This can be fatal if the creature is too close, so you may want to avail yourself of the “watch monster” button that locks onto its movements. Often you can’t simply jump from one to another, or even to buoys or other floating platforms between them, so you’ll need to swim for it. The only real challenge at first is making your way through labyrinthine passages and finding the available small ledges or ladders Kay can climb, but between isolated sections of town you will need to evade the ever-present sea monster patrolling beneath the surface. With lightning flashing in the background and rain pattering animatedly at your feet, you must find a way to ascend to the tops of abandoned buildings for a better view.Įasier said than done. Rather than cower from this offense, however, it only strengthens her resolve, which is your cue to find a place to disembark. Instead it unleashes a tirade of nasty verbal taunts about Kay’s worthlessness and her total inability to succeed. It doesn’t attack – at least, not physically. The most important of these is the flare, which not only radiates much-needed protective light at times but also serves as the de facto hint system, always (if not always flawlessly) indicating the direction of your next step in the journey, which proves to be an absolute must.Īfter cruising through some Venice-like canals of a semi-submerged town in the brilliant light of day, suddenly the weather turns grim and foreboding again, the little girl turning into a glowing sentient energy ball and disappearing as a huge shelled humanoid creature emerges to block the way. Besides running (or boating), jumping and climbing, there are only a few other context-sensitive interactions, which are introduced as needed via short on-screen tutorials. I preferred the two gamepad thumbsticks to control Kay and the camera, but both methods work just fine. This gives you the chance to learn the basic third-person mechanics – and I do mean basic as there’s little to them besides the standard keyboard/mouse combo to move and interact with the world, whether on land or sea. She knows Kay but plays coy about her identity, beckoning for players to follow. It turns out this light is the gleaming aura of a cheerful little girl in a raincoat, who is able to fly and completely disperse the darkness simply by her mere presence.
Sea of solitude seagulls how to#
With no idea how to proceed, she does what anyone adrift in an ocean of despair would do: head to the nearest beacon of light in the darkness. She wants change, wants to be free, but how? It’s never overtly spelled out, but it’s clear that Kay is trapped in a chainless prison of her own mind.
A gentle, melancholy voice-over reveals her private thoughts, tormented by loneliness despite having friends and family to support her. With a massive, menacing creature lurking in the water below, she awakens aboard a small boat in the middle of a stormy night, lost and confused about where she is. Granted, Kay is the most petite, sweet-natured monster I can recall, but she appears to be tainted by a curse of some sort that makes her look a bit like a pitch-black faun – minus the horns but with a bright orange backpack and glowing red eyes.įiguring out what it is that plagues this young woman-thing and how she can be restored to her real self is for players and protagonist to discover together, as Kay herself doesn’t know. But there are two major differences from the norm: here “defeat” is (usually) not the goal, and the heroine isn’t just confronting monsters, she IS a monster herself. Like many other works that came before it, Sea of Solitude stars a young naïf – small, frail and alone, unable to defeat the giant creatures that stalk her by might alone. It’s not nearly as successful at providing enough substantial gameplay to support it, and certain narrative elements veer between blindingly obvious and disappointingly vague, but as an overall experience it is worth motoring through the weaker elements of this artfully evocative tale of loss and letting go. The latest to represent hideous, deformed creatures as visual representations of inner turmoil is Sea of Solitude, an EA Original by Jo-Mei Games that does a wonderful job of establishing a haunting, heartfelt atmosphere within a gorgeous 3D environment. More and more in popular entertainment, monsters have been used as metaphorical manifestations of real-world trauma like child abuse, grief, anger, pain, addiction and other… well, monstrous afflictions. Monsters may not be real in the literal sense, but they certainly are in the figurative sense.
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