Old Man’s Journey
What is a life well lived? We are constantly surrounded by expansive stories of seemingly heroic feats; 100-foot waves surfed, Spelunky eggplant runs. But these passions, these obsessions, come at a price, often unexpected. Old Man’s Journey is a videogame that asks you to guide an aging man to reconcile with his kin whom he shunned to pursue his love of sailing. But instead of simply asking you to enter his shoes, the player is given a more abstracted relationship with the old man, where you can change, warp, and uncover aspects of the expressive, tumultuous landscape that lets him progress. Set in Northern Europe, the hills rise, the trains roll, and the sky darkens for one final journey, laden with memory. Though the main story veers precariously close to cloying nostalgia, Old Man’s Journey is a surprisingly elegant rumination on the mutability of memory and place.
Creator: Broken Rules
Link: http://www.oldmansjourney.com/
Connections:
Grandma Moses - Sugaring Off
Caspar David Friedrich - Wander above the Sea of Fog
Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea