Bread’s Game Journal 06/10/20: Small Game Big Mood
(I got Wide Ocean Big Jacket from the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality that’s currently available on itch.io If you haven’t looked at that bundle yet, not only is it packed full of incredible games like Celeste and Night in the Woods, but all proceeds are going to a very good cause. Donate what you can for some excellent games!)
Wide Ocean Big Jacket is a lot of things in it’s brisk, roughly one hour run time. It’s a powerful nostalgia trip of my own experiences camping with my family as a kid. It’s a mediation on the myriad of different ways four people can all have wildly different experiences doing the same thing. It’s a warm look at what growing up looks like, for all it’s sweet moments and awkward foibles. Finally, it’s even a visual powerhouse, that perfectly captures the image in my head of what “camping” looked like.
Wide Ocean Big Jacket has an extremely simple setup. 13 year old Mord, her longtime friend, recently turned Boyfriend: Ben, and Mord’s Aunt Cloanne and Uncle Brad, are all on a weekend camping trip. The story takes the form of roughly 12 or so vignettes spread out over the weekend, and the game’s entire loop is essentially just carrying out conversations between the various characters, all of whom you “play” as, at various points. Ben is an obviously apprehensive kid who this all new to, Mord is brash and outgoing, Brad is clearly the “fun” uncle of the family and Cloanne is shown to be awkward with children, but more than at home in the outdoors.
Conversations are presented with simple character portraits, text and a stark black background. It works far better than my description makes it sound.
Some of these vignettes are as silly as Mord declaring she can cook the best hot dogs, then immediately burning them. Others are complex, with one highlight of the game being Mord catching Cloanne off guard late at night with a question Cloanne is nowhere near prepared to answer. Most of them, however, carry a simply poignancy that works better than I could have ever anticipated. It’s such a wonderfully realized vision of what camping as a kid was like. Finding places to explore in nature, sitting by a lake/ocean shore and just watching, learning things you wouldn’t expect about others. Hell, it even has a scene with “Mean Teens” that captures, with astounding accuracy, the experience of being terrorized by older kids who have nothing better to do than harass some random kids at the same campground.
Wide Ocean Big Jacket never surrenders to cynicism. It flirts with heavier subjects just enough to clue you into some of the issues these characters face in life, but it doesn’t make any of that the centerpiece of the whole experience. It’s not a game about Brad’s marital insecurities, or Mord’s internal processing of what dating a long time friend means. It’s a game about a weekend camping trip. It’s a small vertical slice of these characters lives, and just because they went into nature doesn’t mean their internal thoughts and feelings took a vacation as well.
I could frame any screenshot from this game and hang it on my wall, it’s that affecting to me personally.
Finally, i’d be remiss if I didn’t praise the visuals of this little game. Every area that the story takes place in is something of a diorama of an idealized vision of what camping looks like. A shore at night time, under so many stars. A perfect little campsite, complete with bear safe. A small hiking hill, a boardwalk harboring mean teens. It’s like they reached right into my memories and plucked out only the fondest ones they could find to make a perfect amalgam of what camping looks like in my head. Heck, the only thing missing is a general store with a broken World Heroes 2 arcade cabinet.
Random Screenshot Of The Day:
You might be asking “But Bread, what about campfire ghost stories, the best part of camping?” and to that I say: The Rats In The Sink.
- Wide Ocean Big Jacket was such a home run right off the bat as a first selection from that itch.io bundle that I’m super excited to see what else I can find digging through there! I’ll be sure to relay my thoughts here about any other great little games I find!
