An Autumn With You
May. 3rd, 2023 04:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingAn Autumn With You
https://leafthief.itch.io/autumn
An Autumn With You is a short and nonviolent Game Boy adventure game that you can play for free in your browser window. You are Daynese, who is five and three quarters years old, and you’ve just moved with your parents from the city to your nana’s house in the country.
On the game’s Itchio page, the creator says An Autumn With You was inspired by My Neighbor Totoro. An Autumn With You is original and special in its own way, but I can see the influence. The forest around your nana’s house is home to magical creatures called Wichu that are attracted to acts of kindness. As her parents deal with their own issues, Daynese explores the beautiful area around her new house and makes a new friend.
The interesting pull from My Neighbor Totoro isn’t the forest creatures; it’s the way the kid creates(?) imaginary(?) friends to help her process what’s going on with her parents, who are struggling with their own trauma. Like Mei and Satsuki’s father, Daynese’s mother is a scholar working on a manuscript, and her writing schedule is intense. Meanwhile, Daynese’s father seems to have lost his job, and the family couldn’t afford an apartment in the city on an academic salary.
This is… um… extremely relatable to me as an adjunct lecturer. Finally someone managed to create a realistic portrayal of academia, and it’s a homebrew Game Boy game about magical forest creatures. Anyway.
I imagine this situation will be spookily relatable to the scores of young Millennial parents who had to move back in with their own parents during the pandemic, or perhaps in the prolonged economic depression leading up to it. Daynese is five (and three quarters) years old, and she just wants to play outside, but her parents aren’t doing well. In between Daynese’s jaunts into the forest, you see her parents gradually breaking down while her grandmother stands outside and waits for the storm to pass.
The main narrative drive of An Autumn With You is figuring out whether Daynese’s parents are going to be okay. It’s a short game that should take about ten to fifteen minutes to play, but I nevertheless managed to become extremely invested the story.
Unfortunately, the gameplay elements toward the end of the game are somewhat opaque. There’s a simple switch-pushing puzzle that’s presented a way that makes it far more complicated than it should be. Also, I had to consult a video playthrough (this one here) to figure out the next-to-last action necessary to finish the game. Even though you know you have to fetch food for the forest creature, there’s no indication that there’s a fishing rod in the back of the family car. If your family lived in the city, why would there be? I spent a solid ten minutes searching for something to interact with in and around the house before I finally gave up and went online.
If you’ve just read the above paragraph, however, then you already know what to do, and the game shouldn’t be too tricky. In fact, I’d say that An Autumn With You is a perfect game for its length, not to mention a wonderful use of the medium to tell a story. The art is lovely, the writing is wonderful, and there are all sorts of small but significant grace notes that add color and depth to the world.
I looked at the creator’s page on Itchio (here), and it seems they’ve also made a few short PlayStation horror games. I used to be wary of the PlayStation style of retro graphics, but it’s growing on me, and I’m definitely going to check out more of the creator’s work later this summer.
https://leafthief.itch.io/autumn
An Autumn With You is a short and nonviolent Game Boy adventure game that you can play for free in your browser window. You are Daynese, who is five and three quarters years old, and you’ve just moved with your parents from the city to your nana’s house in the country.
On the game’s Itchio page, the creator says An Autumn With You was inspired by My Neighbor Totoro. An Autumn With You is original and special in its own way, but I can see the influence. The forest around your nana’s house is home to magical creatures called Wichu that are attracted to acts of kindness. As her parents deal with their own issues, Daynese explores the beautiful area around her new house and makes a new friend.
The interesting pull from My Neighbor Totoro isn’t the forest creatures; it’s the way the kid creates(?) imaginary(?) friends to help her process what’s going on with her parents, who are struggling with their own trauma. Like Mei and Satsuki’s father, Daynese’s mother is a scholar working on a manuscript, and her writing schedule is intense. Meanwhile, Daynese’s father seems to have lost his job, and the family couldn’t afford an apartment in the city on an academic salary.
This is… um… extremely relatable to me as an adjunct lecturer. Finally someone managed to create a realistic portrayal of academia, and it’s a homebrew Game Boy game about magical forest creatures. Anyway.
I imagine this situation will be spookily relatable to the scores of young Millennial parents who had to move back in with their own parents during the pandemic, or perhaps in the prolonged economic depression leading up to it. Daynese is five (and three quarters) years old, and she just wants to play outside, but her parents aren’t doing well. In between Daynese’s jaunts into the forest, you see her parents gradually breaking down while her grandmother stands outside and waits for the storm to pass.
The main narrative drive of An Autumn With You is figuring out whether Daynese’s parents are going to be okay. It’s a short game that should take about ten to fifteen minutes to play, but I nevertheless managed to become extremely invested the story.
Unfortunately, the gameplay elements toward the end of the game are somewhat opaque. There’s a simple switch-pushing puzzle that’s presented a way that makes it far more complicated than it should be. Also, I had to consult a video playthrough (this one here) to figure out the next-to-last action necessary to finish the game. Even though you know you have to fetch food for the forest creature, there’s no indication that there’s a fishing rod in the back of the family car. If your family lived in the city, why would there be? I spent a solid ten minutes searching for something to interact with in and around the house before I finally gave up and went online.
If you’ve just read the above paragraph, however, then you already know what to do, and the game shouldn’t be too tricky. In fact, I’d say that An Autumn With You is a perfect game for its length, not to mention a wonderful use of the medium to tell a story. The art is lovely, the writing is wonderful, and there are all sorts of small but significant grace notes that add color and depth to the world.
I looked at the creator’s page on Itchio (here), and it seems they’ve also made a few short PlayStation horror games. I used to be wary of the PlayStation style of retro graphics, but it’s growing on me, and I’m definitely going to check out more of the creator’s work later this summer.
