It’s finally happened. You’ve gone beyond the walls of Daymare Town. But what waits for you in the eerie silence of the Sea of Smoke… and beyond? Mateusz Skutnik delivers another creepy-cool yet imaginative point-and-click adventure game with the long awaitedDaymare Town 4. After three years, your chance to explore more of the beloved world has arrived. Just click around to navigate and interact, using the changing cursor as your guide. There is a lot to find and gather up, and not all of it is useful, so make sure to make use of places to store items, or keep your eyes peeled for a backpack to allow you to carry even more.

Chances are if you saw this title and started doing a little squirmy happy dance in your seat, you’re already familiar with its signature brand of surreal, disorienting environments and odd puzzles. In which case, the biggest difficulty you might encounter is navigation, since it’s easy to completely miss a lot of area transitions that aren’t visually indicated onscreen unless you sweep your cursor over them. Chances are if you get stuck, it’s mostly because you didn’t think to try to zoom in on a seemingly innocuous area, or to sweep your cursor along the edges of the screen to see if you could turn around or go another way not indicated. It’s a game that needs you to explore every nook and cranny, to keep your eyes open for clues and try everything. It’s also, as you might expect, absolutely gorgeous, although perhaps with a more unnerving art style to its denizens than before.

Sensitive players also might want to be warned, however, that there is a brief implication of suicide which might be upsetting to some. There’s an overall bleakness to this installment that somehow makes it more unsettling than its predecessors, a grimmer vibe than the Moomin-esque feel it had prior. Daymare Town 4 offers a lot to explore, and continues the series’ tradition of red herrings, allowing you to use some items in the places they don’t really belong to mislead you. (Although as a general rule, in most cases if you’ve put an item in the proper place, you won’t be able to move it again.) It’s a game that sets out to make you feel lost and bewildered and it definitely succeeds. What’s waiting for you out there beyond the Resin Gate, Seaweed Fossil Chasm, and beyond? Only one way to find out. It’s a massive game well worth your time… and if you enjoy it, consider picking up the fullscreen HD version for $5 USD to support the developer who’s given us so much for so long for free.

Author: Dora