The moment you press Start Journey on the title screen, you are thrown into a decrepit town of orange buildings in the middle of an endless desert. A few of the inhabitants speak of a tongue you cannot understand, others seem to express a kind of pity for you and tell you it’s best to ‘’move on’’, most of them simply dismiss you or express a deep hatred towards you; you clearly have committed a heinous deed, but nobody is interested in revealing what. There’s nothing to buy, no one to talk to, no mission to receive, there’s nothing in this place for you, and once you get on your speeder and embark to the middle of nowhere, you can never return. There’s nothing to go back to.

It all starts when you leave…

I discovered It Comes in Waves thanks to @LordDarias fantastic review of it, and since then I just knew I had to try it. If anything, it seemed quite interesting, I do like me some introspective Sci-Fi, and I think it says a lot about the game that despite knowing the themes and general ideas it was going to tackle (it’s not like it tries to hide itself anyway, in the steam page already describes itself as a ‘’experimental open-world adventure about guilt and grief’’) it still surprised me and captivated me in ways that I didn’t expect it would do.

There has always been this kind of repetitive and at this point dumb discussion around if videogames need to be fun to be worth or engaging, if enjoying the gameplay is synonym of enjoying the experience as a whole; I call it ‘’dumb’’ because I truly believe that we’ve gone WAY past the point where it has proven that no, a videogame doesn’t have to fun to be worth it, and in fact it can have value in precisely being the total opposite. Now, I’m not saying that everyone can and should enjoy games that center their mechanics around frustration and repetition, but I’m saying that there’s an undeniable value in that, and It Comes in Waves it’s the perfect showing of how despite not being quote on quote ‘’fun’’, it’s engaging as few other works manage to be.

It all started when you left…

Despite never being properly named in-game, a look to the steam page reveals that you’ve just arrives to ‘’Eremar Prime’’, which, aside of sounding oddly like a Zone out of a Sonic game, makes it immediately apparent that mercy is not going to be a granted thing around these parts, even if the welcome is surprising warming; a couple of sings shed a bit of light on how the game controls and finally give a bit of context: you carry a ‘’specimen’’, but it’s not fully grown yet, and entrance to the sanctuary remains closed until you change that. Your quest is clear, make the specimen grow, arrive at sanctuary, and not die of thirst and the dangers and scarcity that ‘’Eremar Prime’’ holds in store. Good luck.

People have said that the gameplay loop of the game it’s only secondary to what it aspires to say and show, that this is a more contemplative game than anything else, and I only half agree with that notion. ‘’Emerar Prime’’ is nothing short of striking despite its empty nature; an empty sadness of what this land once was plagues its every corner; a dead forest that ends on a titanic tree that seemingly reached for the stars and was punished by the sun to eternally burn, giant remaining and skulls of deceased titans of old fill the landscape, their blood pouring from a few and infecting the rivers they touch; the only alive beings that walk this land are the scavengers , the robots, and whatever are the things the grunts that plague the fields come from. It’s not a particularly big setting, but it feels as such, each that you walk without being close to death is a victory in its own right, and locating and orienting yourself on the map makes the lands feel a bit less daunting… a bit. The excellent music and sounds helps ‘’Emerar Prime’’ feel more alien than it already is; each piece evokes a deep sense of dread and fear to an unknown that isn’t really there, but fear is. Fear is communicated as well by the ambience as it is by the gameplay, and that’s when what I said earlier with only ‘’half agreeing’’ comes in.

It Comes in Waves’s gameplay might not be the most profound or entertaining thing in the world, but it is central to making you feel the horrors of the desert, and I’m not talking about the threat of Permadeath. As you scavenge the lands for guns and upgrades to your equipment, not so different from the enemy scavengers you mercilessly kill as you encounter them and their scattered bases, you also seek to make the specimen grow faster and, most of all, find water for yourself. Water and the lack of it is exactly what poses the difference between life and death; it’s a constant fight for survival that it’s never truly won. There might be some moments of peace after finding a tank of water in the middle of nowhere, but just as the desperation is gone, it comes back fast: water is always depleting, and it does it fast. You may encounter upgrades that slow the depleting process, but it’s never too much help to make you ever feel comfortable, and the only moment it does slow down considerably is when the night falls, moment when the sight, one of the two things you have to aid in your survival alongside your weapons, is almost gone. The only calm is fleeting, and the stress has moments where it goes quiet. It comes in waves.

While I think that the randomness of where certain scavengers may spawn (or rather not to) and the water tanks just being in random places are things that go a bit against what It Comes in Waves goes for and make it feel more ‘’videogamie’’, they are still far from huge detractors (and there is a deeper meaning to search in the fact it makes you feel sad at the prospect of not being able to find people to kill and steal their resources) and what is done right delivers in spades. It’s an experimental work, and the experiment was a success, at first I believed that its themes may have been a little tacked on, but once the personal quest starts is more than apparent that’s far from the case. Everything comes back to guilt, everything returns to that overarching feeling of desperation and loss, of a past impossible to go back to and a present seemingly impossible to fix… but there’s a reason to go on to. A result that might not result on eternal peace or forgiveness, but it might calm the grief if just for but a fleeting moment. And that alone might be worth deifying the hollowness and thirst.

My first death was drowning in the river of blood; driven fearful by the night and thirst I fell down to a demise that was in front of me.

My second one was to thirst; I was defeated by the wasteland.

In my last attempt, scared of not finding more water and with the specimen 90% grown, I decided to try to finish my pilgrimage. I arrived to the doors of sanctuary without water, and then and there I stopped, and it was a matter of what would happen first, I would be given death, or the specimen would fully grow, and for a moment, despite the circumstances that should be anything by calm, I felt at peace. I had arrives and came this far, it was a victory on its own right, but I also felt hopeful. This was gonna be it.

The specimen reached 100% growth. The gates opened. I entered, only with 13% of my health remaining. I had done it and the fear was over, and I watched the finale, for I moment I questioned if the character would even make it out of there or after screen went black it would be its finale nonetheless.

A pessimistic thought to be sure… and one that didn’t take too long to go away. This was not moment for theories or negative thoughts. It was a moment of peace.

It all ends when you arrive…