As many others have noted, this is basically Little Nightmares but Swedish. Also there are a bunch of boss fights for some reason. (Who asked for so many boss fights in a game like this??)
The strength of Bramble is definitely its pretty woodland aesthetic which approaches photorealism at times. The world of the game feels so organic and lush I wanted to lose myself in it. Unfortunately the game itself prevented me from doing that. The gameplay is functional but offers no surprises to anyone who has played a cinematic platformer before, and despite being fairly short, Bramble manages to wear out its welcome by reusing many of the same challenges.
The story is also pretty flimsy. I love fairy tales, especially dark and spooky ones, so I am pretty squarely in the target demographic for this game. But Bramble’s story is really just a clothesline for the developers to hang whatever folklore reference happened to pop into their heads that day on. The only unifying theme here is “creepy and Scandinavian,” and the creepiness often feels forced in a cringey grimdark sort of way. (The tone is not far from a Hollywood movie trailer; you can almost hear the voiceover guy: “These aren’t your grandma’s bedtime stories...”) Folktales are dark, yes, but they are dark because they are about real things in life that are scary. The horrors in Bramble never feel human; they feel like things the developers thought would be cool to put in a video game.
The main problem I suspect is that Olle, our sweet little blonde boy, is boring as hell. I honestly have no idea why we are playing as him. What would a boy his age be afraid of and why? What conflict might there be between him and his sister? What lesson is he supposed to learn? The developers don’t seem to care, so there’s no emotional thread pulling us along, just a vague aesthetic interest in what spectacle they’ll throw at us next. It was enough to pull me through to the end, I guess, barely. But my patience was wearing mighty thin by the end.
Oh and SPOILER WARNING I guess the lesson we are meant to have learned from our trek in the woods, after enduring five hours of nonstop mortal peril and trauma that would leave any child permanently scarred, is...not to be afraid of the woods? lmao
The strength of Bramble is definitely its pretty woodland aesthetic which approaches photorealism at times. The world of the game feels so organic and lush I wanted to lose myself in it. Unfortunately the game itself prevented me from doing that. The gameplay is functional but offers no surprises to anyone who has played a cinematic platformer before, and despite being fairly short, Bramble manages to wear out its welcome by reusing many of the same challenges.
The story is also pretty flimsy. I love fairy tales, especially dark and spooky ones, so I am pretty squarely in the target demographic for this game. But Bramble’s story is really just a clothesline for the developers to hang whatever folklore reference happened to pop into their heads that day on. The only unifying theme here is “creepy and Scandinavian,” and the creepiness often feels forced in a cringey grimdark sort of way. (The tone is not far from a Hollywood movie trailer; you can almost hear the voiceover guy: “These aren’t your grandma’s bedtime stories...”) Folktales are dark, yes, but they are dark because they are about real things in life that are scary. The horrors in Bramble never feel human; they feel like things the developers thought would be cool to put in a video game.
The main problem I suspect is that Olle, our sweet little blonde boy, is boring as hell. I honestly have no idea why we are playing as him. What would a boy his age be afraid of and why? What conflict might there be between him and his sister? What lesson is he supposed to learn? The developers don’t seem to care, so there’s no emotional thread pulling us along, just a vague aesthetic interest in what spectacle they’ll throw at us next. It was enough to pull me through to the end, I guess, barely. But my patience was wearing mighty thin by the end.
Oh and SPOILER WARNING I guess the lesson we are meant to have learned from our trek in the woods, after enduring five hours of nonstop mortal peril and trauma that would leave any child permanently scarred, is...not to be afraid of the woods? lmao