Synopsis:
It’s 1986 – Meredith Weiss takes a break from her career in the big city to deliver mail in her hometown. How will she experience two weeks in beautiful Providence Oaks, with its iconic lake and quirky community? And what will she do next? It’s up to you

Reviewed on: PC
Also available for: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
[Editors note:] As of 14/09/21 Lake is only available on Steam in Australia as it’s been refused classification.

Cast: Karyn O’Bryant, Whitney Szabo, Todd Ellis, Ed Mace, Cassie Ewulu, Moe Rock, Angela Tran, Matthew Curtis, Whitney Szabo, D. Roy Bradley, Michael Orenstein, Rebecca Davis, Troupe Gammage, Jaacob Barrens, Jennifer Losi, Duffy Weber

Developer: Gamious
Game Director: Dylan Nagel
Writers: Jos Bouman (lead), Gerthein Boersma, Eva Niuwdorp, Thari Schop
Lead Programmer: Luc Schols
Game And Narrative Designers: Dylan Nagel, Jos Bouman

Publisher: Whitehorn Digital, Gamious

We have all heard the phrase, “life begins at 40.” It’s a saying I used to roll my eyes and scoff at, imaging ageing people in denial, trying to trick themselves into thinking the best is yet to come, so they don’t have to dwell on lost youth. However, I finally understand the sentiment as I am now half past 30 and approaching said age with infinitely more wisdom than younger me. The idea is that by 40, the harder stuff should be over. It could have been establishing a job or career, studying, finding love, understanding yourself better as a person or knowing what is important and what you value—using those experiences to finally ‘start living’. Through its story, Netherland based developer, Gamious, challenges its main character to decide what she values most and what type of life she wants to live. Questions and challenges Lake also made me ask myself.

Lake takes place on September 1st 1986, and you play as Meredith Weiss. A 40-something MIT graduate software programmer who lives in the city. She works late nights, even missing out on important planned social events thanks to the demanding nature of her career. She plans a two-week break to return to her small country hometown of Providence Oaks, Ohio, helping fill in for her father, the town’s postal delivery person. Each day you are tasked with delivering several envelopes and packages, with no time limits or set routes, leaving you free to navigate the various locations around the towns gigantic and beautiful iconic lake. Some deliveries can be as simple as parking up and dropping an envelope into a letterbox, whilst others involve grabbing a package from the back of the truck and delivering it to one’s residence or business.

It’s during these deliveries you encounter a cast of interesting characters from the town. The relationships you develop and the interactions you have with them is Lakes biggest strength. The mundane drop-offs that didn’t involve character interactions quickly became repetitive and tedious, even after just four days had passed from the fourteen-day in-game timeframe. I get it. It’s a job, and it is supposed to be work, but it felt more of a chore than it needed to be and a roadblock towards the exciting interactions. Thankfully the cast of personalities is great and easily identifiable. Characters range from the old cat lady Mildred Jenkins; the secluded lumberjack in the woods, Robert; Jack, the farmer who doubles as the towns radio DJ; and Meredith’s childhood best friend, Kay. My favourite character was Angie, the owner of The Flick Shack, the towns video store. She is a quirky cinephile that recommends movies and is playful and even flirtatious. Seeing the VHS rental store and its collection of movie pun posters and tapes like Back to the Present, Ghostblasters, Nineteen Candles, or Blade Jogger made me feel nostalgic, and I instantly recalled fond memories of visiting these stores and raiding the weekly sections growing up.

Despite the tape store and a reference to the Challenger spacecraft, no outstanding touchstones scream that Lake takes place in the 80s. The remote town only being able to pick up one radio station comprised of chilled out local country tunes is a reasonable explanation for the lack of new wave, synth or pop icons blasting the airwaves. This isn’t Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, nor does it need to be. Lake is more focused on community, relationships and self-discovery. Quite early on, it establishes that at the end of Meredith’s fourteen days, you will need to make a big decision: go back to your life and career in the city with a multimillion-dollar company, or change pace and stay in Providence Oaks, reconnecting friendships and searching for love.

Meredith’s two choices are often reflected in the two to three dialogue options you have with characters. One will always hint that Meredith is so far removed from the town and its appeal to the point where it can be condescending with such lines as “you have lived here your whole life?”. The other option usually shows Meredith as someone reliving old memories, showing warmth for the town, its people and relaxing nature. Blunt answers can be dismissive and end conversations, whilst the warmer, more open option unlocks extra side quests and tasks to complete. These additional tasks help you understand the town folk and even provide opportunities to flirt and romance certain characters. It was a good introspective look into how and why I would answer the way I did. Am I answering based on how I feel and what I would do based on my view of the world? Or how Meredith would act in her situation? The choices sometimes skewed towards helping characters too much as the alternative made Meredith out to be a terrible person. If you are ending conversations and not enacting the side quests, then you may as well stop playing.

The delivery trucks pace, or lack of it, didn’t bother me at first, being able to take in the gorgeous lake and the surrounding forest woodlands. However, by the halfway point of the six-seven hours required to complete Lake, it became cumbersome, as did Meredith’s slow walking pace and barely noticeable increased run speed. It’s not a race, but I feel like it needed to be slightly faster. Opening the map sometimes allows you to click on a package or envelope icon to autopilot your truck to the location. I found this a great tool to skip walking back to the truck and enduring the short fade to black screen that occurs every time you jump in and out of the vehicle. There is still a quick one-second load screen, but it put me immediately in the truck, slightly ahead from where I parked and, on the road, moving towards my next destination. The autopilot is a great accessibility feature and shortcut tool I exploited but don’t see the value in using outside of that.

You can also fast travel to one of the four main junctions of the map. With the almost non-existent loading times, I was fast travelling to one of the main junctions and completing the deliveries surrounding it using the autopilot to teleport back to the truck, cutting trip times in half. Time in the truck slowly became the burden between the character interactions I craved. With no real environmental storytelling or collectables, I found no reason to explore the town outside of the delivery locations. Eventually, I just wanted to get to the townspeople with whom I could interact and further develop the story and my relationships. As it built towards the closing deliveries, there felt a lack of tension or build-up towards the final decision, which left me underwhelmed.

Lake should be a Buddy game. A charming, beautiful looking indie game built on interesting characters set in my favourite decade. A tale of self-discovery and looking inward to discover what is truly important. It’s just let down by repetitious deliveries and a tedious walking pace. Although the final decision felt flat, the residents of Providence Oaks and the interactions and relationships you form are wholesome and reinforce that sense of community and feeling like you belong. Sometimes in life, it’s about the journey, not the destination, and I think the same about Lake.

(Lake code provided for review)