Lake is a game set in the 80s and is about a woman who has gotten fed up with life at a programming firm in a big city and has the opportunity to take over her dad’s old job as a postal worker for two weeks. Throughout her stay, her interactions with people will help her decide what she wants to do with the rest of her life.

The gameplay is very simple: you deliver letters and parcels. You drive to a location, drop of a letter in a letterbox or take a parcel from the back. Sometimes there’s nobody there, but other times you strike up a conversation. There are some interesting individuals like a lumberjack who wants to save the countryside from apartments, your old childhood friend and a woman who is trying to run a video rental store but is struggling as not enough people have a VCR at home.

There’s no time limit, you just drive around at your own pace and return to the post office when finished. It probably sounds boring, but it actually comes across as really relaxing, there’s a certain charm to the whole game: just like the “holiday” as a postal worker is to the main character, the game is just a nice change of pace for the person playing.

The passion Gamious had in making this game jumps off the screen. The characters have personality and realness to them. Every character has multiple sets of clothing they wear throughout the two weeks this game takes place in. There are so many dialogue choices and all of them have impact on how the characters see you and behave towards you.

Playing this game felt like a warm hug and constant coziness, even when some darker topics were touched upon.
I loved the gameplay. I never knew delivering mail could be so fun. The game could have gone on for much longer and I would have been a happy girl.

It wasn't all rainbows and paradise, though. The music on the radio got repetitive and so did delivering the mail after two weeks of doing just that. I think it could have been made even more fun with more events interspersed. I know that's not how real mail delivery goes, but in terms of a video game, it'd have helped break the monotony of driving the same route and putting mail in the mailbox to the same couple lines of dialogue.

The one thing that frustrated me was that Meredith couldn't run. You can hold Shift to make her walk faster but it barely did anything. It made me want to drive the truck everywhere and not walk at all.

There are some little points that could have been improved, but in the end, this game is an absolute gem. And by a Dutch developer which was fun to find out afterwards (I'm Dutch!). I'm excited to play the Christmas DLC, even though it's not Christmas anymore.

Esse jogo curou minha depressão.

Uma experiência honesta e que me cativou pelos personagens muito carismáticos.

Uma simplicidade singular.

Repetitivo
Um bom jogo para relaxar e apenas entregar suas cartas por aí, e só isso, apesar de ser bem curto (±4h) fazer essa entrega por 14 dias acaba sendo enjoativa, existe algumas histórias dos moradores locais mas bem fracas e não são capazes de prender a atenção.
Ambientação desse jogo é maravilhosa e a soundtrack é muito boa, porém, novamente um ponto repetitivo, acredito que sejam no máximo 5 músicas e a própria rádio brinca com isso.
Por fim, os bugs são um charme a parte e a parte mais cômica do game.

David’s 30 Platinum Trophies Before Turning 30

2/30

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: As close to perfection as one can get.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5: Excellence incarnate.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Amazing experience.
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5: Good game.
⭐️⭐️⭐️: Fun enough to be worth your time.
⭐️⭐️.5: Missed the mark in a considerable amount of elements.
⭐️⭐️: A trudge towards progress/completion.
⭐️.5: A great deal of regrets playing this.
⭐️: Truly disappointing.
.5: Kudos to anyone with a shred of bother.

The above rating descriptions pertain strictly to the overall rating after taking into consideration the elements below, for which I’ll still employ a five-point rating to get an average afterwards.

Graphics: 3 - Pretty okay for something cartoonish, detailed enough, and the colours pop.

Gameplay: 1 - Tedious, and the ability to “run” is like a slap to the face.

Audio: 1.5 - I appreciate the voice acting and the original (?) soundtrack (which is considerably lacking in terms of options), but anything else doesn’t help the game’s case.

Replay Value: 0.5 - There are three endings as implied by the trophy list. That should have been enough to signal the inclusion of the ability to skip cutscenes. Not only that, there are dialogue options that force you to watch over them again.

Story: 1 - Potentially interesting characters that are disappointingly not fleshed out for a chance to hold this game together even at the slightest bit, but hey, as the main character, they truly are side characters as if in real life: ready to be discarded at a moment’s notice.

Overall: 1.4 - I may not want to go back to this lake.

Can't say that a temporary scenary change to the countryside doesn't make you all weird, thinking about new things.
Game feel is off.
Love the characters, despite being as surface level as you'd expect from a video game, they all lack depth.
The main thing that sticks here is the mail delivery part, as boring and tiresome as you'd expect it to be, only having these little shiny encounters during your day, a delivery to the diner, being asked by Mildred to help a cat...

The main choice of the game is go back to evil corporate world and make money, stay in PO living a stable life with a shit job but unlike computers you have friends and a nice setting, or fuck off everything and leave with your lesbian cinephile GF in a camping car, choosing it despite the myst in your mind.

Sort things out, make choices, feel time, turmoil of emotions.
Lake stays on the surface but lack depth and a clearer direction.