There are a lot of little/simple game design gestures in this project that are just so well executed and seamless that make it pretty easy to admire this project.

Moments where the playable character turns to perform a task, executes a small action, and then turns back around to continue their tasks to find the scene changed behind them in order to enable new moments of interaction/dialog are just such an inventive and subtle way of working around cumbersome and unnecessary animation while nicely fitting into the overall distinct aesthetic crafted by Turnfollow.

The dialog also feels so effortlessly written; so natural and carefree, so unburdened by the need to "REALLY EXPRESS SOMETHING" and as a result flows in profound, moving, and delicate ways. There's moments that just just "right" and they happen all the time. The way the characters interact with each other is so consistently written that every time you change playable characters it doesn't feel jarring or uncomfortable.

The "arc" is also so nicely crafted—so clearly set up and then so satisfyingly delivered. You go from "this is cute" to "I'm feeling something" to "I've been there" to "I don't want this to end" in such a wonderful way. Nothing feels alarming or unrealistic, but also not so pedantically predictable or trite. It's "coming of age" meets "knowing your place" in a way that confronts and sensitively challenges the tired tropes of each of those literary and game design genres.

WOBJ is genuine without being twee, sincere without being saccharine, wistful without being childish, mature without being pretentious.

cute, well-told, nice art style. kind of feels like a jam game that felt right so it got another polish pass and released, still a little janky but not in any meaningful way that harms it, but like, that's also because there's not much to harm. i enjoyed my time with it, enjoyed the characters and vibe, but one thing i question consistently when playing games like this, or night in the woods, or gone home, etc. is that a lot of these games (maybe not nitw actually) kind of pack in the narrative of a short story into a 2ish hour experience (i mean a lot of movies do this, too, tbf. arguably short stories are better sources for films than novels) but without a lot of the elegance of it? everything takes a little longer, you have to go in a set path for a while before you get the next bit of story, maybe you even hit some invisible walls along the way or get stuck on an object, and over the course of this time something has to carry you through that and keep you in the moment. i kinda think it has to be the feeling of playing the game, but that aspect of a lot of these games is usually undercooked because it's not essential to the project. i think this game does something kind of cool and comic booky with these conversation circles that change and react to the story bits as you make your way through the dialogue, but there's still something clunky happening here. i think if games like this are gonna really resonate, they need to be more palpable, and that means wasting the time to make a game that platforms as tight as celeste just to not really do much with it. that's probably over the top, but that's what i mean, you need to be able to meaninglessly interact with the environment and explore while still being guided through the story invisibly, it's a tall order, but otherwise it's tough not to play these games with some sense of detachment. i was actually struck while playing this and thinking about how "this form is in its infancy" that even the dialogue in this game is presented like silent movie intertitles. it feels like there's a lot of possibility ahead. now that i think of it, a short hike is a great example of this kind of hybrid approach. anyway, this game really tickled me on a narrative level, gave me some stuff to think about, and was cute and fun, i do recommend it, i played the whole thing over the course of a bath lol.

Wide Ocean Big Jacket is a nostalgic walking simulator set in some nice low-poly and simple but pleasant woods-type environments. The game gets a pass from me to begin with, because it supports 4:3 aspect ratio natively, but it does even better by making a game about being a teenager on a camping trip with your aunt and uncle without being cringe. It's a cute little game that accomplishes everything it sets out to do; unfortunately, I must give it a fairly negative score because of its grotesque depiction of cruelty against some poor rats that were just looking for a snack.

Lingers. Could have gone for another hour or two without a hiccup but the beauty of something like this is that it ends without any concrete answers to the established character/narrative arcs. Such are waning memories. Only the moments of implied catharsis shine brightest. The smaller, possibly even more meaningful gestures, fade away with the mist of moonlit waves. Before you know it the vacation ends, the recollection simply that. A pocket in time that existed for a short while. There are no stakes but to simply observe playful interactions coated with minimalist nature designs. It's simple and cute and occasionally touching, and that's all it needed to be.

More or less a 3D visual novel. Well, sort of. The actual dialogue scenes occur in black screens with little hand drawn portraits accompanying the dialogue. The quirky visual style is accompanied by equally quirky writing that is ultimately in service of a story about mundanity, which actually winds up being a fairly nice balance. Wide Ocean, Big Jacket offers nothing that is particularly profound or revelatory but that is in part the point, that small, quiet realizations and conversations are stories worth telling, because they still shape our lives. That might not leave the game with a lot to work with but it makes an impression nonetheless.

look i'm a mark for quippy indie games about small slices of mundane lives that may or may not reveal other things going on with the characters and Wide Ocean Big Jacket isn't NOT one of those but it's certainly a sweeter and quieter one than most, and i do mean that in a good way.

i've been ben and i've been cloanne and i've been brad here, and i think the game is actually better for not having a big gotcha or real hidden darkness, for choosing to spend its time sitting with quiet fun and mundane conflict.

i also gotta give the game kudos for doing a good job at capturing the adolescent and the 30-something points of view separately and when they're interacting. You see a lot of projects doing one of those or the other but mixing those voices and doing both of them well is a cool little treat.

and as ever game that can do cool shit like this in like an hour is always welcome thank you for short games

A nice little game that can be easily completed in one sitting. The style is cute and I especially liked how dialogue was presented, as well as how it was written. The story is pretty simple but full of fun characters and also is a concept I haven't really seen done much before in any medium, with some interesting themes. My main problem is actually that it's too short and could use some padding. The dialogue is good but in a lot of scenes that's all there is to do, and some more segments like the bird watching section or the unpacking the car section for example I think would really add to the game and give you some more time to digest the story after some key moments. If you play it keep an eye out for the bonus chapters at the end, they're nice.

sweet, funny, and poignant all at the right moments. to me it captures the term visual novel beautifully. the visuals are more than words on a screen, rather they create a positive, relaxing atmosphere for what amounts to a small story to live beyond some pages or a computer app.

it's like textbook definition of what makes a game a game (and not a movie or a book).

also i cried at some nerd kid putting a stick away. gaming!