Review: Simpler Times aimed for a meditative experience, but other factors caused it to miss the mark

Simpler Times

Simpler Times follows the life of a young woman named Taina told through the passing of seasons. When the game opens up, I’m assuming that we’re in Autumn and it shows you that you’re in your childhood room, packing up to move.

I have to segue a bit from the story because you can hard-lock yourself out of collectibles and achievements right from the very beginning. If you’re like me, you’re likely picking up everything. Well, when I picked up a record, it told me that I could “collect” it.

When I did, it zoomed over to my vinyl record player and added it into the slot where one other album was resting. Since this game relies on lo-fi as its music source, I just figured that this track would be a different song.

Technically, I wasn’t wrong. It absolutely does play a different song, but it also changes the entire room. What I didn’t know was that by playing this vinyl record, I had triggered the story to move on.

Nothing told me that playing the record would change the environment, nor was I prompted when I hit play asking if I was sure I wanted to move on. I was incredibly confused when the game suddenly did a cutscene and told me it was Winter.

Not only had the season changed, but a mechanic of the story-telling is that you’re experiencing a day out of Taina’s life. So, Winter represented a day in her life when she was 8 years old. We know that’s her age because her height and age were recorded by her door.

At first, I wasn’t too bothered since I figured I could go back just by playing the other album except that that album no longer existed. I, apparently, didn’t have that record yet. So, the only vinyl I had access to was the one I found in the scene before.

If you’re a completionist, you’ll be annoyed at how easy it is to lock yourself out of progress.

I missed out on a few collectibles and I didn’t finish the quests that I was given in the planner that we see throughout every season.

Spring brings you up in age, as does Summer. Throughout the room changes, you can see that some items stay the same due to their sentimental attachment while others fade away. Each season has its own to-do list to complete in the planner and when Autumn rolls back around, you’re back where you started.

Except that you’re not. It’s the same room, but most things are packed away and you don’t get a do-over if you messed things up the first time.

I liked the elements of the story that had a deeper meaning and the connections that it made. Other than controls, which I’ll get into next, the only other qualm I had was one of the puzzles with string and thumbtacks just didn’t make sense. I didn’t know that I had to try to find configurations that lit up to signify they were right.

All in all, Simpler Times did have some post-it notes scattered around that tried to detail some things. It just wasn’t enough, in my opinion. Especially when you first change seasons.

So, let’s talk about the controls. Even though you can use your controller, I really wouldn’t. It was frustrating enough trying to use a mouse to get things to work the way I wanted to.

Simpler Times is built similarly to most point-and-click games. You have to click to move in closer and then right-click to move away. That’s not really the problem, however. When you pick things up, unless you’re holding an item exactly where it needs to be, when you let go it will just drop to the floor. 

That’s fine, I wanted it on the ground anyway…

You are unable to put an item back where it goes and you can’t toss items. Generally, if it’s an unimportant item, it will likely end up on the floor.

Controls really get gummy and annoying during moments when a certain piece has to go into a very specific place. You can’t just arrange things; you have to hover around until you’re prompted that you can place it.

I really wanted to love Simpler Times and I love this idea so much. I just feel like the execution wasn’t the best. And for a game so simple, it pulled hard on my graphics. I had to scale it down to not lag.

I wish I had more positive things to say. Lo-fi is generally a safe bet, but nothing was particularly remarkable in the line-up and, while the graphics were beautiful, all the negatives were taking away from the experience.

I wish more time had gone into the controls. I definitely wish there had been at least a prompt the first time you play a vinyl to let you know you’re unable to return as well.

To be honest, I’m struggling with the score. Realistically, I think that it’s a 6.5, but we don’t do half-scores. It’s definitely not a 6, but it’s, also, not realistically a 7.

You’ll have to weigh things for yourself on whether you want to play Simpler Times. It’s a $10 game that lasts 1.5-2 hours and the controls aren’t the best. I enjoyed the themes of the game, but I think it just needed more polish.

If you want to try out Simpler Times, you can get it on Steam for $9.99. If you’re unsure, I’d recommend spending two more dollars and playing Smushi Come Home.