It's possibly unfair of me to say that Lake felt like a chore to play, seeing as that's sort of the point. Games that simulate jobs are meant to emulate a work activity, after all, and in that sense I think Lake does an admirable job of capturing the experience of being a mail delivery driver.

It's just not fun or interesting or satisfying, and I don't even get paid to do it this time.

I delivered mail for a summer. I had a bike instead of a truck, but the long stretches of nothing but contemplation, the sorting of parcels of letters, the trying to remember which house is which. It's all here, but Lake doesn't manage to make it feel like anything more than that.

Lake requires just enough engagement to pull you out of any zen-like introspection the repetitive driving and delivering might be able to conjure.

It doesn't help that the story feels perfunctory. It's really nothing more than a Hallmark TV movie about a city girl getting back to her small town roots and leaving her computer job in the city for a good ol' fashioned real job.

I kept expecting the story to take any unexpected turns—and as I left the game unfinished, it's not impossible that it eventually does—but after every cliché in the book had been rolled out, I had no desire to dig deeper into the shallow lives of these empty stereotypes.

Again, I may be unfair in my judgement but for my money Lake is a dreary and unsatisfying work simulator mixed with a story that ironically lacks any drive. It's aiming for cozy but ends up hollow.