Closer the Distance was provided by Skybound Games for review. Thank you!
When I play games that have a major focus on story, I tend to get very invested. It makes me much more critical of the twists and turns, how characters interact with each other, and the motives behind each individual's actions. This is also why I enjoy games like The Sims, where I can dictate what they do and how they live their lives, but I do like a path to follow sometimes. Closer the Distance feels like a combination of a defined story with some choices you can make and dictate for the characters. And in the end, it is a beautiful tale of bringing a community together and dealing with grief that is worth experiencing.
Closer the Distance opens up with the death of Angie, who was killed before her time. The rest of the game focuses on how the small, tight-knit community deals with the fallout and how you can keep them together. You essentially play as Angie's ghost, influencing different family and friends and choosing what they will do. You start off with Angie's younger sister, Connie, and slowly expand to control more people and accomplish the things they want to do while also impacting how they will do it.
Without going too far into the details, I can say Closer the Distance's story is phenomenal. It's a tough tale to witness and be a part of, but that's what makes it so rewarding. The way each character interacts with each other feels raw, and the fantastic voice acting elevates this further. There are a few cheesy moments here and there, but none of those took me away from the events happening in the game and their impact. The writing is excellent, and I found that the way characters interacted with each other was more realistic than I would see in other games, which made the grief each one felt and was trying to overcome while relying on each other to cope, was beautiful.
Some interactions can feel out of place, with the bulk of these coming later in the game from a new character that is randomly introduced, but it never completely takes me out of the zone.
The visuals are more cartoony and low-poly, but they worked extremely well. The characters didn't have faces on their models, but you could see their expressions via their detailed portraits when you selected them. The environments have a little more detail, but they still fit with the overall theme the developers are going for.
The actual gameplay for Closer the Distance feels more like The Sims, but with the overall narrative already figured out. You will take control of each character and choose what they do and how they do it. Each character has its wishes/goals for you to accomplish while having different bars for hunger, sleep, and others for you to manage to ensure each person is taking care of themselves. You will have to find a balance to ensure you complete those wishes while also caring for their personal needs.
These choices and how you accomplish your goals affect the story, making it feel more personal and immersive overall. The choices may seem small at the time, but the payoff of seeing how the narrative changes and how the character's relationships and interactions change makes it all worthwhile. I also like how the game pauses when important interactions between different characters you aren't focused on happen. This means you won't miss any story developments; I greatly appreciate that.
I also want to give a special mention to the controller support for gameplay. Games like this usually feel lacking in this department, with awkward ways to look into your character's details or see all the information necessary to make a decision, but Closer the Distance does a very good job of making it all obvious and playable. For example, pressing Y to go to your Wishes and then selecting them to give you the actions to complete them or pressing X to go right to their location makes it so much easier to see and handle these goals.
And playing on the Steam Deck is great if you are willing to compromise on a couple of aspects.
Playing Closer the Distance on the Steam Deck is an awesome experience, and one that I do recommend because of the gameplay, but it is harder to run on the Steam Deck than I expected. There are no in-depth quality settings to change, just a single "Quality" option with a High, Medium, and Low setting. After looking at each and comparing them, I decided that a 30 FPS/90Hz lock on the Low setting was the best way to play.
The High setting dropped framerate to 22 FPS with a 24W battery drain, while Medium was able to get up to 45 FPS with a 20W battery drain, but there were too many moments where it would drop to 36 FPS at specific camera angles. Low looked around the same as Medium, but offered significantly better battery life. It still had the same 36 FPS drops though, so a 30 cap kept things stable and dropped battery drain to an average of 12W.
Otherwise, everything else fits perfectly for the game, and I couldn't be happier!
Accessibility
While there aren't many accessibility settings, there are some great settings that help playing on the Steam Deck. You can change the UI and dialog text size, making them larger if necessary (and I would say they are). You can also change the volume, invert camera rotation, and change camera sensitivity.
The game does support 16:10 resolutions, so you won't have any black bars, and there is full controller and cloud save support. There are no HDR settings.
Closer the Distance is a wonderful game. The fantastic narrative is enforced by great writing, convincing voice acting, and a deep story that go over darker themes of grief and loss in a respectful and realistic way. It isn't perfect, with some cheesy moments here and there, but it is a fantastic experience overall. The gameplay is reminiscent of The Sims, with how you manage each person, and the visuals are glorious! It does run well on the Steam Deck, and even though it has some compromises, it's still very playable and good-looking. Overall, this is a wonderful game to play, and I definitely recommend it!
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Closer the Distance is a fantastic story-driven Sims-like game that respectfully tells an amazing tale of grief and community, while also being playable on Steam Deck.
