LogFAQs > #957752257

20. AER: Memories of Old (PC, 2017)


When I was a kid, many of my gaming purchases were of games that I did extensive research on. As I started going to college and beyond, the more going into a game virtually blind appealed to me. Some series, like Super Mario and Hitman, I would completely ignore any articles about a new game and would just buy it because I was always going to and really wanted to be surprised by the series that I loved. For the vast majority of games though, I would typically just look at a gameplay trailer if available or head to Youtube and see if someone made a short gameplay video themselves just to give me a basic idea of what I can expect. If it jumped out to me, I would wishlist it on Steam or bookmark the developer/publishers game page. As someone who primarily plays indie games, my approach can make it easy for games to fall through the cracks, which makes it all the more special that AER did not.

AER is an exploration adventure game you play as Auk who is tasked with discovering what is happening to the world. You will ultimately go through a simple and familiar path of finding, gaining access, and going through various ruins, complete a bunch of intuitive platforming and puzzle challenges, and see the end of your quest. It was an effective loop but not what made the game so special to me.

It begins with Auk who has a contract with a bird deity that allows her to transform into a bird at will. Flying around is such a joy. Its easy to change speeds, elevation, and turn. It may be difficult for precision landing when going at fast speeds, but theres no real risk of failure because even though the events of the game are serious and ominous, theres no chance of dying (there is no combat in the game). This encouraged me to play around. Going through clouds gives this neat visual effect, and I liked doing silly stuff like flying really fast and then transforming back into human form to skydive before transforming again to pull back up.

The game utilizes a minimalist, low-poly visual style. Its a style that Ive seen pop up more frequently in the past five or so years, and it is one that I love. Developers Forgotten Key maximized the potential of it in terms of pure aesthetics and character and environmental animations to create a truly breathtaking world that you want to explore.

The game takes place entirely in the sky. I mean, you do go inside ruins, and you can walk around on land, but the world is made up of continents suspended in the sky. Unknown events caused those continents to break apart, so you will come across dozens, maybe even hundreds of islands you can land on. I loved going around to various regions of the world, going to each island and seeing if I could piece together how the continent used to look.

The world-building in this game is incredible, giving you just enough to get a solid base grasp but ambiguous enough to allow you to come up with your own thoughts, feelings, and conclusions. Theres few characters in the game and not much dialogue. They give some exposition, while the environment does the bulk of it. This is a carefully crafted world, and it is chock full of landmarks, dwellings, cultural objects, scrolls, images of the past, and more to give you some insights of the world and its history. Exploring is one of my favorite things to do in a game, and you can be sure that I went through every square inch that I could find. If that isnt your kind of thing, that is okay because most of the world is optional, and you can just do what is required and still get a satisfactory idea of what you experienced based on what you found out about the world.

This was sadly the only game released by Forgotten Key, though I have downloaded the demos of their unreleased games. It is very tough to describe why and how much I love this game. I dont know that I ever will. I just know that I came into this game knowing very little about it and was blown away every step of the way.

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