Take A Walk: Simon Flesser of Simogo unveils cult hit Year Walk's big screen redux

Like it or lump it, the rise of mobile gaming has been the big news story for video games in terms of their potential reach and commercial clout. With it has come a steady stream of ‘craze games’ that everyone from your usually game-allergic office colleague to your Mum have been harping on about. Early adopters will remember Flight Control whilst the likes of Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds and Plants Vs. Zombies have drained precious battery life and, well, precious life from millions across the world. More recently, we’ve endured endless Facebook invites to Candy Crush Saga and have even witnessed the hatching, flight and death of Flappy Bird.

Then there was the hoopla over 2013’s Year Walk. You remember Year Walk? That weird little Swedish monochrome puzzler that saw you scavenging the snowy woods for the corpses of dead babies in order to return them to a natty horse who lived in a nearby brook? No? OK, so for some reason Year Walk didn’t quite tap into the mainstream lexicon but it did breed a cult following and was one of last years’ gaming highlights, reminding the weary amongst us that the smart-phone platform wasn’t necessarily exclusive to a million cutesy clone games about birds, candy or birds and candy.

“It’s kind of our ‘home’, so I don't think we even really considered other platforms at the time of the initial release,” explains Simon Flesser, one half of developer Simogo, on why they chose the iPhone for Year Walk. Along with partner Gordon Gardebäck (Simogo is a mesh of both SIMOn and GOrdon) the small Swedish developers had released three titles on the Apple Store before breaking through with Year Walk. “There was also the fact that we wanted to play around with some meta-things, both in the puzzles and with the narrative, and that was very suited to a mobile platform.”

Year Walk drew praise for many aspects, not least its novel use of touch-screen that had players utilising their phones, and indeed their apps, in novel ways. “I think making unique things is always crucial for standing out,” explains Flesser on part of why Year Walk became a cult and critical success. “There are lots of mysteries and things open for interpretation in the game that I think helped pave the way for people to talk about it. That mattered too.”

With this in mind, why choose to port Year Walk to home computers, given that at least some of the game’s appeal was down to the innovative use of its original platform? “We weren’t planning on bringing it to other platforms, but as it got nominated for an Independent Games Festival award last year, we were guaranteed a slot on Steam,” says Flesser. “But even then we weren't really sure how we should tackle it as so much of it is based on the hardware it is played on. We started talking about ideas for remaking the puzzles and after (subsequent iPhone game) DEVICE 6 it seemed like a good idea to make a smaller scoped project, so here we are!”

Indeed we are, as Year Walk (reviewed here) is now poised for that promised release on Steam. Yet it is clearly no straight forward port and is, if anything, the better of the two versions. Those who have tapped and smudged their way through the original will notice how at home the PC version plays out with mouse and keyboard control whilst smart-phone specific puzzles and even some locations have been altered to best utilise the new home. Then there’s the rather obvious point that a game like Year Walk looks and sounds so much better on the bigger screen.

“Most, if not all, are there to make it feel at home on a PC,” says Flesser of the changes. “Mainly, it needed to control interestingly, and the puzzles should never feel like they are dumbed-down versions of the touch puzzles. On a big screen it needed to look denser, so we needed to add a lot of things to really fill the screen in other ways, like adding fog, more snow, and a lot of post-effects like vignette. It also needed to sound ‘bigger’, so we have added extremely subtle sounds to the forest; distant howls, something moving, owls, and so on. We figured that the most dedicated fans of the original game would probably want to replay it on PC too, so we took that into consideration and tried to make this new version exciting for them as well.”

In that regard, Year Walk is a definite success, and for those who have yet to try its dark, mysterious wares, this new iteration stands as the definitive version. Both are worthy of your time but if you play just one, make it this one. With any justice it will expand the games’ admirers, something Flesser was initially unprepared for. “We knew it was an odd piece of work, so we were actually prepared for it not doing too well,” he claims of the original release. “In hindsight, it's easy to see that it is quite inviting and intriguing, even just by looking at the pictures and reading about it.”

And so, hopefully, that cycle continues, something that is rather apt given the circular narrative of the game itself. Whether you’ve walked the walk before or are thinking of taking your first formative steps into this unique little puzzler, Year Walk is an ominous experience like no other and as with the best ghost stories, it will stay with you for a long time to come. Best foot forward and all that.