Lost Brothers – Preview
About four years ago, Firewatch came out, the game became pretty popular. One of the main gameplay factors of the game was that you were alone, with only a person on the other end of a walkie talkie to talk to. This feature gave that feeling of solitude to the game and created a cool atmosphere. Recently a game has been released in Steam Early Access that uses that same feature. The game is called Lost Brothers and tells the story of a guy, called John, looking for his missing brother.
In Lost Brothers, John wants to go hiking, as he did so many years ago when he was a kid. At first, he thinks he will have to go alone, but his younger brother accompanies him. After a fight, Sam goes missing while John is gathering firewood. John’s expectation that Sam was just pulling a prank quickly turns into guilt when even the police can’t find him.
Now years later, John is back in his home town and goes hiking again. He goes back to the same spot where he camped with Sam, maybe just to honor his brother but deep down he still treasures a little bit of hope that he will pop up. While John is relaxing, he hears a voice coming from his Walkie Talkie. A writer called Samantha got stuck in a mine and is asking for assistance. John packs his things and heads out to help her, but it turns out the journey might not be an average mine rescue.
The start of the story is just John’s thought and his conversations with his brother. While this story continues, at one point you’re supposed to pick answers, but there is no warning or anything saying you need to select answers. It also doesn’t help that there is no indication of which option you have selected, not even when you hover over it. It just looks like the conversation between two people, except the text is set in yellow. Some pointers would help to show that you must pick an option.
Lost Brothers looks pretty good, even though there are a few glitches that you can spot here and there, the environment is quite nice to walk in. You’ll start in the forest, where a lot of trees do look alike, however, the red color of the sky together with the trees does create a nice atmosphere. Once you arrive in the mine, you are greeted with fluorescent mushrooms and crystals, in-between the regular rocks. From little to big mushrooms, all of them are quite magnificent to look at, and many (fictional) kinds are included. While you are walking through the mushroom forest, it can be quite fun to spot all the different kinds.
The music in the game is alright, it’s very similar to the kind of music you would expect in an adventure genre game. As you are playing, you might notice the SFX being very loud. As you walk in the forest, random bushes start rustling but this sound is so much louder than the music it becomes painful to listen to. It also happens quite often and during the day, so it isn’t exactly scary. There is no voice acting present, which would have made more sense to be present, since you are only talking to one person through a walkie talkie.
Once you get into the game, it is, for the most part, a walking simulator. John is also a very slow walker and has only a tiny sprint, so it’ll take a while before you get anywhere. Even though you will communicate with Samantha now and again, you’ll be mostly trying to get to her location. The developers are however planning on adding more interactive elements, which is stated in the update logs on Steam. In Lost Brothers, you can walk, jump and interact with specific items. You also get a map and a compass, although the map doesn’t seem to be correct at certain points. It also doesn’t help that both arrows on the compass look the same, so you could be going North or South without realizing it. At one point you are supposed to track down the mine and even though there is no river close to the mine on the map, you still have to cross over a river to reach it, which is confusing when you are trying to follow the map.
Lost brothers has quite a few bugs still present, such as all notes being the same. No access to re-reading the notes, even though there is supposedly a diary option. When you pass through an old checkpoint for the story again, the conversation starts over. The developers did say they’d fixed this, but it still occurred. There are also a lot of times that the conversations get triggered before the event happens, which is confusing. At certain times, there are even conversations about something that didn’t even happen, which might not have been put in the game yet. The game also doesn’t have a clear ending yet, which might still be implemented later.
Conclusion
Lost Brothers seems to be a game with good potential. It is similar in gameplay and style to Firewatch, but it leans more towards the supernatural, while Firewatch leans more towards real life. There are a lot of bugs still present and the story is missing quite a few pieces still, however, the game certainly is already enjoyable to play. If you want to try the game out while it is in Early Access, you could report any bugs you come across to the developers, which would help them to improve the game. Lost Brothers does seem like a game that once finished and polished, would be a good story-based game.
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