It’s a warm summer day of 1986, and you’re driving through the winding roads of a small town in America. The sun is shining, the radio is playing, and life just seems to slow down. This is the feeling that Lake, a game that I recently played, manages to capture perfectly.
In Lake, you play as Meredith Weiss, a big-city girl who decided to take a break from her busy life and spend two weeks in her hometown of Providence Oaks. She promised to deliver mail while her father, the mailman, is out of town on holiday. It’s a simple premise, but executed well. As you drive around the town in your mail truck, you get to know the locals, learn their stories, and appreciate the snail pace of snail mail.
It’s not only the narrative that establishes this theme – the gameplay itself is slow and deliberate. In this post I’d like to break down how game’s mechanics – the space you navigate, the time you perceive, and the freedom you’re allowed – work together to support the laid-back approach. And since I love maps, let’s start by analyzing one!
