Gray Dawn

Despite a few issues this is a striking and memorable "walking simulator" game with some simple puzzles.

Its visual presentation is superb and feels refreshingly original, unapologetically soaked in Romanian Christian flavor and colors. The palette is at once vibrant and drab, carefully calibrated for a very specific and persistent note, which complements some devastating environmental storytelling. The scenes are many and diverse, rich in fantastical, horrific, and even mundane detail. It's impossible not to be seduced into exploring them and drinking in every last object and vista, and to often be moved.

Unfortunately, the textual presentation is amateurish and unpolished. Some of it is due to bad English translation, with grammatical and even spelling mistakes. The voice actors are OK, but sometimes they miss the tone and even words. Of course, I don't envy the challenge of trying to make the poorly constructed sentences sound natural.

But even if the text were better edited, it would still be disappointing. The themes keep tripping on themselves with extremely heavy-handed symbolism and stream-of-consciousness philosophical meandering. It's just trying to do far too much with too little room and ability. Peel through all the layers—if you have the patience to follow them—and you'll be left with a conceptual soup that doesn't add up to anything coherent. It's about salvation through Jesus and ritual? Or temptation? Or regret? Or heartbreak? Or a critique of all of that? The writers should have exercised some restraint as the "walking simulator" genre is more suited to minimalism than exposition.

Luckily, this shoddy literary mess is backed by a fairly solid story. It is revealed slowly throughout the game, passing through various "what ifs" and alternative threads and interpretations. But they do all come together in the end, at least enough to have some satisfaction in closure.

Strongly recommended for fans of the genre, though with a warning about the copious amounts of Christian symbolism, which might be too grating for some folks' tastes.