Sad about: The Tragedy at Deer Creek

Sometimes you play a game and feel like it was a huge waste of potential. Not as a dig at the developers, but as a… great sadness? I guess? That the project clearly had a vision behind it, but the end result just wasted all of it. The Tragedy at Deer Creek is such a game. Despite being a relatively cheap independent title, the beginning of the game shows huge promise – wonderful visual style, moody atmosphere, good music. And after a short while, that doesn’t actually explain why the main character is doing what she’s doing, you even get hints of a cool mystery. But all of that is wasted, because as an adventure game it doesn’t work well, as a story-driven game it doesn’t work well and even as just a story it doesn’t know how to end properly.

So yeah, this is a point and click adventure game from first person perspective. It doesn’t have the full Myst-like movement across locations with different perspectives on the same room, like the long awaited ASYLUM from last year was, rather it’s usually limited to one “room” which often have several closeup sections to it. The game is quite short, can be easily completed in under 2 hours, so there are not that many such locations to explore and most of the time you will be moving between the same rooms. And most of that movement will probably be because you have no idea what to do.

As an adventure game, this title breaks so many good design recommendations… Giving players tons of items, without establishing any clear goals. Then presenting a problem that, somehow, none of those items can solve. Having countless fake interactive objects, that have interaction prompt on them just for show and all of them just have the main character be dismissive about them. Except for some, where the item is instantly dismissed, but maybe a part of that item is important and you need to notice that. Several of the puzzles can be solved via the hints presented for them at the start of the game, even though you actually get to those puzzles, finally, at the end. Backtracking to the same items through the same boring long paths, because after some story flags they become interactable “for reasons”.

Which could all be excused, if the cool premise was interactively explored and told through the game and the exploration. But it’s not. You can get small portions of information through investigation, but those do not shape a story, like in a good example of a game where you have to gradually reveal some mystery. No, in this game you get a few hints and then the game ends with the main character watching a 5 minute cutscene where the entire plot of the game is shown. Why even have a game before this, if all of the storytelling is going to happen as a final cutscene? Plus, lots of scenes just end and or abruptly cut with no logic or continuity. And the finale leaves the story of the main character of the game, who is in focus when the game starts, completely unresolved. Leaving the actual story of the game, not just the mystery part, straight up unfinished.

It’s just… “It’s a such a sadness”, to quote David Lynch. I don’t know what caused this, if the developers didn’t have enough experience, or the project turned out to be too big and expensive. But The Tragedy at Deer Creek is just a sad and frustrating experience in the end, where it could be a wonderful mystery solving adventure game.