Closer The Distance has a unique and special world rocked by grief, you live in the world with the characters and explore with amazing gameplay.
The newest game on the indie block is the slice-of-life simulator Closer The Distance. From developer Osmotic Studios is a fantastic look into the town Yesterby as the whole town is subjected to the sudden death of one of their residents and they all process their grief together. Skybound Games, who most will know for saving The Walking Dead once TellTale went under, came on to publish lending their expertise with emotive stories to the project.
Closer The Distance has a far deeper and more layered story than it initially seems. Angela is a young girl living in the town of Yesterby and acts as a narrator of sorts throughout the game. Angela, often called Angie has died, she was riding her bike outside of town and was in an accident.
That night, as the police turn up at her family home, the player is taken to Conny, Angie’s younger sister. Conny doesn’t know what has happened yet, only that she suddenly feels a connection to her sister, as though she can hear her in her heart.
Connie is the first of the bright cast of characters you will meet throughout Closer The Distance. She is a sweet and quiet girl who clearly feels a lot of affection for her older sister, wanting to connect with her and follow in the older girl’s footsteps. It is through her that you learn the news of Angie’s passing, and through her, you start to see the effects on the rest of the town.
You start with only Conny’s story, but soon more characters are added to the ones you can control. They each have wants and needs which can be met through reaching out to them as the other characters, however, they soon become available to play as, making it far easier to maneuver them into doing what you, as Angie, feel is right for them.
While playing it would be easy to assume the whole game is leading up to Angela’s funeral. It seems like a natural end point as you live with the town in this period of grief. However, the game continues beyond the funeral, picking up a few weeks later where you get to influence still more characters.
The build-up to the funeral tells a story of grief, a town coming together in a moment of despair and having to step up as a community to prepare for the funeral. It is a tender and deep story that is hard to manage with the various emotions going on.
Once the funeral is over, I feel the story moves from strength to strength. The town is past the initial shock and now is the time to learn about them outside of that. Zek goes from being a distressed young man, losing his first love in tragedy, to someone trying to find motivation, a purpose to define him in the world outside Yesterby.
River, a kind girl who offered Conny love and kindness when she was at her lowest, is now a strong woman trying to honor her friend who she loves and misses as she builds the boathouse for both herself, her town, and her lost friend.
You also have the opportunity to learn more about each person’s relationship with Angela. These could be moments of love she shared with them, such as encouraging Zek or being kind to Conny about her love of sewing toys. It can also be memories that are harder to focus on.
Arguments with her mother now fill her with nothing but guilt or Genya’s experience as her doctor. You learn more about it as the game goes on, but Angie had a disability that affected the freedoms she had and Genya was a big part of that aspect of her life.
The room is made to explore these characters and it is wonderful. The story is less about the town as a whole and concentrates on the individuals. While playing you will be sure to find at least one character in Closer The Distance that you relate to. Whether that is the struggling artist, being young and not knowing what to do with your life, or even being a single mother trying to make a new relationship work in a new town.
The story can change and develop as you go through it. An early example of this is seen in Pia, Conny, and Angie’s mother. She is full of grief and as the playable characters at the time you have to choose how to honor Angie at her funeral. Depending on how you do this will change how Pia reacts during the funeral and how her relationships with these people can vary.
Closer The Distance has a wonderful story told in a fantastic way, with layer upon layer of narrative happening all at once. Even if the gameplay were very simple, a walking sim or even a point and click adventure the story would still be worth experiencing. The gameplay, however, is only an addition to the game. Being complex enough to hold interest but also leaves room for the story to grow and shine.
Closer The Distance is self-described as a “slice of life”. These words often evoke certain expectations when it comes to games so seeing the genre be subverted in this way is so interesting. When boiled down to its core gameplay then Closer The Distance would be simply a life simulator. You have characters with needs, wishes, relationships, and even a past that will affect how you play them.
This is a fantastic way to tell this story. There are so many things happening at once and the player, as Angie’s ghost, has to prioritize who to please and how to get everything done. The gameplay is simple, but it grows as you gather more characters and have more people to take care of.
Each character has four main panels that you need to keep track of. These are their needs, shown as little bars that fill and empty as their needs are met and ignored. Each character has their own needs that are unique to them. While everyone has Sleep and Hunger, their priorities may change beyond this.
Conny is introverted and craves routine and solitude, both of which are meters that have to be monitored. Ganya is a health fanatic so a run will always help her keep the Health scale in the green.
These are a great tool for both gameplay, you have so many more things to keep track of when everyone’s needs are different and it is so much fun, they help with the story as you can learn a lot about characters by simply looking at what they prioritize the most in life.
The next panel is the Wishes and Needs section which tells you what each character would like to prioritise as well as how far through a task they are. Both the needs on the meters that have to be kept filled and the Needs and Wishes are intractable.
This means you can click on them and see the best way to fill them. A key example of this would be Conny’s need for solitude. By clicking the meter you can see that sewing, reading, or journaling would help fill this need.
There is a lot of overlap here which Genya can show perfectly in her Need for Diligence and Loyalty which often overlap with her wishes at the bottom as she tries to help Angie’s family in her difficult time. Having these as interactable buttons is fantastic as it prevents the player from spending a long time confused while looking for a way to fix an issue without it being made clear.
The next panels are Relationships and History. These have far less interaction in them, merely reminding the player of the past choices they have made. History has a tracking of events that took place while relationships remind the player of how everyone feels about them as well as having an expandable section on each character to show actions that were either positive or negative to them.
This keeps the UI comprehensive but still simple enough to not overcomplicate the gameplay in a way that distracts from the story. In order to fulfill all these tasks you have to keep up to date with each character. One issue with the gameplay is an inability to stack tasks.
You can’t give a character a list of jobs and instead, you have to keep checking back in. While this is a good way of making sure you know what is happening with each character, this aspect of the gameplay is already taken care of by the big red bubble so it is more of an inconvenience than a feature.
The big red bubble is the Closer The Distance notification system. When an important conversation is happening a red bubble will show up telling you which character is having said conversation. Surprisingly this actually has a small learning curve.
I assumed there was only a limited time in which I could go to these conversations, however, this is not the case meaning I was often switching between two important conversations and not getting the full understanding from each when I could instead just wait for one to end then zip to the next one.
The gameplay is a fantastic way to tell this story. Everyone in this small town has been affected by Angie’s death and this is a fantastic way to explore that. If you leave a character for too long they do feel alone, as they would in real life.
At times the Wishes can feel a little confusing, at times I found I was doing a job twice rather than picking just one path as I should have done, but any issue was very minor and once used to it they don’t affect the gameplay at all.
The art style in Closer The Distance is stunning. The town has so much character that within just a few minutes you will be able to tell whose house belongs to who because they so well reflect the characters that live within them.
The characters don’t have faces, this sounds terrifying I know, but instead, it means the story is told through their body language as well as small emotions that appear above their heads in big emotions. The graphics work perfectly in this game as they are simple but beautiful.
Closer The Distance has a full cast of voice actors and each one of them is perfect. There is not a single bad performance, instead, each is filled with emotion and passion. As well as this the sound design is amazing. The world feels real thanks to the soundscapes created and the music is emotive and unique throughout the game.
Closer The Distance is a fantastic game told in a beautiful way. The gameplay adds to the story in a way that helps you understand how a tragedy can affect a whole town. Every character feels deliberate, as if they exist with a purpose in the story, feeling fleshed out with a history rather than existing just to be a character in the town. The sound and graphics add to the story, both being beautiful and making the world more unique and real.
