We never really know what we have until it's gone.

I Am Dead is a exploration-based puzzle game that is half hidden object game and half cut-it-in-half simulator. Telling the story of Morris Lupton (who is dead), we travel across the quirky island of Shelmerston to try to communicate with other lost souls by finding mementos from their past. Each of the locations is brimming with life and detail, and it never bored me through the 7 hours of gametime finding little objects that defined a character or connections from one thing to another. Shelmerston feels like a world that lives and breathes, and it only helps that NPCs move around frequently and have fully realized stories of their own. This is mainly a puzzle game, and there are various ways the game has you interacting and solving its interesting mechanic, but you are staying in the game for its excellent world design and lore. One of my favorite experiences of 2020 and another brimming success.

For fans of: hidden object games, The Room series, To The Moon, Return of the Obra DInn, Outer Wilds