If there's one thing I really appreciate, and rarely see, it's when a game goes out of its way to be more than mere fun, and make us explore deeper dimensions of human emotionality. That's a rare thing to find in a game, and more often than not, the games that try to do that end up being awful in all other respects. Then there are games like Erayu, which deliver on the emotional premise beautifully, all while still being a pretty great game overall.

My appreciation of this game made me forgive most of its flaws, which are common in many point and click adventures, and I will cover in detail in the Gameplay section of this review. Those flaws are mostly present only in the first Erayu sessions, and they almost made me think of quitting, but the mystery, the narrative engagement, and the beautiful atmosphere kept me going. I persevered, and I'm glad I did, because this game is brilliantly beautiful and lovely.

PRESENTATION AND STORY

I know that I say that in many of my reviews, but it applies to this game with absolute perfection: the maps and sceneries are beautiful, gorgeous, mesmerizing. The authors took an already pretty collection of tilesets, created lovely map compositions with them, added pretty lighting and shading effects, as well as some sweet atmospheric elements like falling autumn leaves, small animals running around, the faint sound of birds and trees, and occasionally the murmurs of large crowds, all complete with a lovely layer of the most beautifully emotional ambient music. Every scenery, complete with its visual and auditive atmosphere, perfectly conveys the emotion the game expects us to feel in each scene. Those emotions range from sorrow, to grief, sadness, desperation, and also some glimpses into peace and hope.

A meta-game about the emotional potential of games

The most interesting and brilliant thing about this game's story, and that's another thing we don't see everyday, is that it's a meta-game, it's a game where the main character plays a game. Much more than that, it's a game that, in itself, is proof that games can touch our lives as strongly as other forms of art do, and it happens to portray a boy playing a game that touches his own life as strongly as other forms of art do, or even more strongly. The way Alex "interacts" with the boy from the Erayu game, where he sees analogies between his own plights and the plights of the character, is probably how many of us felt about a novel, movie, or video game character, one moment or another in our lives, in those hard moments of grief and desperation, where it seemed like life simply didn't make sense.

The interplay between the daily life of "real-word" Alex and the tales Erayu is a genius way to tell a story, and it's executed very well too. Alex's life is more or less mundane, but deep inside, his struggles translate into the ones seen in the game he's playing. This is just... beautiful, I lack words to describe this. It translates almost perfectly how I felt playing certain "hero games" back in high school, where the heroes would often need to remain kind and resilient in spite of people (or monsters) treating them poorly or attacking them all the time.

GAMEPLAY

Erayu is a point and click adventure, and a pretty good one at that. It demands the player to gather objects, negotiate with NPCs, and create little contraptions to achieve many different objectives. It also contains a few "logic" puzzles, such as the one with the wooden rings, and collectibles that the player can attempt to gather in the Erayu game within the game.

Overall good point and click puzzles

I enjoyed investigating and discovering new things in most moments during these point and click sessions. Objects that you can interact with are hardly ever "pixel hunts" to find, since hovering the mouse on top of them will usually make the mouse glow (in "real life" mode) or a textual description of the object pop up (in "game mode"). The point and click puzzles themselves are more often than not pretty easy to figure out once we have the right objects to accomplish a task, but that didn't make them any less engaging. Erayu (as in the game within the game) reminds me a lot of what a King's Quest game would be like if it was made by a JRPG fan, and it's pretty sweet.

In "real life" mode, you move Alex around to accomplish mundane tasks, such as buying groceries or talking to his brother. Those are usually short sections, kinda serving as a bridge between Erayu play sessions, and to give us a deeper glance into the emotional predicaments of Alex and his family. In Erayu itself, things get more complex: in the beginning, you will occasionally see yourself having to assemble impromptu tools to help gather new objects, prepare recipes to make fetid smoke bombs, give an adorable shy boy a gift for him to give to his lovely fairy crush, help heal a wounded cute fluffy creature, etcetera. The more you advance, the weirder and creepier the Erayu side of things becomes, and even "real life" Alex starts having strange dreams where the real world and Erayu blend together in strange ways. It's kind of awesome that, in these "dream" parts, the game gives no clear indication that Alex is dreaming, and it dawns upon us slowly as we investigate and see that things are way off.

A few flaws common to point and click adventures, but only in the beginning sections

While these point and click sections are usually pretty cool and fair, there are occasional situations, especially in the first Erayu play session plus the short real world part that comes after it, that frustrated and angered me quite a lot.

As the character wakes up and sees himself in a tent, being cared for by an adorable little fairy, and then steps out to see a camp in a beautiful mountain, we feel relaxed and pleased by this sweet atmosphere. But as we start playing and try to figure out what to do, things started getting a little bit annoying.

The following section contains spoilers, so I'm just gonna use hide tags in them.



Thankfully, though, these were problems I only faced in the very beginning of the game, as if the author slowly learned to avoid them as he/she continued the development. The rest of the game is (nearly) flawless, save for a few annoying things here and there that were thankfully never overwhelming.

Logic puzzles thrown in for good measure

As well as the usual "lateral thinking" point and click puzzles, the game also contains some puzzles that rely on more straight-forward logical thinking. Those are more often than not really easy, but they still add some variety and enjoyment to the overall game experience. The puzzles I identify as "logic puzzles" in this game are, say, the pebbles puzzle in the first Erayu session, and the "wooden rings" assembly puzzle as well. Those were nice, and there were quite a few of them.

Other considerations

It kind of annoys me that the game plays 90% of the time with mouse-only, but then it demands us to use the keyboard to access inventory and journals. I think that would be better served by HUD buttons instead, so the player could make do without the keyboard. In spite of that, I'd say the interface functions okay. It was confusing at first, but I eventually got used to it.

OVERALL

Now, some people will interpret this review as though I expected every game to do what this game does (with human emotions and stuff), but that's not the case. There's always room for games that focus on entertainment without a deep emotional message behind them, and many of my favorites are just like that. But still, if we are to put into question the mainstream definition of art, and the way it usually excludes video games as though they were "mere toys", then this kind of game is very important, and should be incentivated. This game is brilliant in that it achieves both emotional and gameplay high quality, all that without being too pretentious nor overwhelming the player with information.

I'm not sure if I can call this an "art game" or not, but most "art games" I see out there end up focusing too much on boring teen angst, and exploring said angst in uninteresting ways, with shallow gameplay and plain storytelling, which often dissuade people from the whole "art game" concept, and that's a huge problem. If Erayu itself can be considered an "art game", it should serve as an example to developers who want to make such "art games", teaching them the lesson that a game doesn't have to be boring and shallow in order to accomplish an artistic purpose. The more good games we have with this kind of artistic intention, the more we'll see people in the video game community being drawn to the many different dimensions of artistic expression, and that would result in quite a few brilliant video game innovations in the future.

It may be that I'm coming off as pretentious to most people reading this, but let me just tell you that: I believe this kind of artistic exploration of human expression is essential to keep the entire scene of video games from becoming a gallery of mediocre skinner boxes and clichés in the near future. Gaming needs new ideas, and why not look for those ideas in art instead of profit for a change?

...gosh, I AM kinda pretentious. Still, to make things simple, "this great game, you play it now, bye bye".