The subtitle 'A Simple Story' is very true, so if you have ever played a sad indie adventure, you won't find anything new here. Did you know that your child and your wife and finally yourself dying is sad? In any case, it's aesthetically way ahead of other games (The First Tree among others) and especially early on the time manipulation feels very good to use. I just feel like they missed the opportunity to tie that into the narrative - Timelie did it for example.

In the end, it really just becomes way too kitschy. Play RiME instead, which also uses tropes a bit too hard but ties its gameplay better into the narrative and has a more nuanced metaphorical world. And it's not the constant black-and-white switches between love (good) and sad (bad) while a big bearded man is faceplanting onto the floor for the fiftieth time.

Lovely scenery but dubious game design.

Game is weirdly punishing and the controls are just not up to the task.

There's a climbing mechanic that is like Uncharted if that game hated you.
Fall damage kills you a lot. You're playing a spirit in the afterlife why is fall damage even a thing?

It's clunky and I eventually gave up trying to pull a jump one too many times.

Journey had almost no physical challenge and you had to go out of your way to die in that one segment (and I'm still not sure if it counts as a failure state or the games lets you continue on).

I feel many Journey likes fail because they skip this design philosophy and insist this genre needs more "game".

It doesn't.

This is a touching and (as the name suggests) pretty simple little game that I enjoyed a lot. It's a dialogue-free, emo-puzzle platformer in the same vein as Journey, RiME and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. You play as an old man who has died and appears to be reliving certain key memories from his life, all of which centre around his partner, from first meeting her as a young boy, right up until old age. The story, such as it is, treads a fine line between sentimental and twee, and although you can see where it's all going from the very start (the devs are obviously big fans of the first 10 minutes of Up - put it that way), I still came out the other side feeling like it was quite affecting.

Each of its ten levels are only twenty minutes or so long and include abstract or magic realist elements. In one you're miniaturised, exploring a huge forest, jumping from one skyscraper-sized sunflower to another, whereas in a later level you're wading through snow drifts from light source to light source, trying not to freeze to death. The central gimmick is that you get to control time using the right analog stick, moving it one way to fast-forward and the other to rewind. This allows for some straightforward but nonetheless effective platforming; in one memorable sequence you have to navigate a canyon in the middle of an earthquake, using the time travel mechanic to ascend boulders that are in the process of tumbling in slow-mo from a ridge above, then pausing time to bridge gaps using collapsing trees. It's all very gentle and, with checkpoints everywhere and near-instant restarts, not exactly coaxing. Thankfully, however, after completing Huntdown at the weekend, gentle and undemanding was precisely the sort of thing I was after, so I didn't mind.

It's also quite a pretty game, for all its simplicity, with varied environments, over-saturated colours and some lighting effects that are very easy on the eye. Special mention should go to the orchestral soundtrack, too, which often mirrors the gameplay: plinky-plonky minimalist piano in the bits where you're supposed to feel sad, and then, in one especially spectacular set piece, soaring majestically as you're magically swept along by the wind.

Overall, it's less than four hours long, it's not very demanding, it tells a sweet little tale, and it's currently about £3.50 from CDKeys. Money well spent, I say

Completed with platinum trophy earned. It starts a little slowly, but [i]Arise: A Simple Story[/i] grew on me as I progressed further into it, introducing greater diversity to its originally simple gameplay mechanics - all primarily based around time manipulation, bringing some complexity to otherwise fairly straightforward 3D platforming. Undeniably graphically stunning (my main reason for buying on PS4 rather than Switch), there's also a beautiful musical score throughout, perfectly fitting with the game's simple but touching, emotional story of love and loss.

Arise is another game that takes heavy inspiration from Journey, in that it attempts to tell a story resembling an entire life cycle with as few words as possible, focusing heavily on atmosphere and immersion. It's definitely a super pretty game and has a very melancholy yet soothing soundtrack as you traverse the memories of an old man's life. That being said, I unfortunately think some of the game mechanics actively hinder the overall experience and took me out of immersion multiple times; a lot of the jumping is imprecise due to the physics of the engine, and this problem gets amplified further on thanks to the inclusion of ice physics. I found myself dying a ton due to just barely missing jumps or slipping into water. Also, it can be hard to tell just how far you can land when you have to make certain jumps, and as a result there were multiple instances where I died to falling just a tad bit too far when this distinction between living and dying was very minute, at least to my eye. Alongside that, jumping or falling a little too far can result in the old man stumbling, which is probably intentional but happened far too often in my playthrough and resulted in a less cohesive experience. All in all, I think the puzzle mechanics of being able to rewind and progress time to traverse a level were executed well enough, but the core 3D platforming mechanics could have been significantly improved with a bit more fall distance and less restrained controls so jumping felt more reliable.

Nothing like playing a platformer with inconsistent fall damage. You basically have to guess which pathway is preprogrammed to determine if you’ll survive the jump. Except this game has collectable memories located off the main pathway so you are ‘encouraged’ to explore. There wasnt REALLY any personal incentive to explore since the easter egg memories dont add anything to the main lore. Oh the theme of this level is his wife being sick? Here’s 3 almost copy pasted pictures of him standing next to her bed.
Interesting last level design

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This is a game about the story of a life, it features an interesting platform mechanic about going forwards and backward on time, beyond that in an imprecise platformer that wants to be evocative. Its gameplay's not good, and neither is the story.

Este juego sobre la historia de una vida guarda una interesante mecánica plataformera que consiste en adelantar o retroceder el tiempo, más allá de eso es un plataformas impreciso que pretende ser evocativo. No acierta ni en lo jugable ni en lo argumental

an arty, story-driven, combat-free 3D puzzle-platformer in the vein of games like Journey and GRIS, with its central gimmick being the use of the right analog stick to rewind and advance time. not at the top of its class in a subgenre I'm quite fond of (the platforming doesn't feel as tight as it should, and the fixed camera angle makes it more difficult than it should be to gauge distance when platforming), but the time-manipulation puzzles are generally pretty fun and the story, while not terribly original (the "simple story" part of the title isn't an exaggeration), is fairly well-told through gameplay, with a genuinely touching ending.

Simple is a great word to put in the title because this game is very simple, almost too simple and it’s a continuing issue with these “artsy-fartsy” games that have been out since Echochrome was released over 10 years ago. Journey is still the game that does this best and hasn’t been topped. While Arise actually has gameplay, unlike similar games it still has no purpose, meaning, or story. You play as an old man who is clearly remembering his past be it meeting his wife, surviving harsh journeys as a child, and various problems that arose with his own child, but these are told with just statues posing to show an image or an idea and it’s never really clear.

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The majority of Arise is composed of great platforming with varied environments and time manipulation at your disposal. One level has you rewinding and fast-forwarding time to freeze or thaw water causing platforms to appear and disappear underwater. Another is a level where you just leap across lily pads and moving time makes the pads spin around. Another level is on a mountainside and you use the time to rewind time to use the destruction of the cliffside to use as platforms. It’s very unique, fun, and I had a blast figuring out how to get across each level and having different uses from the time manipulation and varied levels made the 3-hour adventure never seem stale.

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However, a few issues arose with weird camera angles and I couldn’t make out where I was jumping and made poor judgments. I even ran into an issue where a sparkly wind would carry me across a level and dump me on a lilypad only to fall right through it…about half a dozen times. Outside of this, the game wasn’t hard to figure out and I flew through the game in no time. The music is fantastic and has a sweeping orchestral score similar to Journey. But, unlike Journey, there just isn’t a purpose or story really told here and I want this fanciful art to stick with me. I know I’ll forget Arise in a few weeks while I still remember my three playthroughs of Journey from 7 years ago like they were yesterday.

The visuals are superb with a gorgeous art style and lighting effects. I particularly like how each level has a feeling behind the platforms. The lilypads feel squishy while another level’s bouncy round cells feel like rubber. There’s so much to look at and take in that on a really nice TV or monitor the colors will pop and dazzle you. The seven levels bring something new to the game and each one takes around 20 minutes to finish. There are even some areas where ghosts will kill you if you don’t manipulate the forest fire around you to provide light, and another level has you pausing time to light up the area with lighting strikes. It’s just such a shame there’s no reason to finish the journey other than to see the gorgeous levels.

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Overall, Arise doesn’t break the cycle of artsy indie games having no story or purpose, but it at least has great gameplay unlike the majority of them. I wanted to feel the emotions the old man was going through but how can I when there’s no context? Developers need to understand that they may understand and feel what’s going on, but we as players have no clue. A few statues and an old man looking sad don’t tell us anything. Play Arise for the visuals and platforming but don’t expect something to tell your friends about.