REVIEW: Boreal Tales

My family was from Morecambe in the North West of England. There are 42,589 people living there. It is also home to bad comedy and shellfish. It is a dead city. It is a black hole. It is a black hole. Anything that enters its orbit is destroyed and there is no escape. It was once said to have thrived but no one remains who can verify that.

Everything the town offered, whether it was to residents or tourists, ended long ago. Many of the older residents are blaming television's Noel Edmonds (Swap Shop and Noel’s House Party), Deal or No Deal, Noel’s House Party, Noel’s House Party, Deal or No Deal) as well as his bulbous life-partner 1993 pop star Mr Blobby (Noel’s House Party. Blobbyvision. The All New Adventures of Mr Blobby). They are all dirt there. They are hustlers, turncoats, and treacherous scum. Because some things are better kept unsaid, I have never had the courage to ask them why. Some truths are too heavy for the heart, while others are too painful.

(Like when I met Mr Blobby in real life, and he looked at me through a shower curtain. This is an actual thing, and I'm not ready to talk about it now. It was an error that I made, and I am sorry for it. (

Morecambe has been dead as long as I can recall, and probably even longer. The extent of poverty is alarming and unemployment is rampant. Teacher's cries for help, as hungry children eat from bins, fall on deaf ears. The streets are lined with abandoned businesses, while a strip of buildings with 'Old West-themed facades acts as the mocking and cartoonish centerpiece of this miserable ghost city.

Morecambe's final days were long before I was even born. Its emaciated husk has been all I have ever seen. As I was playing Boreal Tales by Snot Bubble Productions, I wondered if anyone had noticed. Did they feel or see it? They tried to stop it. Or did they let the cancer grow unnoticed until it was too late

Boreal Tales, according to its developers, is 'the dream for a dying city'. Explore interconnected vignettes from the collective subconscious of a struggling community, talk with anthropomorphic creatures, solve puzzles, and uncover mysteries.

The game begins with Bree. Bree investigates Boreal Blocks, monolithic, iridescent ghosts that seem to be the result of the town's psychic and economic decline. The town has been experiencing a collective sigh of despair since the announcement about the closing of the mill. She shifts between people/places/personas/dreams via the static signals on her TV/DVD combo, found discs corresponding to different destinations. In search of a lost friend or a murderer, she navigates the mad, depressed psychosphere of residents of this doomed community.

The visual style of the game is influenced by early 3D titles on the original PlayStation. The early 3D games had a level and style that was abstracted that is not present in modern video games. Modern games have a higher graphical fidelity, which means that the game does most of the heavy lifting. By necessity, Rudimentary 3D graphics had an impressionistic quality. Although people, places, and objects were easily identifiable, there was plenty of room for your imagination to make meaning. This makes Boreal Tale's particular flavor of uncanny terror a great choice.

Boreal Tales was a dream about a memory of a demo for a PS1 video game that you briefly saw at a friend's house in 1997. It was never found and you aren't 100% certain it existed. As you navigate menus taken straight from Final Fantasy VIII, wires hang above. __S.42__ __S.43__ Which direction are you going? Are you in the same place as before? Are you the same as you were before? Each design decision is made to make the town's electric undercurrents of frustration and hatred almost palpable.

Yume Nikki meets Alone in the Dark at an abandoned gas station, just off David Lynch’s Lost Highway. __S.49__ Because I have already spoken far too many times, you'll have to look into the static in the eyes a bird sees from the top of a radio.

Boreal Tales is the most interesting experience you will have on your PC this year, and it's available on itch.io and Steam for far less than it is actually worth. I beg you to consume the blood of this severed bear's head as soon as possible.