Short but sweet. This might be the first game about death I've played that can be accurately described as "cozycore" without it sounding like a backhanded compliment.

You play as Morris Lupton, the recently deceased curator of the museum on the island of Shelmerston. After frittering about his new free time in the museum he once worked at (his old haunts, if you will), he reunites with his dog Sparky in the afterlife and Sparky reveals that A) she is now a talking dog and B) Shelmerston's dormant volcano is going to explode due to the waning powers of the island's protector, Aggi the Custodian. With the help of Sparky, Morris searches across the island for some more ghosts, uncovering their history, stories and secrets, in an attempt to find a new patron of the island before it's too late.

As a whole, I liked this little five hour experience. The two best ways I can describe the gameplay are "point-and-click Where's Waldo" and "art piece diorama". You're a ghost that can phase through objects and see the innards of things as you go about, collecting the memories of other ghosts. It's all just picking things up in the environment, rotating them around, and discovering their secrets, but it's also a beautiful and gentle contemplation of memory and loss, of the connections we form in life before we pass on, and about the odd ways you'll be remembered. But you can also gaze inside a thermos and see what color tea a sea captain was drinking.

The game starts out all jovial by having beloved pillars of the community like a yoga-loving lighthouse keeper or someone's husband, but then you also get to visit a campsite where a nature lover is remembered for being a prickly asshole. Ironically, the prickly asshole was the character that stuck with me the most. The other ghosts have family members and friends fondly remembering their loved ones (the second ghost in particular is a 37-year old woman remembered by her father, who tragically outlives her) but then you get to the campsite where a dead man's camper has been left abandoned to the elements and all the campers are mildly relieved that the weird owl-obsessed loner guy with all the strict rules is gone. It's this story - this tale of a guy remembered for being an asshole in life, even if he had a good reason for it - that keeps the game from feeling too saccharine. Sometimes, death happens to the guy that was just kinda annoying.

The game also gently eases you into its whole "this may LOOK like Earth but also there's weird fish people and bird people living alongside humanity, and also there might be fruit people?" setting over time, which I enjoyed. Sure, you're dead, the island might explode, and the dude in the camper is mainly remembered by people who hate him for confiscating their kite, but also you can find a four-legged pear man smoking a corn pipe in each level.

The ending is kinda underwhelming though. You spend the entire game looking for a Custodian to keep the island's volcano from erupting and wiping out the entire island but then, after talking to the Bronze Age woman who's the current Custodian (which, sidenote - I appreciate that this game didn't treat her beliefs as "primitive" and "wrong" or had her talk like a caveman), the game just kinda rolls credits without saying anything concrete. It is rather easy to connect some dots and come to a conclusion (that your main character and their dog are the new Custodians), but also it's weird that the sense of urgency that's been brewing for the entire runtime of the game just sorta fizzles into a lazy walk on the beach. I feel like "Does a volcano explode?" is one of those questions that shouldn't be left vague.

Ah well. It's cute, it's a fun little art piece, and I honestly think this particular game flew under the radar for a lot of people. I just wish the talking dog had a more convincing dog bark than "human-making-a-vaguely-dog-noise" and the weird goat man that looks like Discord from My Little Pony didn't give me such a strict time limit on his riddles.

If I'm honest, I expected more of an annapurna game.

The art is clearly not the problem, they focus a lot on the unique style of every game of theirs, BUT the story is just okay and the gameplay is just "zoom in and zoom out".

It's just an average game. Not a horrible one, but it was not good enough to click with me, at least.

'I Am Dead' é um jogo de puzzle simples, porém com uma história bem profunda, faz o jogador refletir sobre a morte e as lembranças (sejam elas boas ou ruins) que as pessoas ao nosso redor levam consigo após a nossa morte. Esse jogo veio num momento muito peculiar, perdi meu pai faz menos de um mês, e tudo que eu tenho dele são as boas lembranças e objetos que me lembram a pessoa que ele era, espero que nesse momento ele já esteja no oeste.
Veredito: mecânicas simples porém super criativas, uma arte bem diferenciada, com puzzles acessivos e uma história linda. Se está procurando dar uma relaxada e ter uma experiência reflexiva, esse jogo é para você.

I almost wrote off I Am Dead. My first impression was that it was twee with little to say or do. But I stuck with it as it was short and didn’t ask much of the player (and I’m a sucker for a short game). By the halfway point in the game, it became apparent I was writing off this game too early and that there was a deeper tale unfolding about memory, death, and legacy. While the gameplay is simple and amounts to little more than a hidden object game with the ability to look into objects, it was satisfying to match your understanding of the character and their memory to the lost object. And there is some startling truth to the gameplay—memories are all that are left of the dead, and these are often connected to objects. Lives are revealed by looking deeper and peeling back layers. It may be cliche that the outsiders and oddballs in this world turn out to be misunderstood sweethearts, yet most of their stories had enough dimension that these revelations felt “earned”. And the larger story of the island was interesting though incomplete with its interconnected history. In the end, the game reminded me that each life leaves an indelible, if unnoticed, mark on the places and people where it lived.

It's an eye-catching title, I'll certainly give it that. I might not have looked twice at I Am Dead had it been called something like "Shelmerston" (after the game's setting), but as a title it is certainly fitting.

You are, indeed, dead. The story concerns the recently deceased Morris, who is idly getting used to the afterlife when Sparky, the spirit of his similarly departed dog, visits him. She brings worrying news that the island's volcano is about to erupt unless a ghost can soothe it. Morris is apparently not right for the job, so the two set out to find the island's next protector.

This takes the shape of a hidden object game where you search through a series of delightfully low-poly dioramas to learn more about the various candidates. You see the memories of those who knew them and try to find items that were important to them while alive.

While this sounds morbid, the game leans more towards the quirky than macabre. In fact, I Am Dead is often too quaint for its own good. The writing isn't bad necessarily, but the tone is almost flippant to a point where it's easy to forget that death looms over every moment. The game rarely actually commits to exploring tragedy or grief, instead celebrating each character's life. While this leads to some genuinely sweet moments, it undercuts the larger themes that the story is reaching for.

Zooming through the levels to find each object can be quite engaging, especially since Morris is able to phase through almost every single item in each level to visual dissect them. It's a particularly satisfying visual effect, and I can't help but be impressed at the sheer volume of detail that has gone into somewhat realistically model thousands of items - both inside and out - most of which are just there to obfuscate your goal.

It's hard to knock the effort and care that's been put into creating this charming world and its characters. As a game and story, it sadly doesn't quite coalesce. The very abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion left me feeling deflated rather than moved. For a game partly about the value of closure and important of legacy, it's a disappointingly unfulfilling note on which to end.

When you really get down to it, this is a pixel hunting game with bad writing. I feel the art department was done a disservice by how laborious the mechanics are, and how generic the plot is. Because it does looks pretty and it's clear a lot of talent was used here. There's a somewhat decent challenge here and there, usually testing your attention on previous pixel hunting ventures, but it is just not great. The biggest sin, however, is that despite being at heart a poorly constructed story in a tedious game format, that would be salvageable if it wasn't also written in the much dreaded hollywoodesque marvel style, that I abhor.

I Am Dead is a really pleasant experience. The gameplay loop is essentially Ispy with X-ray vision which doesn't exactly jump off the page. However, it is actually really fun to do in the context of the world of Shelmerston and the individual areas allow you to take your time interacting with its beautiful, episodic stories. I was having such a blast I even collected all the Grenkins and Whitstable riddles (little guidance from google on a few because they can get really tough). The characters of this game are such a joy to learn about, Peter Noach, Ogden Beckett, and Aggi especially. Discovering the impact they had on the people around them through memories is a theme that I will simply never tire of. The areas of Shelmerston were so cool to explore and kept me fully interested throughout the playthrough. I really appreciate the voice acting as well. the performances made the world feel more lived-in, and the dialogue was calm and befitting of the cozy and slow-paced nature of the game. As far as the overall story goes, I really liked it. It was pretty clear from the jump that Morris was headed for the job of custodian, but I really enjoyed how the game doesn't make it all about him and his responsibility. It tells the story of the island as he knows and loves it, the people, places, and shared experiences of Shelmerston, leaving the story of Aggi and his fate as simply a part of what makes him perfect for the job. The one thing I was not a huge fan of was the wrinkle they threw in about Sparky being part-spirit of Shelmerston. I don't think it was all that necessary. Sparky is Sparky. She is a part of Morris, and that's all she really needed to be in my opinion. I also thought that the voice acting performance was a bit off when she was talking about how the island was a part of her, but outside of that I still really liked the story.

In conclusion, I Am Dead is a surprising hidden gem that hit me with the charm from the jump and never let me go, highlighting the beauty of life and death and what we leave behind.