Developed and published by Tonguç Bodur, ‘The Dead Tree of Ranchiuna’ is a walking simulator game that tells a story while you walk around some stunning landscapes and solve a puzzle every now and then.

The game is set in a fictional Romanian village and after graduating from college in the city the player returns to his village which is abandoned. As you walk past the few houses in the village you will see ghostly visions of the character having a past interaction with the inhabitants that once lived in the houses.

Listen closely as they will guide you in the direction of where to go next. The puzzles you will face are fairly easy as it just requires flipping switches until the pathway opens before you. The real major puzzle is learning where you are meant to be heading in hopes of stumbling across another past conversation other than just walking around aimlessly and being lost.

Visually, the game offers stunning sights to behold as the nature was done perfectly. You will see some random animals like deer and sheep but you can’t interact with them in any way. Players can switch between the first-person point of view to third-person with the transition for switching done rather fluidly. I didn’t use third-person view often as the character model seemed a bit awkward for walking and did tend to bug out over simple steps.

Players will also come equipped with a flashlight for the dark portions while exploring and when looking down at the hands the torch is very undersized and again looks awkward to how it is being held. As great as the environments that have been created are, the village at the start definitely could have used a bit of a touch-up on it. The village area is just a dead zone with nothing of visual appeal that the rest of the game offers.

Audio-wise there is a lot to unpack here as the game will have a running narration of the story when you are progressing so if you are not lost the story will keep being told. If you do tend to get lost which is very likely to happen you will endure silence and then on the odd chance, some calming and relaxing music will play giving false hope that you are back on track again only to die off as quickly as it is started.

The control scheme is very easy to pick up as all you really only need is the joysticks and if you are using the auto walk button, you will still need to turn as it is not an autoplay option. It just saves you from wearing down a button or joystick.

In conclusion, The Dead Tree of Ranchiuna brings to the table a fantastic landscape to explore but also gives no direction to help the player progress. Even if you missed some audio that may hold a hint there is no option to read what was said or even a map on hand. There are however some maps scattered around the place that will show where you are but they don’t show which way you are facing or where to actually head towards next, so you will at one point get lost and walk around until you stumble into progression.

Written by: Shane Walsh