Sunset (2015)

Though the story is peppered with periods of inactivity that are detrimental to the pace, Sunset acts as a thoughtful, pensive walk through social themes and struggles not often explored in this medium.

Sunset's themes, setting, and plot are plenty interesting, but the player's interaction with them feels incongruous.

Sunset is that rare game that endeavours to challenge players to be entertained by something other than action.

Sunset survives as the antithesis of contemporary narrative construction, but lacks the confidence and vitality to thrive inside of its admirable periphery. It's all support with little regard for structure.

Completing a task is only a matter of finding the thing in the apartment and clicking it. It's a terribly mechanical design, and the process of merely playing is, at times, glitchy and shaky. But the experience of Sunest is role-playing that goes both ways. And it's rich.

Sunset has big ideas. At all times we have understood what Tales of Tales wanted to convey, but unfortunately, in few moments we’ve actually felt it. And there’s nothing more dangerous in a work than catching the creator's intentions rather than succumb to his deception and let yourself be fooled by its story.

Sunset is refreshingly original in putting players in the role of a housekeeper, but with poor instructions and no real choices, it never meets its ambitions.

The gorgeous soundtrack and clever use of lighting in the environments cannot conceal the fact that the game is written to accommodate only one particular playstyle, whilst offering the illusion that a different path is possible. This results in wild inconsistencies between player agency/actual gameplay and the protagonist's monologues and eventual culmination of events, making us feel like outside observers, instead of active participants. For the right, extremely limited demographic, Sunset could provide plot-related thrills but for the vast majority of players, this will feel like an exercise in style who lost it's way.

Sunset has some great elements, especially in terms of diverse characters and intriguing subject matter, but that doesn't excuse its shortcomings. As beautiful and contemplative as the writing is, I spent too much of the game frustrated by glitches and bored by exploring the same surroundings.

Sunset struggles with pacing, technical performance (movement is a tad wonky and it can run sluggish), and a disconnect between how its lead is written and, occasionally, what she does, player depending.

It becomes an overbearing checklist of simplistic social commentary. [Issue#163, p.109]