The Stillness of the Wind

Would I recommend this game? No. Was it a bad game? Also no. The visuals are stunning and it had the bones of a good epistolary plot, but the pacing crossed over from meditative to simply slow. I would love to own this game as a painting on my wall not play it as it is. Three out of five stars.

I genuinely can't figure out how to play the game. There is no tutorial, just wandering around like a point and click game. Do you need to keep gates closed? The looseness of the UI suggests no, but common sense and reading Steam guides says yes. I retrieved water from the well and couldn't figure out what to do with the water. Do the goats and chickens need water? How do I give it to them? I get that the game wants to be minimalist but I genuinely can't figure out how to interact with it after wandering around the farm slowly for 20 minutes.

Calming but sombre tone. Beautiful direction, it's short and sweet and has a good pace of story for what it is.

what a weird but also an amazing game it's more of an experience that leaves you with so many unresolved emotions that got me crying in the end

I understand what the game was going for, and it did it well, but I did not enjoy it. I already don't like farming sims, so getting started was a pain, then it just went downhill from there. This is not, I repeat NOT, a farming sim, but you still have to do all that mess to progress initially and I was not a fan. I have never wanted a game to end so badly that I actively attempted to facilitate the blatantly obvious ending. Nothing I did made it go faster. Do not play this game unless you are extremely into philosophy and thought experiments about the human condition. I generally have a lot of patience and offer a lot of leeway for stuff like this. Not this game. It was agonizingly slow, boring, and predictable to the very very very very finally end.

Very little of what you do matters while an old woman loses her mind and loved ones during a supernatural end of civilization event. And, it all happens painfully slowly. I can understand it for the main character, she's an old woman, but the cutscenes take 2-3x longer than needed. This isn't a game, I would argue it's not much of a visual novel.

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