When I first saw footage of RiME, I instantly wanted to play it. The initial preview looked half-Zelda: Windwaker, half-Myst, and I wanted all of it. The opportunity to actually play it wouldn’t come for a few more years, unfortunately.
When I booted it up for the first time, I could feel the emotion oozing from every second of this game. The music reminded me of a Miyazaki film, the graphics were vibrant and colorful, and the gameplay was relatively simple. RiME starts, for those that don’t know, on a mysterious island. You play as a young boy, maybe around 10-12 years old, wearing simple white garb, a torn, red cape, and bearing dark Mediterranean skin and hair. He wakes up on a beach, partially submerged in the bright blue surf, seemingly confused. He gets his bearings, and sets off to explore this strange new place.
The Technical:
RiME‘s gameplay, as noted above, is fairly simple. You walk at a swift pace, can grab and pick things up with one button, jump with the usual X, and press the triangle button to make noises with his mouth. The noises vary, depending on the situation. If nothing interactive is around, he usually just hums a bit, although this changes depending on the level/situation.
Switches are activated through a shout, and this shout can be used to interact with other things in the game world, including using it to make torches flare up. This ability to interact with sound was somewhat reminiscent of Journey, a game experience that I love dearly for many of the same reasons. The young boy can also jump and climb up on recognizable ledges and vines easily as well.
Gameplay
Most of the gameplay is exploratory or puzzle based. There are a variety of collectibles to find throughout the stages of the game, and some of them are pretty well hidden. After two playthroughs, I still have collectibles that I’ve yet to uncover (and I searched much more thoroughly the second time).
Collectibles are mostly non-interactive, but you can find different outfits for the boy to wear, which is nice. The puzzles are the perfect kind, which means that they’re often abstract and require some careful thought. The exploratory element applies to average gameplay as well, since when you usually enter a new area you have to search around a bit to determine where you should be going.
The game, fortunately, provides an organic prompt to guide you a bit if you get lost in the form of a small fox companion that you unlock or “wake-up” in the opening segment of the game. It was rare that I was completely uncertain of where to go next for more than a minute or two. Some areas are more open than others, and even the more linear levels have an organic feel to them with various offshoots and hidden rooms to find.
Graphics
The graphics look great. The colors are bright and vivid, and the use of lighting is very effective and well done. The scenery overall is very captivating, and I found myself stopping a few times to simply enjoy the visual aesthetics of the game. As I mentioned above, the music in RiME reminds me of Spirited Away, or any number of Miyazaki films with soaring instruments and sounds, and often times has a muted presence even when nothing is happening. Actions and events trigger musical changes frequently, which adds to the profound feeling of the game.
There is one technical complaint on top of all of this. There were some unfortunate frame-rate drops throughout the game, to the point that it almost felt like it was buffering. This didn’t happen all of the time, but it was often enough that I would be remiss if I didn’t say something. Frame-rates aren’t something I usually notice or pay attention to, so it was unusual for me to feel put off about it.
For the last segment of this review, I’m going to actually do a bit of analysis of the plot and action of the game, which will bear some spoilers, so proceed at your own risk.
The overall story of RiME is one of loss and grief. This can be discovered fairly easily if one simply goes out into the main menu and looks at the names of the stages they’ve completed. Just about anyone who has taken a minor psychology class in high school or college will recognize that the names of the stages are named for the five stages of grief. I won’t say more than that in terms of what the grief is about or what it is related to specifically, but this is part of what makes this game brilliant.
Not only does RiME have enjoyable gameplay, beautiful graphics, and memorable music, it also has a very deep and well-explored message about loss and acceptance. There are many clues throughout the game that add to this theme in a very subtle way, including wall paintings, statues, small painting “scenes” viewed through keyholes spread around the levels of the game, and also in the differences between the stages.
The full story of what this game is built around isn’t completely told until very near the end, but as I played back through, the stages of grief were much more noticeable in the gameplay and the way that the stages changed as I progressed. Another impressive aspect of this story is that it’s all told without any actual spoken or written words. The way to understanding this story is to feel it, again, drawing similarities to Journey. In addition to the feelings that it creates, the game also allows a deeper analysis for those that wish to think through it more thoroughly. This is something that won’t appeal to every gamer, but that I found incredibly engaging.
Recommendation
All in all, I found RiME to be a brilliant triumph. It’s an exploration of complex and important human emotion and behavior that I honestly feel could be therapeutic for some individuals dealing with loss or depression. Its gameplay is simple, yet elegant, its music is stirring and moving, and its themes speak to a deep and complicated understanding of how humankind deals with loss. I highly recommend it, and I suggest that anyone who plays it should give it a quick second play-through to get the full effect of the game.
(“Rime is an adventure–puzzle video game developed by Tequila Works and Tantalus Media and published by Grey Box Games for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and was initially released on May 26, 2017.” Source: Wikipedia)
