REVIEW : Ghost on the Shore (PC)
An adventure game about emotional relationships that last beyond death. Riley is confronted by a tenacious ghost who encourages her to embark on a journey over evocative coastlines in search of the island’s sad story. The relationship between the two is shaped via conversation choices, which eventually determine Riley’s fate.
You play as Riley, a young lady stuck on a deserted island with a brash ghost who has been dead for as long as he can remember. You get to know the ghost Josh as you explore the decaying homes of the lost islanders and find their possessions. As you make irreversible decisions in discussion, you shape your relationship with him, which has an impact on the game’s ending.
Riley begins to realise how an island’s history led to Josh’ death as she pieces it all together. On foot, you explore the stunning beauty of the Rogue Islands. As you do so, you chat to Josh about the islands’ history, his recollections, and his sentiments, as well as Riley’s hopes and objectives, and why she’s fleeing her former life. You and Josh work together to discover the ancient islanders’ items and the tales behind them. This gives a flavour of what life was like on these islands before people began to leave.
A one-of-a-kind function that allows the user to make nuanced immersive decisions. You never know how your remarks will influence the other person. Words have a lot of power.
Things might get entertaining, thrilling, or just plain embarrassing, just like in real life. The story branch you get to explore is determined on the relationship you form with the ghost. There are four branches, each with a distinct conclusion.
Playing with a keyboard or mouse is fully supported. Both worked as expected when I tested them. There’s an auto-save feature with strategically set checkpoints. There’s no need to be concerned about retracing due to a lack of a manual save. You keep a notebook with the doodles, letters, and cassette recordings you come across on your journey. Invert X, invert Y, and loudness controls may all be turned on. I’ve never seen anything that was timed or required rapid dexterity. The game is very appealing.
Yes, we stroll, but we’re also investigating and exploring! Accompanied by a ghost who saved our lives and brought us to the Rogues when we were out on the water. He was with us when we chose to tour the island, and it quickly became evident that there was a mystery: he is dead, has no recollection of much of what occurred, but as we travel, we learn more about the prior occupants and, of course, about him and who he was…
The game is very appealing, and I enjoy the tale and how we learn about more and more tiny bits that, in the end, make a full… rather than just one entire picture. I’m now playing through the game for the second time.
This is a compilation of moments: conversing with the developers over the course of a few years, watching the game improve in response to player feedback, and seeing it shape up for a complete release. Even if it’s only as a distant observer, I’m always ecstatic to be a part of the adventure. It’s not a new notion in video games to have a voice tag along for the journey that you can’t see, but I don’t recall it ever being a ghost. It makes you wonder how he died, what mysteries the island he called home has, and, most significantly, why he became so attached to me as a player. Since the first time I heard the music, I’ve been a major fan. I’m pleased to see that the final release begins with it, and it does a fantastic job of creating the tone. The music is beautifully created, but I must say that I didn’t pay much attention to it aside from the opening song and the end credits.
The game has not just the developers’ hand drawn graphics, but also scribbles and drawings by their young family members, and I believe it’s fantastic that their work will live on in this game indefinitely. When a game has branching routes, they usually all lead to the same outcome. While the game’s structure is essentially linear, I did play it twice in a row and observed significant differences in tone and language.
In my first run, I was Josh’s friendly, helpful partner, and in my second run, I did a speedrun, neglecting any non-essential details and was cruel to him. This portrayed his behaviour realistically, and it even led to some amusing instances when Josh chastised me for disregarding certain areas and stuff. There were a few “surprise turns” that I could see coming a mile away and won’t tell here, but anybody who has played games with ghostly components or watched/read a lot of dramas will notice them well before the official disclosure. However, there were two key story points that really threw me off guard.
Even more so was the reason behind them, albeit I had to call in a lifeline and ask the programmer, who described the inner workings to me and blew my mind.
Depending on your choices throughout the game and how you interact with Josh, Ghost on the Shore offers four alternative endings. Normally, a narrative adventure like this ends there, but I had two completely distinct results, and based on the achievements, I’m missing two more. I enjoy it when games do this since it makes it more interesting to discuss with people who have also played them and allows you to compare your results. There are notebooks, photos, letters, and cassette cassettes strewn throughout the islands for you to find. Each one makes a significant contribution to the plot. What’s more, you won’t have to wait through the same stuff twice if you disregard them on your second play. In fact, ignoring the other ghost on the island earns you a cheeky accomplishment, which made me laugh.
While you shouldn’t overlook all of the stuff you can interact with, it is a possibility (except for a handful of forced ones for the plot). In my second play, where I did just that: made a beeline for the next story point, I observed that both Riley and Josh assumed I had seen or read stuff along the way that I had really disregarded in that game. (Slight SPOILER ALERT: The last major reveal does allow the devs a cop-out when it comes to pre-existing information, but I’ll leave you to find out why.) While there are a few branching components in the tale, the real journey is generally straight. You’re on your way from point A to place B, frequently via a narrow path. It’s a common cliche in the walking simulator/narrative adventure genre, so it’s readily forgiven, but I would have liked even more off-the-beaten-path mysteries to find. While the game starts off with a variety of conversation options ranging from relaxed to giving your tag-along ghost a hard time, as the game progressed, I found that my flexibility was increasingly limited. SPOILER ALERT: I had to agree with Riley’s fury toward Josh since she insisted on presuming that he left his family behind of his own volition, when it was clear to me early on that he had died on the island in some way.
