Arctic Awakening

Arctic Awakening delivers an entertaining, mysterious story set in a fresh Arctic environment, but it’s unfortunately held back by a sluggish pace, uninteresting characters, and a poorly fitting voice performance for the main protagonist.

If you admire The Long Dark but bounced off its punishing survival mechanics, Arctic Awakening might hit the sweet spot. It’s a game that feels like spending a weekend in the cold; you won’t stay forever, but while you’re there, it’s an experience worth having.

There is plenty to enjoy about Arctic Awakening. Its writing and voice work bring the characters to life, and the mysteries of the abandoned facilities and plane crash are worth exploring. It's a shame that so much time is spent walking long distances to reach the next major story point.

Arctic Awakening is an interesting story-driven adventure game that does a great job at creating a mood and delivering an emotional tale. The game's best features are its graphic design, emotive music, and the way Kai and Alfie's relationship grows. The branching choices let you see several endings, and the story is well-paced with five chapters.

With a strong narrative focus, GoldFire Studios’ Arctic Awakening feels like a five-episode series with a well-defined arc, aiming to be an event for fans of the genre, but ultimately getting lost in gameplay that’s too passive and dialogues that are more tiring than engaging.

While Arctic Awakening feels very directionless in its plot and frustrating character writing, it's serviceable as a walking sim for fans of the genre who may enjoy its beautiful setting and interesting premise.

It takes something special for me to love a walking sim and trust me there are some really good ones out there. Arctic Awakening does fine, and I’d hear an argument to include it within top contenders. For me though, what holds it back is the length and the slowness that comes with it. Technical bugs aside, Arctic Awakening is worthy title in the genre however and fans should keep an eye out.

Even though I loved my time with Arctic Awakening, it did frustrate me in equal measure. The pacing is sometimes off, and there are moments when the story wanders off track. But the overall premise is great, and the visuals and soundtrack are lovely.

Unfortunately, I did encounter a good amount of bugs and glitches in my playthrough. That being said, most of these issues were quickly resolved by restarting at the most recent checkpoint. The developers are aware of issues.Considering the demo portion was much improved in the final version of the game in such a short time, I do believe they will work out the kinks pretty quickly. Be aware that the console versions are a little behind the Steam version in production, so they are more likely to have more problems at this time. Steam is where I played for this review.

Arctic Awakening is a beautiful walking simulator that clearly takes inspiration from those that made the genre great to begin with, and while it makes valiant attempts at creating its own mysteries and forging its own connections between its characters, it just fails to land the final punch. Choices don’t feel impactful enough, with the game remaining very linear despite the dialogue options on offer, and the game’s bugs do enough to sour the experience as a whole.