Arise: A Simple Story is a premium adventure game for PC created by Piccolo Studio. This narrative-driven title tells the story of a man who has recently passed away and is now going on a journey looking back on the most memorable moments of his life.

Spiritfarer touches on similar themes and concepts of the afterlife just like Arise: A Simple Story does while providing a calm and atmospheric experience. The game also offers various puzzles and platforming challenges that go along with its story and serves as nice intermissions from the main narrative.

Of love and loss

In Arise: A Simple Story, you play a man who has recently passed on to the afterlife and goes on a journey of self-recollection of his memorable events throughout his lifetime. The experience is portrayed in dream-like sequences featuring environments that visually transform to reflect the nature of the memory at that point in time, and range a variety of emotions anywhere from happy to sad.

The overall presentation of the game is minimalistic yet charming in design, complemented by subtle sound effects and a beautiful musical score. There are various puzzles and platforming challenges throughout your journey. To solve them, you will utilize a unique time manipulation mechanic that lets you turn it forward or backward, altering the state of objects and the world around you as needed.

The game also offers co-op gameplay that allows a friend or a loved one to take charge of the time manipulation aspects for you as you experience the story together. On another note, the game features a fixed camera perspective throughout your whole playthrough, and it can negatively affect platforming, especially when it comes to gauging distances and the direction of jumps and swings.

Tugging at your heartstrings

Simply put, Arise: A Simple Story is a must-play adventure game that just about anyone will enjoy and appreciate. Its beautiful presentation coupled with its emotional and heartfelt story makes for a compelling and worthwhile experience. Its gameplay has some quirks but they are not enough to ruin things for you and prevent you from checking out all that it has to offer. Highly recommended.