Lake (Xbox Series X)
Lake offers a very particular slice of life, one that seems almost so specific it shouldn’t be relatable and yet the mood of the experience is quite easy to get immersed in. Set in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and featuring a middle aged woman heading to her small home town after working in a big city, it also sounds a bit like a Hallmark original movie, but this narrative adventure game handles the concept better than just some glowing recommendation of small town life while also still working to evoke the relaxing pace of a slow and easy life.
Lake begins with Meredith Weiss heading to Providence Oaks, Oregon after finishing a major project at her computer-focused job. With her parents heading to Florida for two weeks, someone needs to take over her father’s postal worker position, so Meredith decides to make a vacation out of heading to her tiny home town to do the small favor. With so few people there are only a handful who even need deliveries a day, Meredith able to take it easy and take her time on her route, meeting locals and reconnecting with some people she hadn’t seen in almost twenty years. Some people will just want to chat while others you can start to get to know better, even arranging some simple ways to hang out after work. While you can go fishing on a lake or see a movie with someone, the actions aren’t the focus, instead the conversation the element you have control over as the primary focus is on building up relationships through the dialogue choices you pick.
A typical day in Lake begins with you getting in your mail truck and driving around the tiny lakeside town to deliver mail and packages. A map and minimap both make it easy to see where you need to go and for the most part, you can just pop out of the vehicle and deliver the mail or packages without much worry. The car is very responsive and smooth and a day’s work won’t take too long either, much of the time spent actually doing your job more about breathing in the natural world around you. Beautiful but subdued, it’s easy to find yourself drinking in the scenery as you drive even if there are some aspects like shadows that can sometimes hurt the presentation a bit as you can see them shrinking as you drive towards them at times due to draw distance considerations. A more reliable companion comes in the form of the radio though, Lake having a single station that plays a small batch of catchy country songs. Most of them do sound a bit similar but still have memorable hooks to set them apart, but you will feel the limited number of them if you choose to keep the radio on. It is nice to have a little morning show segment to introduce each new day, especially since you’ll hear from other people in the town through it and even get to meet the DJ eventually, but perhaps the limited number of unique music tracks playing at one time is a bit too true to life for a radio station even if it is a quality selection.
The delivery route is yours to decide and there’s not really any way to mess it up, this cozy activity seemingly meant to help build up the idea of Providence Oaks offering a serene lifestyle compared to Meredith’s busier schedule back in the big city. Over time as you interact with people more the question does arise on whether or not you even want to leave, and while Providence Oaks’s simple and easy living does have a strong case made for it, it’s not like the game makes that pivotal choice the only one worth making. Meredith’s career prospects are shown to be incredibly promising back in the city, but the small town might offer her a more relaxed way of living with a close knit group of friends. Your interactions with the people you meet during your job show that Providence Oaks isn’t perfect either like the burnouts living in a camper van and a few people are a bit off-putting, but it’s more about painting a somewhat realistic picture rather than dragging things down with some sort of seedy underbelly that could scare you off.
Perhaps a more important consideration for which ending choice you’ll go with are the people you become acquainted with over the short stretch of days. Meredith is able to romance one of two possible candidates, a video store owner named Angie and a lumberjack named Robert and she can get to known both of them a bit better before any choices are made so you can figure out your preferred option. Both of them have a little side story, Angie trying to make VHS take off in the tiny town while Robert wants to make sure the forest’s natural beauty isn’t plowed over for apartments, and you can help them both in fairly simple but grounded ways, neither plot taking off into something huge but matching the down home feel this game is going for. You can also impact the strength of friendships you have with other characters though, like whether or not you reconnect with your childhood friend Kay that will lead to them ruminating on the unexpected demands of life but possibly trying to find their intended successes through it together. You can help a conflicted teenager start to figure out her future trajectory, but you’ll also be asked some questions about a fellow postal worker’s activities that are a bit more serious. Each day starts with that mystery of who you might be talking to today and your choices in how you speak will nudge them into different directions, some things a bit more set in stone than others but the game keeps itself believable by not having sweeping changes possible with just a few right words said during idle conversations.
You can choose whether or not to do certain extra actions like deliver an old lady’s cat when it’s ill but there doesn’t seem to really be any reason not to, the player able to line up most interactions without finding their schedule too crammed for it all. Mutually exclusive things usually involve the fairly obvious ones like who you choose to actively romance but you can still assist the other person as far as their non-romantic goal will go. There isn’t too much to do off the beaten path, you can talk to a metal detectorist who isn’t required to interact with and that’s almost about it, but there’s still some things to appreciate like walking around the video store and figuring out all the parodies of 80s films on offer. Your truck can’t run anyone over and crashes are harmless, and even if you get stuck you can just press X to get back on the road, the game even offering autopilot and fast travel options in case some of the slower parts start to rub you wrong. It probably won’t take you too long to do your daily deliveries though and you are usually given enough interactions that they don’t grow stale, the game overall only around 6 or 7 hours with that greater focus on the human interaction that the postal worker position facilitates.
THE VERDICT: A leisurely story of delivering mail in a small town and growing connections to the people you meet on the route, Lake is a game that moseys along but it’s the kind of calm and relaxing moseying you’re happy to go along with. The mail delivery is simple enough with some lovely sights and quality country music to accompany it and it goes by relatively fast so you could get on the game’s real strengths: personal relationships, meeting interesting characters, and deciding how you want to influence Meredith’s future in this gentle and easy-going narrative experience.
And so, I give Lake for Xbox Series X…
A GOOD rating. Lake isn’t likely to win over anyone who thinks the idea of a mail delivery game with no challenge isn’t their cup of tea, but this sliver of simple life does pack some compelling character stories that are small in size but still able to have heart. There’s the small but enjoyable mystery of wondering what the mail route will bring each day and the interactions are delightful, sometimes funny, and often sweet, Lake certainly a feel good game and better able to get away with its mundane moments because of it. Driving about in game certainly isn’t so overdone or dull that it detracts much from the time you spend with Lake, and it does feel fairly clear the relaxation of low stakes, low energy activity is meant to be part of the charm. Some technical problems do cause troubles here or there though and shouldn’t be totally brushed away. The nice clean art style is hampered a bit by the shadow issues and some foliage has the same problem on occasion, and perhaps the most heartbreaking moment was the game giving me a camera to take pictures with but developing them lead to only a set of black polaroids. It at first seemed like a possible joke since the chain-smoking general store owner hates her photo development lab, but it became clear it was just some issue with the game when those photos could be entered in a photography contest. Still, a begrudging store clerk working with Meredith to understand a then-new technology is the kind of little story that is fun to come across thanks to the clear personalities of those you interact with and the mostly well done voice acting. Everything feels down to earth and humble, and while some people might desire more excitement out of a video game experience, Lake taps into the simpler pleasures of life and roots you enough in Meredith’s shoes that interacting with her friends and acquaintances feels a bit special.
Lake could probably do with a few more interactions on some days and at times your dialogue choices are limited but the important establishment of the game’s mood is effective enough to keep the short narrative journey satisfying enough. Lake aims to be a cozy facsimile of the kind of calm small town story you could find in real life, and that willingness to commit to the grounded realism gives it a nice little niche for a relaxing story-focused experience.