SIRE

Beautifully atmospheric, eloquently written and deeply personal. A multi media experience that immerses the player in the world of the narrative. An almost choose your own adventure style while staying on the path of the game story. Visually pleasing graphics and music help to convey the emotions of the game. The writing was poetic and vulnerable. Played it the whole way through in one go, riveting!

This game found its way into corners of me I hadn’t visited in a long time, and showed me something quietly honest when it got there. From the start, there was a strange sense of recognition. Not because I’ve lived the same story, but because the feelings, the doubts, and the small moments of clarity felt so real, so human. It’s a rare and beautiful thing to feel seen through someone else’s experience. Thank you for sharing something so personal, and for letting me witness it.

Saw this at the Amaze this year, and just bought it because I thought it looked neat. SIRE is a card-based auto-biographical narrative around the protagonist travelling to Cambodia after his father's death and about him confronting this passing and his relationship to his father. Mechanically you play through various scenes and memories by dragging cards on top of each other to interact with the environment, e.g. dragging the "hand" card onto the "bag" card to search through your bag, and so on. I found that this mechanic was used in really varied ways, and each scene felt distinct, and like it had its own pace, stakes, and tensions, and not like the same kind of scene 15 times in a row. Additionally, I felt like the developer found a lot of ways to structure scenes, without the mechanic starting to overstay it's welcome. If this had been a 5 hour game, this form of interaction probably would have gotten tedious. I found the story itself really touching and personal. It's hard to give "critique" for an autobiographical story, so what I mostly want to say is that I found it really powerful to immortalise one's father and parts of his artwork in a game in this way, as a person who one both loved and resented. Though as a woman, there were one or two lines in the game I found a bit icky. One thing I found a bit odd about the game was the choice to be so stylistically close to Cultist Simulator. Not just in the mechanic of placing cards on the table, but the colours, atmosphere, and the character art style are clearly taken from the Weather Factory games, which felt a bit... derivative and like an odd choice to me, given how personal the actual contents of the game were. The developer could have even taken the style of his father's artworks, or do anything like that. Additionally, while this was a good and impactful story, it just didn't resonate with me as strongly as other games have done over the years, which is a completely subjective opinion, probably because our lived realities are just very different. There is nothing really "revolutionary" going on in this game, but that's also not what a game as personal as this has to do.

Playing SIRE felt like being pulled into a living fairytale I didn’t want to stop experiencing. It carries you from childhood memories to present-day travels, exploring themes of love, loss, and the complicated thing called family. The game is creative, poetic, and emotional. Its unlike anything I’ve played before. I especially loved how it blends illustrated art with real video footage, creating a dreamlike and immersive vibe. If you’re looking for something unique, fairytail like, and emotionally touching, I highly recommend SIRE.

Mi ricordo del giorno in cui ho giocato SIRE per la prima volta in ogni suo dettaglio. Dove ero seduta, con chi ero nella stanza e su quale pc lo stavo giocando. Mi ricordo di due occhi che cercavano di leggere le mie reazioni facendo finta di fare altro. Chiamare SIRE un videogioco è riduttivo di qualcosa che è molto più ampio: è un esperienza, un viaggio emotivo. È arte. Un dialogo. Giocare SIRE è semplice come scivolare in un sogno, ma da svegli, dove tutto è estremamente reale. La scelta delle parole è accurata ed emotivamente affilata e la capacità linguistica di sintetizzare senza mai perdere il contatto con le emozioni è sorprendente. Come le scene sono direttamente collegate ai sensi. All'essere presente nelle emozioni. Ho sentito e risentito le parole del video finale, ancora e ancora, cercando di riportare le emozioni della narrazione in immagini. E quando ho giocato il gioco per la prima volta mi sono emozionata per quelle stesse parole come non le avessi mai sentite. Ed stata un esperienza nuova e completa. Questa è la potenza della narrazione di SIRE. Sono onorata di essere stata parte di questa esperienza. Mat [An anatomic heart]

Highly recommended for everyone who has dealt - or still deals - with traumatic grief. Gorgeous, vulnerable, courageous. Learn about loss & resilience through a beautiful and creative multimedia game.

I played this in one go. It is a very personal, autobiographical piece of storytelling about family, loss, legacy. What I appreciate most is that it does a few (hard to do) things in a very graceful way. The writing stays fresh and never dips into cliche. The card mechanics are minimalist but never became boring. This is simple in the best way, it doesn’t lose itself in style or pretension, it feels very authentic. This game knows what it wants to be and delivers no more and no less than exactly that. I recommend it.