Short but sweet. This might be the first game about death I've played that can be accurately described as "cozycore", and I mean this in the best possible way.

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.