LAKE

Getting away from it all in small-town ‘80s Oregon

Developer Whitethorn Digital

Publisher Gamious

Format PC, Xbox One

Origin Netherlands

Release Spring

Here’s a novel concept in 2020: a moment of calm. It’s an increasingly elusive feeling that, even in the slightly wonky early preview build we play, Lake is already very good at evoking. As we chug around in our white post van to a soundtrack of gentle country music on the radio and distant crickets, syrupy autumnal sunlight breaking through the trees, the effect is like taking deep, slow breaths of pine-tinged mountain air.

Lake is the kind of game where holding down the run button shifts your speed from ‘amble’ to ‘saunter’, where your most highimpact interactions include opening mailboxes and sitting on benches. If it’s a slower pace of life than we’re used to in games, though, that just helps put us in the plimsolls of Meredith Weiss. A software developer in the mid-’80s, she steps away temporarily from a life of DOS command lines and holiday-weekend crunch to cover her dad’s postal round for a fortnight in Providence Oaks, Oregon.