Obsidian rocks, we're told at one point, looked like 'sparklers pressed against a dark window'. And inexplicably she doesn't punch him nor get up and leave. 'It felt like I was soaring in the air with borrowed wings,' he ponderously muses of driving his dad's car. It's hard to interpret The First Tree as anything other than some weirdly specific self-indulgent fantasy where a guy gets to tell a girl his outstandingly boring dream, and for some reason she's enraptured by it, hanging on every sixthform poetry word. All the while a simpering female voice oohs and ahh and agrees and soothes at this bilge as if it were the most riveting thing she'd ever heard. Dig up loose soil where giant columns of light stretch to the sky, and you'll trigger Captain Narcissism's next meandering memory of his younger years, of his most uninteresting teenage non-rebellions, and of vaguely fractious relationship issues with his father. HAVE SOME FEELINGS NOW PLEASE.įrom here on out you steer your boatfox toward 2D sparkly lights around the crudely rendered fields and hillsides, because there's nothing else to do.

Within about 30 seconds of starting, and realising just how badly the fox moves (she steers like a boat, rather than say, a fox), you encounter a dead baby fox-cub lying on the grass. In this game you play as a fox, because - er - it's about a dream a man had? BUT WITH TEH FEELS. I'm about to take a giant shit on a game that, for all I know, could well be a developer processing his own feelings about his losing his dad.

Most prominently, the death of a man's father. Sanctimonious from the opening moments, this is a mediocre third-person exploration game made nauseating by the most self-obsessed narration I've ever encountered. For me, The First Tree leaps over that line with a clumsily implemented, wildly incongruous double-jump. There is a fine line a lot of introspective indie games are walking, between a careful exploration of memories and events, and solipsism.

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