Pine: A Story of Loss Review

I love games that hit you in the feels. In fact, I love any media that elicits an emotion. Crying can be cathartic. Pine: A Story of Loss should have, in theory, pushed all my buttons. It’s about a woodworker who has lost his wife and has isolated himself in a wood, living in a log cabin and leading a basic life while he ruminates on the past. A wordless, two-hour experience with lovely hand-drawn visuals. What could be better for milking those lacrimal glands? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

I think the biggest issue I had with Pine was my lack of connection with it. I’ve suffered many bereavements in my life and it can be utterly brutal. Here, the nameless protagonist, a man whose hands are bigger than his entire head, is grieving. Grief can take many forms; in this case, it manifests in repetition. Each day, he performs the same tasks: making soup, collecting water, growing and harvesting veg, bundling thatch, fixing his roof. These are all done with a palpable weariness and emptiness, but gamifying them is a far trickier thing to achieve. There was only one point where I felt a twinge of sadness, during one of the cutaway story segments which are peppered between the actions you need to perform, again and again. And again.

The controls seem to be optimised for touch screens rather than PC. Swiping to scythe through fields or chop wood is a little more interesting than moving your mouse to do the same thing. Using a controller is even more detached, as you mindlessly push down on a thumbstick or tap a button to continue. Highlighting objects — which should be a basic mechanic — feels hard to follow since all of the objects have the same coloured border which remains regardless of which you pick. I counted two or three actual “gameplay” elements in Pine. One was completing a veg box jigsaw. Another was ordering notes from a tune in a Simple Simon manner (for goodness sake, do not use a controller for this). Another was a poorly executed rhythm game. 

Otherwise, you’ll see the same animations repeatedly and you’ll do the same things repeatedly, until any meaning is replaced by frustration. For instance, a lovely section where you carve a piece of wood into a figurine by rotating it and hitting a button to whittle it down is touching. After the seventh time I was considering quitting. Tasks are bundled together and you repeat them in sequence until eventually a new memory is sparked and a snippet of story is played out. For instance, you’ll water and harvest veg from your planter multiple times until you see a caterpillar, which sparks a memory of the man’s wife finding a caterpillar as they build the planter. It should be melancholic, but it’s monotonous.

But. That’s the point. That is actually the point. The game is supposed to make you feel like this, right? All the man is doing after losing his partner is existing, so that’s all we’re doing on his behalf. Get up, do your chores, eat, go to sleep.  Numb, numb, numb. There is no pleasure in his life. It is a portrait of desolation. It is brutal. 

But does that make for a reflective art piece or a good game? For my money, and yours, it’s not the latter. And if you’re after an art experience, how much you get from it will depend on how closely you connect with the message. Everyone’s interpretation will differ, which makes scoring this even more subjective than usual. It could be a masterpiece. Personally, as the credits rolled after an expectedly obscure finale, I was left feeling as hollow as the guy I’d just spent two hours with. Then again, that’s possibly what Made Up Games wanted me to feel. Or not. I really don’t know.