Rime

Developed by Tequila Works, Rime is an adventure game that offers a fantastical setting dominated by a melancholic atmosphere, which gives allegorical undertones to the journey of its young protagonist. The game’s level design, however, is problematic in the way it discourages exploration with an abundance of points of no return.

The story begins with a shipwreck, when a young boy wakes up on the shores of a mysterious island. Towering above him is a gigantic tower with the symbol of a lock carved into its top. The boy proceeds to find a way to reach it, being occasionally accompanied by a fox and followed by a shadowy figure in clad red.

The game’s narrative is sparse. There’s no dialogue whatsoever, so we start to pick up bits and pieces of what’s happening by observing elements of the environment and by interpreting the frequent reappearances of certain characters or objects.

The places the protagonist visits, through its sculptures and drawings, clearly reveal the game’s main themes. The repetition of certain elements, such as boats, sails, shipwrecks, capes, and weeping figures, reflect an obsession rather than a culture, appearing to be more the fruit of a troubled psychology than parts of an actual place.

It is not difficult to guess what’s the dominant theme of the story: each chapter is even named after one of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, making it clear to those acquainted with it. The game’s ending, therefore, is bound to come across more as a confirmation of what was happening than a twist.

The art direction, in turn, indicates from the very first moments that the events taking place should be interpreted like symbols instead of being taken literally. The few puzzles that must be solved, for example, often play with perspective and shadows, with the boy having to realign his gaze to realize that he is able to proceed where before it seemed impossible, walking through a path that has just materialized. In a great moment of symbolic power, right at the end of the first chapter, time must be reversed to open a path.

The design behind each of the islands the boy visits, then, tries to follow its corresponding theme: the first one, for instance, finds in the ability to reverse time a great symbol for denial. Meanwhile, on the next island, the protagonist is under the constant threat of being attacked by an angry creature. These connections between theme and level design, however, are often as sparse as the story itself – and a bit repetitive to boot.

The first level, called Denial, has the being in the red cape appearing more frequently because they personify this feeling, but, save for the time mechanic, that’s basically all there is to this island in terms of narrative importance. Even the time mechanic itself is not unique to this island, appearing in the next one as well. Rime, therefore, would have benefited from a greater variety of symbols and metaphors, especially since it foregoes any kind of dialogue – an element that helped another (far superior) game with the same theme, one called The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.

The motifs here are always the same (boat, shipwreck, tears, sail, cape) and, although they serve to cement the obsessive aspect of the scenario, after a while there is little being presented that is new and the attentive player will have already captured the message. Consequently, the ending is not as impactful as it could have been, even for those who missed the hints: it doesn’t add new elements or subvert old ones, but only reaffirms everything in a clearer light. Some characters, such as the fox, also suggest being more important than they actually are, and it is relatively arbitrary why each animal takes on the symbol it does.

Rime’s atmosphere is benefited from the game’s approach to music, making the protagonist’s melodic voice his main skill. As in Ocarina of Time, the focus on music in Rime contributes to the mystical aura of its world, with the boy using melodies as a key to open the locks that eluded the person who built that abstract place.

The soundtrack, in turn, is a constant presence in the adventure, reinforcing the melancholy that marks the boy’s journey, while soaring at just the right times to make everything feel a bit more epic and grander. Since the game’s art uses a cel-shaded style, the composer, David García Díaz, crafts melodies that seem to seek inspiration from the animations of Studio Ghibli – and one cannot help but think on Princess Mononoke when hearing the track “The Song of the Sea.”

Finally, it’s important to note how the game has some issues when dealing with exploration. Rime is an adventure game at its core, with the protagonist scouring each island for clues and answers. The level design, however, runs counter to this mindset with a lot of arbitrary points of no return.

Points of no return block exploration, with the player being locked out of parts of the level, losing access to whatever was there – mainly collectibles. Here, when you get to one of these points, you need to restart the whole chapter if you want to acquire any collectibles you missed. It’s bad enough to have a lot of them in a game about exploration, but Rime makes it worse by rarely signaling to the player that they’re about to cross one.

It’s one thing for the player to realize that they are jumping off a platform from which there seems to be no way back:  they may have faith in the developers, believing there will be a shortcut hidden somewhere to get them back to the previous area, but at least they take into consideration the danger of not being able to return. It’s quite another thing entirely to find out that you’re not able to get back from a bridge, which is still there, without having been destroyed or broken down or anything, because now there’s an invisible wall blocking your path. It’s a frustrating surprise.

Rime has some wasted potential. The idea of creating a fantastical setting that serves as an allegory for the pain and suffering of a character is not developed to its fullest, being hampered by the excessive repetition of the same symbols. Meanwhile, its moments of exploration are sabotaged by a strict level design. In the end, the game is certainly better than Tequila Works’ past title, Deadlight, but it could have been much more.

April 09, 2021.

Review originally published in Portuguese on September 19, 2018.