Wide Ocean Big Jacket was the hilarious camping getaway I needed

destructoid.com:

When I’m feeling overwhelmed with all the games I want to play, sometimes the perfect antidote is putting on something short that I can finish in an afternoon. After perusing through an itch.io bundle that I’ve had sitting around for over a year, I decided on Wide Ocean Big Jacket, and thankfully it was everything I needed from games right now.

Published by Tender Claws in February of 2020, Wide Ocean Big Jacket is the debut title from indie studio Turnfollow. It’s certainly one of the quirkier games I’ve played of late, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s a really simple walking sim game with a simple, offbeat art style. The story is told in a series of short vignettes, telling the story of a young girl named Mord, her boyfriend Ben, her aunt Cloanne, and uncle Brad as they spend a night camping.

After the past few years of quarantine, I’ve really been missing the outdoor time my family used to spend together when I was growing up at the foot of the Appalachian mountains. Wide Ocean Big Jacket felt really familiar to me in a way that I didn’t expect, and even though the art style is super minimal, this game came in to take me right back to those summers hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a game that makes you kind of stop and take it all in, which I didn’t realize how much I needed until I got it.

And Wide Ocean Big Jacket is hilarious. I was fully laughing out loud at points, especially when it came to Mord and Ben’s dialogue. It’s really difficult to write kids, but it’s even harder to write them in a way that’s both believable and stylized. Both of them have such fun, distinct personalities, and perfectly capture the awkwardness of a first relationship.

For all its restraint, the game really manages to