Traveling Light explores a difficult time in the lives of several friends, letting players see that relationship through several perspectives.
CONTENT WARNING – DEPRESSION, SUICIDE
Life itself is something that has ups and downs. This is a game that showcases a friendship between four individuals, some of them having a quarter-life crisis and others just trying to be supportive. It’s a narrative driven game that handles topics of suicide and depression, with the appropriate warnings as well.
In the demo that I played at Devcom, the friend group was drinking and having fun in a garden, being friends and having conversations about their connections with one another. It’s clear they’ve all known each other for ages and enjoy being around each other. Then, the game fast forwarded to the future, when it was made clear that they weren’t going to be able to hang out together in this greenhouse. That’s when a tragic turn was taken, and suddenly one of the friends were committed to a mental hospital.
Traveling Light touches on how problematic places like mental hospitals can be through mini-games where you need to find and hide your stuff before people come or through cut scenes that show your inability to be yourself. Within the game, you do switch between the characters often, learning more about what they are thinking or what they are going through. Sometimes it’s more direct, while other times you’ll just be seeing glimpses and thoughts on what this character has on their mind.
Conversations happening between the friend group are also interesting and very well written with moments of awkwardness as well as lighthearted banter. What’s interesting is that there is an ability to re-wind the conversation and see it from another friend’s perspective, deciding who should ultimately be the one driving the conversation based on your own decisions.
From my limited time with the game, I feel Traveling Light is important, meaningful and impactful. I truly wanted to know more about these characters and how they were going to remain friends after all of this.
Traveling Light is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can follow its developers on Instagram.
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