and talking at the Open Mic night at the end of the game, no one else in town comments on her or you having a relationship at all, it’s like she does not exist. On the other hand, anytime you hangout with Robert, even it is just to have a nice, we are definitley friends type of a lunch, Maureen (the person who runs the diner) has to make a comment on how you two look so good together. The town pretty much tries to force you and Robert together and it just comes off weird. Between this and the other townsfolk, there really is not punch to Lake's narrative, it just kinda falls flat.
There were also multiple times were the game seemed to be getting held together by just duct tape and bubblegum. I was lucky enough to not have any hard crashes, but there were multiple times of Meredith ending up in the back of the truck were the packages are, cars getting stuck, etc. Lake is definitley what it says it is on the back of the virtual box, so don't expect anything crazier to happen then a Open-Mic Night at the local diner.
I did enjoy my time with Lake, but I just wanted more from the narrative and more choice when it came to the story. It is the prototypical indie game that has an ambitious idea of a game, that just does not seem to be hitting on every cylinder but is almost there. Lake really has me looking forward to what they come with next because there is a lot to learn from this game, good and bad