Arctic Awakening was provided by GoldFire Studios for review. Thank you!
After a supply mission in the Alaskan wilderness goes wrong, Arctic Awakening puts you in the shoes of Kai, who has just survived a plane crash along with his court-mandated therapist drone, Alfie. Now it's up to you to find your crewmate, Donovan, and discover just what brought your plane down in this remote location, and you soon discover that a lot more is going on out here in the wilderness.
The story of Arctic Awakening is the core of the game, and it leans on it heavily, offering little in terms of gameplay or gameplay mechanics. Unfortunately, although the story is quite intriguing, going deep into conspiracy theories and secret government operations that you might have gotten yourself caught up in, it isn't quite able to bear the weight for the length of the game, which is a good 8 hours, give or take a little depending on how quickly you move.
The game centers around the 3 characters mentioned above, with a larger focus on Kai and Alfie. And if you don't connect with the characters, you'll have difficulty getting through the game. Small glimpses into each character's background are given as you play, but it's a slow-burner, and I found myself finding it difficult to care about any of the characters in the game. I cared more about Alfie the drone than I did about either human character, as they both seemed rather dislikable.
Arctic Awakening takes the "Walking Simulator" moniker and runs with it, no pun intended. I don't think I've ever played a game where most gameplay is "hold up on the left thumbstick". The game intersperses this with back-and-forth dialogue between the 3 characters, or voice logs from previous survivors as you walk. Still, it just isn't enough to carry the game; sometimes, you can walk for several minutes with no voices, and I found myself doing other things while holding the analog until I reached a point where something interesting would happen.
More gameplay mechanics would have mitigated this slightly, but there aren't really any. All movement is done with the left analog. Jumping, navigating cliffs, and ledge hanging are all done automatically by the game, requiring no player input.
There are survival mechanics, in the form of food and "sanity", but food is abundant, and it's highly unlikely you will ever be scrounging around to find some food; it's more just a slight nuisance that you have to stop every few minutes and eat some of the many boxes of cereal you found. Sanity can be replenished by sitting at any of the numerous "relaxing cairns" found on the paths, making you play a not very relaxing minigame that requires you to time your button presses. I understand why these mechanics are used, given the "survival" situation, but neither adds to the fun nor intensity of the game.
Adding some sort of inventory limit or weight limit might have actually been beneficial in this case, but as it is, you can store any food you find in your inventory. This leads me to generally have around 30-40 pieces of food at any one time, with only 3 or 4 needed to fill my hunger, which depletes every 20 minutes or so.
Visually, Arctic Awakening is okay, but again, you are in a frozen wilderness, and there isn't really a whole lot going on. The environment is unchanging, and if you showed me a screenshot of the game, I wouldn't be able to tell you where in the game that screenshot is from, as everything has a very similar look throughout.
The voice acting is at least decent, and not something that I ever found irritating or grating. Besides that, there isn't too much sound in the game, besides a few musical cues, usually signifying the end of a chapter.
I also encountered a bug about four hours into the game that effectively ruined my save file, requiring me to restart from the very beginning of the game in order to play again. I ran into a couple of bugs where interaction or movement became impossible, but restarting usually solved the issue. Unfortunately, this bug didn't disappear despite quitting and reloading or rebooting the game entirely.
Arctic Awakening has controller support, as well as supporting the Steam Deck's native resolution of 1280x800.
However, to get playable performance out of the game, you will need to run on the "Low" graphics settings and cap the frame rate to 30 in-game. I personally removed Bloom and Motion Blur, but that was personal preference.
Unfortunately, even with these low settings, the game still struggles to maintain 30 FPS, and we see dips as low as 20 in certain areas, particularly at night with the lighting effects. Given the type of game Arctic Awakening is, it doesn't make the game unplayable, but it can make it feel unpleasant to play.
The power draw is also pretty high, mostly around the 17W-21W range, but it can spike as high as 24W. You should expect about 2.5 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck OLED, and around 1.5 hours from a Steam Deck LCD. Temperatures were around 65C-75C
Arctic Awakening has subtitles for voiced dialogue, and you can increase the subtitles' size, making them pretty easy to read on the Steam Deck's display. You can also disable head bobbing for motion sickness and rebind controls.
If you are big into "Walking Simulators" and you like stories about clandestine government operations and conspiracy theories, then you might find Arctic Awakening interesting. However, for me, the characters feel unrelatable, the gameplay is close to non-existent, and the storyline just wasn't enough to keep me interested for 8 hours. The 4-hour progress-destroying bug also soured my mood just a little.
Performance on the Steam Deck isn't great either; despite running the game on low settings, it's not possible to maintain 30 FPS throughout. Fortunately, there is no "action" in the game, so playing at a sub-30 framerate is still playable; you might not enjoy the game as much as you otherwise might.
このレビューはPC版に基づいています。
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Arctic Awakening might appeal to hardcore Walking Simulator fans, but it lacks enough gameplay mechanics or an engaging story to keep me hooked. Plus, performance on the Steam Deck is disappointing.
