Play This: ‘The Old Tree’

The Old Tree immediately chimes with the strength of an Amanita Design breed of point and click adventure – in fact, it could even be the same tree that the upcoming Botanicula is set within.

The Old Tree is fascinating from the very start, which just so happens to be a black screen with a faint red light flickering. Moving your mouse over it and clicking turns on a light and reveals an underground burrow full of eggs, right at the bottom of this titular tree. The task is to merely climb upward and outward, as if a rites of passage into the wide open world outside.

The player is confronted with an alien sense of understanding – there is no tutorial, no introduction and it is this that instils a lingering curiosity. There are no such prompts for the player to follow, only their own gradual understanding of how this world works as they unfold its strange existence, one dark screen at a time. In every way, you mimic the newborn’s thought process as it learns what the many peculiarities around it serve to function. An integral part of drawing you into the state of the character is the tactile interface, as in, the environment is the interface rather than a distancing pop-up menu or inventory bag.

I was hooked in from the first click: mouth gawping, ears pulsating from the warbling soundtrack and eyes soaking in every inch of this alien world. The great thing of course is that it is not an alien world at all, it’s just an imaginarium of the microscopic life around us.

You learn in yourself when you play a game such as this, what it is that you love about them, in this case it is that sense of bewilderment. Not just visually or even aurally but embalmed within the root of the gameplay. In one sense, the player doesn’t even do much – a squirming creature crawls forward by itself and only requires the player’s input upon meeting an obstacle. The halt in progression cues the player to start clicking around the screen, fumbling with the various imperfect tools at their disposal, attempting to piece together a botch job solution.

It is at this point, in solving the puzzles, that there is a noticeable disparity in difficulty between an Amanita game and The Old Tree. In the latter a partial flow is maintained due to there never being a puzzle that could stump you for more than a couple of minutes. If you’ve played the likes of Machinarium, you’ll know how a simple task can take hours and sap you of any remaining brain matter. The Old Tree is closer to Samorost; both in difficulty, length of play and oddity.

There’s not much more to say about The Old Tree because I would really not want to spoil it in any way. Know that if you are a fan of Amanita Design then this is a must-play; it’s a perfect mimicry of atmosphere and tone, yet remains very much its own thing. I would love to meet with the chaps over at Red Dwarf Games and shake their hands, “keep making games like this”, I would say, “and while you’re at it, take all of my money”.

You can play The Old Tree for free over on the official website.