Aer
This game, I can legitimately say I had no expectations for. I received AER in a bundle, and was intrigued and excited to see what it was. I am absolute sucker for exploration games, especially when coupled with beautiful art and atmosphere. I am, as I said in my 35MM review, in love with walking simulators. Though AER is not a walking simulator, in principle, it should hit the same buttons.
This one has crabs!
AER Memories of Old follows the adventures of Auk, a shapeshifter who navigates her world of floating sky islands by transforming into a bird and sailing between them. We join her as she is visiting a temple. It collapses around her, giving a dire warning - seek out the other three temples and the gods slumbering within before the rift that turned her world into floating islands comes back to devour what’s next.
No pressure.
The stakes and quest are clear from the start, and helpful NPCs in the first village are happy to point Auk in the right direction. The mechanics themselves are pretty simple. Auk hops off a ledge, transforms into a bird, and flies to the next island to solve puzzles, explore temples, and save the world. The puzzles are easy, the level design is interesting, and it’s all relatively straightforward. Indeed, a word for it might be “cathartic.” Cruising from island to island as a bird with just the music and the sights to guide you, it’s easy to get lost in the moment. The atmosphere is absolutely incredible, the music is perfect, and the look and feel of it all is perfect for the atmosphere it’s building. There’s a lot of love in how this game was built, and it shines through.
Also a sheep fell in love with me.
My review so far has focused on the look and feel, the atmosphere of this game, and how it feels to play, and though AER excels, that that is the focus of my praise is a bad sign.
I play on a touchpad because I’m lazy and don’t want to go get a mouse, and as such, my gameplay experiences can sometimes be radically different from someone playing with a mouse. In the case of AER, it’s very difficult to turn the camera. This doesn’t make the game unplayable, but it means that my threshold for when a game is asking too much is lower than it might otherwise be.
I also struggled with the flight mechanics. They seem simple - button go up, button go down, spacebar to go brrrrrr - but in practice, it became my personal challenge to land where I was actually intending to land. I eventually ended up just deciding that it was easier to dramatically crash into things than to try to land where I intended to land. Once again, a small mechanics issue, but when coupled with already struggling with controls, the straws on the proverbial camel’s back piled high.
“Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?” - A sperm whale, now reincarnated in AER
All of this could have been doable. I made it about two thirds of the way through the game before something went horrifically wrong. Three hours of struggling with cameras, struggling to fly, slamming into rocks, and randomly transforming, just to have it all come crashing down and me finally give up.
I stepped through a hole in the ground and fell into a void in the game. I assume it was an unadvertised pit to hell. There was no escape. No turning into a bird. No flapping out. Just me, the camera, and an eternal plummet into a pink abyss.
I closed the game, and reloaded, only to find myself back at the beginning of the temple I’d nearly cleared. I closed the game again, this time for good.
In all the screenshots, you may have noticed the emptiness of the world. There is next to no one to talk to. Your lantern will illuminate ghosts who give you insights into the world that was, and the puzzles offer fun the first time. The atmosphere is nice, but is a matter of playing through the same, unchanging spaces over and over again. When coupled with a narrative of doom, it’s difficult to believe there is a real threat to this idyllic world. Above all, though, the world is the same. There’s nothing new.
I can struggle with controls. I can give up on turning a camera. I can plow ahead so I can find out what’s around the next narrative bend. To have it all reset due to a bug, though, is to reveal how little replayability there is, and how taut that string of patience can be. It reinforces the fragility of the narrative and how much lifting the atmosphere is actually doing, and how easily that atmosphere, if it fails, brings the entire game down with it.
I did not finish AER Memories of Old. I am unlikely to finish AER. It’s a beautiful game, filled with love, and with an atmosphere that longs to be explored, but that’s the crux of it. If you enjoy the atmosphere, the game will not disappoint. If the atmosphere falls away, though, you realise there’s not much there underneath, and your interest plummets into the pink abyss.
Developer: Forgotten Key
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle
Year: 2017
Country: Sweden
Language: English
Play Time: 3-4 Hours