I Am Dead (PS5)
Morris Upton is the kind of bloke that’s easy to get along with. Upbeat and always able to find the positive side of things, he’s the kind of fellow people decide to call “Uncle” even when they’re not related to him because of his warm and friendly demeanor. If you sat down with him, he’d probably tell you a lightly amusing anecdote that he’ll chuckle as he shares, and if you saw him passing in the street, you could always count on a big wave and a “how do you do”. Perhaps that’s why when I Am Dead opens with Morris realizing he’s dead, he doesn’t seem too bothered about it. He’s a bit rattled sure, but he takes it on the chin and looks forward, and because of that, this narrative-focused hidden object game ends up presenting a refreshing perspective on what happens to people when they pass away.
Morris’s death doesn’t lead to him being just any old ghost though. The island he lived on his whole life, a little place off the coast of Britain called Shelmerston, is at risk of being destroyed as the dormant volcano at the heart of it returns to life. To stop the eruption from wiping out his beloved home and all of the people he came to know on it, Morris is tasked with finding a new Custodian who can keep the island spirits calm, Morris himself ineligible since he hasn’t been dead long enough. One interesting thing about the task put forth before him though is the character providing him information and guidance, as his beloved pet dog Sparky who passed away years ago can now speak and seems pretty smart to boot. Sparky and Morris get along adorably, Sparky a bit more likely to turn her nose up at something strange or absurd, but she’s very much the loyal and loving dog as well despite the afterlife upgrade of speech making her sound a little more intelligent than you’d expect. The two are a perfect pair for exploring the different parts of the island for other lingering ghosts who can assume the Custodian role, most everything they find eliciting a comment from at least one of them. Sparky might tell a cheeky joke or give into her dog instincts as she wants to play or rejects something dogs find unpleasant, but Morris puts forth that wonderful look on life again as he almost always has some reason to be delighted by what he finds, be it the memories it evokes or the curious aspects of the item itself.
To locate the candidates for being Custodian, the player must search a few locations for people with strong memories of some notable local that will lead them to items of importance to that person. This focus on fond memories for the dearly departed definitely helps build up I Am Dead’s refreshing perspective on life after death. We’re not at funerals, none of the spirits are defiantly fighting to return to life, and while people do often wish a loved one who’s gone could still be with them, it’s with a wistful sigh rather than a hard sob. I Am Dead focuses on the impacts those who pass away leave behind both grand and small. Someone might appear in memories related to creating a great public work or helping stopping the senseless slaughter of the manatee-like morlo creatures only to have another memory in the same level focus more on a simpler memory like a lovely day at the bar or a bit of youthful shenanigans. The objects you are tasked with can emphasize this too, it not always apparent what kind of object might be considered important because the scenes you’re scouring for them can often integrate them in a natural way. Sometimes it’s a treasured heirloom, but other times a small action lead to something new like some kids repurposing an old art palette into a step for their treehouse. We can change the world and people in ways we’ll never get to imagine or see, and perhaps that’s one reason everyone seems pretty content, even the usually grumpy souls, since they are able to witness how they aren’t truly forgotten after they’re gone.
Perhaps this wholesome and down to earth message about death might make I Am Dead sound grounded outside of the spiritual angle, but Shelmerston is apparently a town much stranger than life. While the first level’s lighthouse-turned-yoga-retreat is a cute concept and you can almost accept the robot caretaker as something off-kilter but perhaps part of our future, then you start learning Shelmerston has people with tomatoes for heads and bird people as tourists and it becomes clear this island has a character and history all its own. When you first encounter something like the fishpeople it at first feels like it’s just there for a joke, the fishpeople having only come on land long ago because people introduced them to toast and they’ve never had a dry meal before. Over time though, as you look at more memories, you start learning the island’s history and you come to know the island almost as well as the characters, Shelmerston’s own fate becoming important to consider. You are, in essence, trying to prevent the death of the island, and with people starting to flee it before the eruption, there is the question of whether the island itself is important to keep alive or if its memory and the effect it’s had on people has more value. I Am Dead brings up this idea but the ending doesn’t quite stick the landing as it disregards some factual questions in favor of an emotional scene, but the game at least opining on and exploring some angles of questions on life and death definitely bolster the experience even for those who might be turned off by the idea that I Am Dead technically qualifies as a hidden object game.
When in one of the levels of I Am Dead, you first get an overview of the location, the player able to move about to different sections and scenes to search for people with lingering memories of the spirit you’re trying to track down. Viewing memories does involve bringing an image into focus, but it’s not difficult and more just a bit of interactivity to split up a character waxing nostalgic about what ties they had to the character of note. Once you’ve listened to the memory, you’ll know of an item of importance that should be fairly close to the thinker, but it is still enough of a search that this feels more substantial than the memory parsing. Your cursor will only let you zoom in on certain objects, but once you zoom in, I Am Dead reveals it does have a clever away to enhance the item finding other than picking interesting layouts for its locations. As a ghost, Morris can move through objects, so he can effectively “slice” them, meaning he can view cross sections of objects without having to actually break them. You can see what’s cooked into a pie without opening it, you can check out the contents of a vacuum cleaner bag without opening it, and technically, a lot of the places you explore you’re slicing open to see like getting an overview of a boat or plane to find the pertinent rooms. There are quite a few objects you can slice just for the novelty of looking inside them which also helps to increase the pool of objects so hunting for meaningful items isn’t over too quickly, although there are also items that don’t have anything worth seeing inside them that maybe lessen the fun of looking for more things to peer into.
Admittedly, the items important to plot progress are often not too difficult to find. While you head to a good range of locations like the museum Morris ran about the island’s history or a garden filled with artsy sculptures, there areas aren’t often too cluttered and the game doesn’t get very clever with hiding its key items. It will still require a bit of hunting, but it’s a hidden object game more in how it plays rather than the game trying to really make finding the right objects a challenge. However, every areas you visit does have three sets of optional activities, neither impacting the story but they do give you more to go for and provide PlayStation trophies. One the game won’t even tell you about, each level having a specific thing to find like wrens or thermal flasks to find and once you’ve found each of them, the PlayStation trophy popping up is your only clue. Thankfully, I Am Dead’s other two tasks are more involved and you get some feedback from the game on completing them.
The first of the optional tasks involves little island spirits called Grenkins that have hidden themselves inside objects and will only appear once you’ve found the right cross-section perspective. Sparky will alert you when you’re in the right area for one and show you an image of what the cross-section should be, but you have to find the right item there to make it. There are some pretty strong nudges to help you with this, the image pulsing and beeping as you get closer to getting the right shape, but once you’re close enough the game will take over and adjust it. This does prevent futzing with zooming in and out too much to line it up right, but it also might be a touch overzealous. Still, it does give you a reason to look around more, although Mr. Whitstable’s riddles are much better for that. In each level there is a poster with some clues on it, a kooky island spirit named Mr. Whitstable wanting you to find an object in that area that matches what often amounts more to a pun than riddle. Once you click on one of the clues, you only have a set amount of time to find it but no penalty if you fail and need to try it again. However, while you’re hunting for it, Mr. Whitstable will laugh if you’re getting closer, but the time limit is often too strict to just use him as a radar. Admittedly, that timer might be overzealous as even if you’re heading to the solution as fast as you can sometimes the process of getting to it can leave you with little time to lock in your answer, but if you’re up for a bit of a challenge and know some British idioms to decrypt some of the puns, it is a nice way to get more out of the experience. The separation of these side activities from the actual story was likely done so people here for the narrative won’t grow to resent the object hunt, but something beyond the silly reward for doing all of Mr. Whitstable’s riddles still feels like it could draw more attention to this more involved part of the gameplay experience.
THE VERDICT: Morris is a lovely protagonist for a game like I Am Dead, his positive outlook matching its examination of other people’s lives after one person’s death. Rather than morbid or defiant, it’s a heart-warming game that also is happy to get a bit silly with cartoon fish people and yet it doesn’t toss away genuine sentiment to include these kookier elements. The search for objects of importance during the main storyline is a bit more subdued than one might expect after the mechanic of slicing objects to look inside them is introduced, but a bit more mileage found in the optional activities gives you some more meat to the interactivity while letting people choose whether they’ll go for more involved play or a narrative focus.
And so, I give I Am Dead for PlayStation 5…
A GOOD rating. The game’s ending avoiding concrete answers for greater sentimentality feels like the one point where the game’s heart lets it down a touch since elsewhere it is what gives the game its compelling identity. Even if you were to roll the Grenkins and Mr. Whitstable’s riddles into the main plot as required activities, it wouldn’t be the hidden object searching and item slicing that really motivated you to keep playing. Learning more about Shelmerston’s fleshed out and unique history, Morris’s refreshing temperament as he always sees the best in people, and the messaging about life not being some fearsome terminus to life but something that won’t truly steal us from those who cared and those we’ve affected makes for a surprisingly rich narrative despite such a blunt title. While it feels like some might suggest more difficult object searching as the way to bump up the gameplay side more, what the mandatory item hunting perhaps needed was just a greater number of things to be found. The game is fairly brisk if you’re focused since there are around five memories per location and locating the spirit after finding the related items just involves a simple flying section as Sparky, but there are memories where potentially two or more extra items could have been marked as important ones to search out and they wouldn’t necessarily need to be more difficult. One character for example has you find his sousaphone’s mouthpiece after seeing a memory, but you can find that sousaphone elsewhere in the level too, so the game could attempt something like really well hidden items being near the person with the memory while bigger objects instead give you reason to scan the stage at large.
I Am Dead does feel like a game for people looking to get more out of a story than just its plot and more out of a game than its gameplay, which makes it feel a bit odd as marking it down as a hidden object game. It sometimes calls itself a “puzzle adventure game” but there aren’t many involved puzzles or big interactions. It’s a story game with a nifty way of uncovering more information and it’s more about the underlying meaning of things than the quest to find the new Custodian, but with how comfy and cozy it can feel and how charming Morris can be, it’s easy to appreciate the little things and the relaxed atmosphere of a game that even manages to turn its title around. It might seem such a sentimental and positive game wouldn’t have a title like I Am Dead, but that blunt approach to death is disarmed by how the game shows that death isn’t the destruction of a person as they can live on in the marks they leave on the world and others’ hearts.