Eastshade

Definitely not for everyone. But it is the right one for me!
Imagine if Skyrim had no combat, and no fast travel, and no map, you'd have this game. If you enjoyed simply running around, taking in the scenery, and helping towns folk, this will fit for you. It's a cute little walk through the forest, making friends, solving puzzles, and helping them with their problems.

Terrific game. Beautiful scenery. I'm old( lol), and I was actually able to figure out the quests. I just loved it!

I bought and played this game way back during the release. And remember it was a pure joy to play through the game almost in one go. It feels just super cosy and relaxing and fun to play. The way they implemented mechanics in the game is just done in a great way. I can highly recommend the game to anyone. And hearing their story about this game on their youtube makes it all the better. a true indie gem.

Kind of exactly what I want from a game? Wander around, look at things, meet people, and using the things you've looked and at the people you've met, look at more things and meet more people.
And maybe, just maybe, if you meet the right people, see some REALLY cool things.

During a summer more than 10 years past I had rented a small room over a bluff. I did a lot of walking then, and a lot of thinking. When my time there ended I kept thinking about a line from a novel. "Everything in life is just for awhile." Eastshade captures a feeling I have about that time, one that grows stronger the more I replay it in my memory.
You play a visitor to an island. Your recently deceased mother had told you of her visit to this same island when she was young. And your purpose for travelling there -- the main quest of the game, is to fulfil her dying wish; to paint some of the locations there from her memory. Having passed already, she will never see these paintings.
I find the sub text of this game compelling. You are connecting with the spirit of your dead mother by visiting a place she had been before you were born. You visit, you interact with the people, and you move on. The people move on as well. We all do. We are threads crossing at only a point in the tapestry of life. The art is how this is made felt without having to say it. In the things unsaid. In the lacuna.
On a technical level this game is quite beautiful. Perhaps one of the most visually stunning games I have ever played. This is as it should be, since the game is largely about the practice of the visual arts. It is not without its flaws though. And these mainly come in the form of bugs that are never to be fixed. The bugs are sometimes visual, sometimes soft locks, and some times they are crashes. Save often. Unfortunately they happened often enough to leave a sour taste. But overall I have no problem recommending this game.

Oh, Eastshade.
What is Eastshade? Eastshade is the feeling of coming home to a familiar and warm and beautiful place, surrounded by friends and family whom you love dearly, distilled into an enchanting digital elixir of purest concentration and highest potency. It is a place that, while fictional, will come to be every bit as real and memorable as any place you've ever inhabited, mayhaps even moreso for the unique connection you'll form with it. It is the game that saved my life, when I was so broken after a bad breakup from an abusive relationship that I simply lay in bed for almost a week, not eating nor drinking, my weight dropping to 106 as a 25 year old man.
To tell you I love this game would be a lie. I don't just love Eastshade; I am in perpetual awe of it.
I adore its winding trails and bright, sprawling hills. I crave the cozy warmth of the Inglenook Inn, the crackle of the fireplace bathing every second with a homey, dreamy whimsy as I sip a lovely cup of Meadowspice Mead. Beneath the Great Shade, I am swaddled in vegetation and shadow, the lazy afternoon passing unseen into dusk as I forage for herbs to mix into yet another new tea blend. I crane my neck at the silent shipwrecks standing sentinel over secrets long forgotten in the frozen waterways of the far north, quietly ashamed that my meager canoe could never leave such a grand, forlorn, and beautiful corpse as these once great vessels.
Eastshade is beautiful. It is funny and bright and charming. It's a world where differences don't divide so much as they create new opportunities to become closer. It is a place where the people are kind and gentle, knowing full well the bounty and rarity of the gift of their home. Brothers, separated by distance, play convoluted tricks on one another. Close friends, passionate yet unsure, anxiously and awkwardly become lovers. A child learns to paint, another learns to fly, yet another tends the garden near her grandmother's grave.
But Eastshade is also lonely. It is contemplative and purposeful, it is introspective and clever. Long treks have little more than your footfalls and the occasional somber melodies of strings, flutes, and horns to distract from the visual feast that becomes the world. You will have time to yourself, to think and explore your feelings, to truly capture something of yourself in the framing or lighting of the paintings you capture. You will consider your own relationships, your own stories and favored places, how those people and places make you feel, how best to express that through light and color and scene.
I often joke with my friends that Eastshade is where I want to go when I die, but it is more than that. Eastshade is the very vision of a world in which I wish to live; one which I've only ever inhabited as a stranger, but one wherein I always feel so very much at home. In my mind, I never stray far from the shores of Eastshade, because in my mind it is a place of comfort and healing. And if ever I should stray far, I won't be concerned, because I know I'll always be welcome when next I lay eyes on those glimmering, golden shores.
If you are someone with a broken heart, an ailing mind, crushing depression, anxiety, hopelessness, anger, feelings of listlessness and stagnation, I implore you to board the next vessel for Eastshade. May you find comfort and healing in the small moments where you remember that you're alive, and that there is so much more beauty to be found within you. I truly, truly hope you can find your joy -- and your passion -- again. <3
P.S. Here's a piece I wrote for RPS some years back, detailing more of my experience with the game and further showing just how nuts I am about it.

it's fun and there's no killing of fighting people like some other games. peaceful and fun, running around doing interesting quests. Thanks for making this game.