Developed by Tonguc Bodur and published for the Playstation 5 by eastasiasoft, The Dead Tree of Ranchiuna is a first or third person walking simulator where you take on the role of a college student returning to his hometown only to discover it completely abandoned. From here, the player embarks on a hike through the surrounding wilderness as they uncover visions of the town’s inhabitants and the protagonist’s relationship to them, contemplate musings about human nature and society, and experience gorgeous vistas enhanced by a beautiful soundtrack.
The Dead Tree of Ranchiuna’s gameplay can be generously described as barebones. Being a walking simulator, the majority of your time will be spent walking around the game environment, watching cutscenes, and doing more walking. You can change the speed at which you walk (going from snail’s pace to actual human walking speed) and your point of view between first and third person, but that’s about it for the most part. There are puzzles you have to solve, but “puzzles” feels too generous in most cases as they are incredibly simple. The game seems to mock the fact that it included these puzzle segments, as after completing one of the few gate puzzles, the achievements I received were named after gaining EXP with the final achievement being called “Level Up!”. They feel almost sarcastic, bemoaning the fact that games are expected to engage with the player on a level beyond walking around the world.
In spite of my final opinion about the game, it helped me come to terms with the appeal of walking simulators, a genre I previously had no experience with. Some players might just want to experience a story and world without being distracted by quest markers or combat or any other extraneous gameplay. By stripping away these elements, the player is left with nothing but their thoughts as they explore the game’s world and engage with its story. For some, this can be a powerful experience as they are forced to directly engage with the game’s themes and narrative on a deeper level.
Of course, this means that the game is only as good as its narrative, and The Dead Tree of Ranchiuna’s narrative is unfortunately lacking. I will try to avoid spoilers because, should you buy it, the story is the majority of the content in this game and it is best to go into it blind. While the process of uncovering story events and piecing together the narrative as you go along is engaging and had me guessing until the very end, that ending felt anticlimactic to me. Rather than pondering the game’s final moments and how they related to the greater themes at play, the reveal of the antagonist’s motivations had me asking “Really? That’s why you did all of this?”.
Given everything you uncover and the twist regarding the protagonist, the ultimate “why” of the game’s plot feels so disproportionate to what transpires it is genuinely jarring. Speaking of the game’s greater themes, the protagonist will repeatedly philosophize about the nature of human life and of society at large during gameplay. I found these soliloquies to be hit or miss. While some can be genuinely insightful and worth pondering, others range from pretentious to downright stupid (I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the use of a toilet as a metaphor for life). On a final note about this game’s story, I played this game using English audio and the wooden voice acting genuinely took me out of the story and characters at times. The stiff line delivery can turn moments of tension or tragedy into unintentional comedy, which isn’t a great reaction to have to a game that’s trying to be serious and thought provoking.
Thankfully, the rest of the game’s audio presentation is top notch. The score is absolutely beautiful to listen to, and it comes in at just the right moments to punctuate story moments or philosophical musings. This game’s music made me stop at several points and just take in what I was hearing. The score did more to elicit a genuine response from me than the writing could ever hope to. I felt loss, nostalgia, acceptance, and the urge to self-reflect all from listening to the soundtrack. Working in tandem with the music, this game’s graphics, given its smaller development, are a sight to behold. While the textures are somewhat rough and the protagonist’s character model is even rougher, the first is more than made up for through the use of lighting and the second can be bypassed entirely by playing the game in first person view. In fact, the use of lighting in certain sections created environments that could only be described as jaw-dropping. Combined with the already beautiful score, this game created images that will stick with me forever.
The Dead Tree of Ranchiuna is a beautiful walking simulator held down by its anticlimactic story, stiff voice acting, and pretentious philosophical musings. The game’s presentation, while outstanding for an indie game, can only take it so far. Not to mention, it can be replicated by listening to the game’s soundtrack with the headphones/earbuds of your choice and going for a walk in the woods for two hours. This way, you can experience this game’s strengths without having to sit through takes on humanity and society so shallow it would make the Joker blush, and you get some exercise as a bonus.
For more information, visit: https://www.eastasiasoft.com/games/The-Dead-Tree-of-Ranchiuna
I love games and love talking about games. Some of my favorites include action games (both 2D and 3D), metroidvanias, roguelikes, shooters, and Indies.
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