(This thread is kinda dormant but this is the right place so).
I want to talk about a game I just finished playing:
Before saying anything else,
an important note: Mutazione is a mostly narrative game; there is no difficult action/skill sequence, no obtuse puzzle, the game is almost entirely about seeing a story unfold by talking to people (you do have dialogues with multiple options, but I don't think they influence the narrative that much) and exploring the place on a relaxed pace. In fact I think it's impossible to get a game over in this game, and the worst thing that can happen is you rush through the game and miss many details of the story. I'm saying this so that people who don't usually play video games don't automatically pass over it, and so that people who are looking for intense gameplay experiences don't feel tricked if they give that game a try.
Ok, with this out of the way, let's get to the actual thing:
Mutazione is a narrative point-and-click game. You play as Kai, a late teenager/young adult girl who is travelling to the island of Mutazione to visit her ill grandfather. The island of Mutazione is a very peculiar place: struck by a meteor many decades ago, life was reborn there completely changed, and the island now has unique flora, fauna and even people, and seems to obey quite different rules from the rest of the world.
You will get to know the inhabitants, discover the peculiar local flora, and at the prompting of your grandfather, discover a form of musical gardening that might unlock the secrets of the island.
And I really really liked it? The overall story is pretty classic, but the game feels like it's less about that and much more about the little moments, all the interactions with the inhabitants and the island — it's a game that rewards curiosity; you
can breeze through the game fairly quickly if you concentrate on your daily "goals", but it's much more interesting to wander around and talk to everyone — and these people have things to say! This game doesn't do the thing where once a character is "done" talking they just repeat the same last line of dialogue over and over; here, as long as you see the dialogue option appear, the character still has lines of dialogues you haven't heard (even if it's just to tell you to let them work now). Through these dialogues you get to know them as rich and complex characters, understand how the little society of their town works, hear about their dreams, aspirations, and difficulties.
As the story unfolds there is a fair bit of drama and adult themes popping up (loss, grief, guilt, lack of communication, trauma), but this is all done very carefully and without unneeded pathos, the game remains safe for all publics, or at least anyone who can handle Dark Crystal or Secret of NIMH will handle this without issue (to say nothing of SSSS readers).
The characters are also on point on the diversity side, in many different aspects of diversity, but I was particularly fond one character who's wheelchair-bound; he is very well written, shown as perfectly useful (he helps you several times during the game), but not
reduced to that aspect, as he's also shown to have hobbies and activities of his own that aren't directly relevant to you. At the same time, his infirmity is not brushed asides, as there are frequent references to him needing the help of other people to move around, and he's not shown as perfect, impossibly resilient individual either — he has his own fears and traumas, but those are also not directly connected to his handicap, which is a part of him but doesn't define him. Superb writing here.
The town and its inhabitants feel very genuine, it reminded me of summer vacations as a kid, those long evenings in places both foreign and familiar, all doors and windows open, of small town festivals and food stands, of Miyazaki's quieter movies like My Neighbor Totoro or Kiki's Delivery Service.
And outside of that, the details that went into creating the natural environment of Mutazione are incredible. Animals are mostly in the background, but you can spot many species throughout the island, some of which only show up during certain hours in specific places. But the real strong point is the flora: the main designer of the game created about a
hundred species of original plants and mushrooms, each with its own prefered environment and its own ornamental qualities — the game is, among other things, about gardening, so you will get to explore the island to look for seeds and spores of all the flora in order to create beautiful gardens — with music as your gardening tool of choice!
The game is also about spirituality, about music, about different ways to understand things, about not rushing things through, about friendship, about family, about community, about memory… This is a simple game with a simple story yet it feels like there's so much to unpack…
So to conclude, I really really recommend this to anyone who wants a relaxing time and a really well written story. At worst you could watch a playthrough of it on youtube just to get the story.
