Lieve Oma

[got_quiet]

Name: Lieve Oma
Status: Complete
Site: https://vltmn.itch.io/lieve-oma
Rating: PG
Pairing: Gen
Description: A walking simulator through a nice forest, with a friendly grandma

This isn't a VN, but more a walking simulator. It's a very short, sweet game where you control a child as she takes a forest walk with her oma. The gameplay is entirely walking around exploring relatively small maps looking for mushrooms, which you then bring back to your grandma to declare if they're good or not. This little conceit is sort of a ploy by grandma to get her grandchild out into the fresh air, and to talk to her about some of the changes going on in her life. It's an atmospheric, heartfelt, and smooth running game with only a couple glitches that one expects from something made quickly, and as a tribute to a loving oma I think it works great. It's also a "choose your own price" game so there's really no risk in downloading it and having a little walk.



My only criticisms is that the conceit runs a little long. You end up slowly walking through about 20 maps or so. They're all a little different, with different types of trees here or a creek there but the interactivity really is just keeping the W key down most of the time. The game does a great job of simulating a walk through the forest, but it's still not an actual walk through the forest. My other source of frustration is even though the maps are relatively small and your job, kinda, is to find some mushrooms, I never found a single mushroom that wasn't right along the path. Vision is obscured by the top of the trees to simulate the search, but it appears to always be futile. So I kind of felt that the time I spent running around while oma waited for me patiently was wasted, but if I didn't look I felt like I was missing something. In the end I got 6 mushrooms and don't know if that was bad or good, but really the game play is just an excuse to get the player along for the ride, just like narratively it's an excuse to get the grandchild somewhere quiet and relaxing so they can open up a little about their frustrations.

The game at the end remarks on all of those who help to give children space to work through things in their lives and I think it did a great job of showing how adults do that. Sometimes all kids need is an ear and the assurance that someone is in their corner, believing in them, and the oma in this game does this wonderfully, without there being any sort of pat solution to the problems the grandchild is going through. There are scenes a little into the future that show that things did turn out fine, just as oma promised, and that the kid, now a little more grown up, is happier and has a wonderful relationship with her oma still. It made me both happy and super sad, because I chose to play this game on Christmas while my own grandmother, the last of my living grandparents, is 1000 miles away. Whoops! Time to send her a letter.