A Wolf in Autumn

released on Oct 27, 2015

A dark, surreal psychological horror game, in which a young girl finds herself locked in a shed, in the middle of an idyllic autumn forest.


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very short, atmospheric, with not much else to tell. the story was interesting but it's optimized so poorly; i had like 600FPS in the main menu & the first area is an eyesore. i got it for 99 cents so i can't complain too much, but it left a lot to desire.

Usually not one for these short puzzle narratives, but Syzmanski is to be trusted and I'm glad I did. The starting area is hideously ugly, but it makes sense why by the end. A great story in a neat little package.

It's atmospheric, sure, but a number of bizarre design choices stopped me getting much out of this one. The colour palette is the worst I have ever seen in a game; despite most of A Wolf In Autumn taking place outdoors, everything is so aggressively oversaturated and high-contrast that it hurts the eyes and it's impossible to see anything. That's even more a problem when most of the game involves picking up small objects, because if you happen to drop them in something's shadow you will never find them again.

The writing fluctuates between pretty good and deliberately babbling and incoherent. An awful lot of it is just presented as white text on a black background, and some of the babbling sections are painful to read, but the voice-acted parts are honestly pretty ok. But the story told by all this text... ehh... I never really understood what any of it was, and I think that was the point. I don't know which events are supposed to be real, which metaphors are supposed to relate to what, and the ending is... well its not good or satisfying.

The moment to moment puzzles also aren't great... an awful lot of them devolve into 'I need to destroy this object, let's permutate between all the tools I have available until the game determines one that will work. Seriously, why can I remove a padlock with a wrench but not a bolt-cutter or a hammer? Some of it stinks a bit of the moon logic at play in Szymanski's older game Fingerbones, but the logical threads were at least more followable (or perhaps brute force-able) in A Wolf In Autumn...

But yeah, it's very short and there is some pretty nice atmosphere in here. I think on the whole it's definitely the weakest of the Szymanski games I've played (at time of writing that includes this, Fingerbones, Chop Goblins and Iron Lung), but I guess it's still possible to get something out of this.

Probably the most straight-forward of Syzmanski's older titles in regards to the theme, but it still paints a pretty vivid picture. Some minor puzzle elements are present here too, but I'd still say it was worth playing for the brief but powerful narrative.

As every experience focused game by Szymanski, this is a high concept, mechanically simple and deeply atmospheric game. The story is the most abstract and subtle yet and that works on its favor as well as it detracts from it.

I really like how the game casually introduces aspects of the protagonist than change the players perstective on her with just a few words. Also, the fact that the game is interrupted by calls of the mother of the protagonist -driven by a great performance- adds so much depth to an otherwise simple game.

Although I can't sincerely give it a higher score, I really enjoyed my time with this game, but I don't think I got to enjoy the full experience since my english is not the best and the introduction as well as the ending have kind of complex language.