I make my bed every day. It’s the easiest way I know to tell the day that I am ready for it. Making the bed is fairly simple to do, and (in most circumstances, I imagine) shouldn’t take more than five minutes. The results can be astonishing. Voil ! A bedroom is transformed. Does a tidy person live here? Who knows! The possibilities are endless and the day begins with a task completed.
Here is the secret about making beds: you can make your bed at any time of day. It really doesn’t matter when. The same logic can be applied to days. Sometimes the best thing to do is to climb back into bed when the day is going wrong, just to climb back out of it again. The first month of the year is drawing to a close. Perhaps, by now, you have left your resolutions by the front door alongside your running shoes, yoga mat, and half-finished juice cleanse. That’s fine. The market for resolutions is wildly exploitative anyway. This isn’t the first time you have experienced a new beginning. It won’t be the last.
Here are some games which remind me of that feeling.
Our boy Samuel went and exiled himself to a remote, virtual goat-farm last year. He came back with some nice things to say about free farming experience Where the Goats Are. Now, imposingly named solo developer Memory of God is returning for an encore performance with The Stillness of the Wind, an expanded commercial follow-up which looks quiet, charming and stuffed to bursting with potential for emotional devastation.
Solo developer Coyan Cardenas (aka the entirety of studio Memory of God) grabbed our attention with Where the Goats Are, a minimalist, melancholy farming sim about a goat-herding grandma that's kind of like Stardew Valley but with crushing loneliness and goats. Backed by publisher Surprise Attack Games, today Cardenas announced The Stillness of the Wind, a minimalist, melancholy farming sim about a different goat-herding grandma. Here's Cardenas' description:
"It used to be a bustling village, but one by one everyone left. Everyone, except Talma. Approaching her final years, she maintains a simple way of life tending to her homestead, surviving, subsisting, while increasingly disturbing letters arrive from her family in the city. Develop your own personal routine as you care for your farm and your animals. Tend to your goats, make cheese with their milk, collect eggs and cook meals, grow vegetables and barter with the travelling merchant."
At first glance, The Stillness in the Wind looks like a shot-for-shot remake of Where the Goats Are: a simple, meditative farming sim elevated by clean art, lovely music and a no-doubt somber underlying message. Cordenas describes it as a follow-up that expands on the original concept, and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because, as Scott learned when he discovered the 'right' way to play Where the Goats Are, the brilliance of Cardenas' games is what you don't see at first glance. I'm always up for an arthouse game about solace and silence, and quite frankly, you've got to admire a man who makes not one, but two games about goat-herding grandmas.
The Stillness of the Wind will release on Steam and Itch later this year. In the meantime, you can get Where the Goats Are on Itch, and it's name your own price.