Callum? Where are you?
What I found rather intriguing about The Park is that it is actually a spin-off of The Secret World, a lesser-known MMO from way back in 2012 that I actually remember playing for a short time. I don’t recall it being terribly impressive, but it did offer up something different from the MMO’s available at the time. The Park does share in a connection to the game but does enough of its own thing to stand out on its own, meaning you do not need to have played The Secret World to understand really any of the spooky shenanigans that are going on. In fact, The Park takes place some 30 years before the events of the MMO.
The Park is essentially a linear, slow-paced walking-sim that sees you in the shoes of Lorraine, a mother who braves the closed amusement park to retrieve her son, Callum, a young boy who had mysteriously run into the park after it’s closed, in search of his lost stuffed bear. It’s when Lorraine enters the park after him, that this story begins and you start to experience strange occurrences as you attempt to track him down. The park is dark, seemingly abandoned, and drastically worse for wear.
Nearly every aspect of The Park is told to you as opposed to you triggering anything from a gameplay perspective. There are a few switches to flick, notes to find, but that’s largely it, making the game more of an interactive movie than a gameplay heavy horror title. This is especially noticeable as during one of the amusement parks rides you are simply sitting down listening to a retelling of the Hansel and Gretel story. The on-rails aspect to much of the game is designed around creating a unified experience, but much of it can be missed should you not see a note in the dark environments, or are looking the wrong way during one of the amusement park attractions. For as on-rails as the game is, I’m surprised that the camera doesn’t auto-focus on these events. The game is essentially split into two locations, the spacious park you’ll traverse for much of the game, or the haunted house that is unlocked once you find the flashlight. This final area is easily the best aspect of the game and feels very different than what you’ve explored thus far. While I understand why this area is what it is due to how it fits into the narrative, it’s shame the entire game wasn’t this focused and entertaining.
The linear path you are walking is focused to push you through the story and this also means that there really isn’t any reason to explore in other directions as everything is essentially closed or blocked off. In fact, the level design is directly focused on only giving you a single path to work through and apart from finding notes to add more to the story, you’ll keep pushing through until you get to the next attraction, occasionally shouting out to Callum, who will reply with cryptic responses or childish laughter, and sometimes it’s not even Callum that responds, but something, or someone else more sinister.
The main story itself starts with Lorraine attempting to track down Callum, but it eventually dives into some pretty intense themes of mental illness and her relationship with her son, one that can get pretty damn dark at times. Actress Fryda Wolff, as Lorraine really sells her plight and the problems she’s facing as a single mother. As you listen to her talk through her life and problems, you start to get a sense of what she is going through and the moments that led to the birth of her son, and the circumstances around it. The game starts to get vastly more interesting and the world around her starts to adapt to her state of mind. This is especially noticeable during the final moments where you start to understand her mental state far more intimately.
Given the simplicity of its design, The Park is a short experience, one peppered with very similar locations that don’t really give the game much variety. You can easily beat it in just over an hour and that’s reading and tracking down everything you can find. Repeated plays don’t offer up anything new and makes the game a very “one and done'“ experience, especially since there are no multiple endings to unlock. Even despite this being a port of a 2015 PC game, the visuals on the switch can be pretty muddy when playing docked, and the smaller screen when playing the game portable does alleviate that to a certain degree. There is still a lot of texture pop-in and you’ll always see grass and other vegetation popping up in front of you as you walk around. You are also given a flashlight towards the end of the game, but then lose it once you enter the final area, a location that is rather dark and considering many clues surrounding what is going on is in that darkness, it’s easy to miss out on some pretty damning aspects of the narrative.
I also suggest wearing headphones as the audio is pretty great with some fantastic voice acting and constant moments of hearing Lorraine’s anxiety throbbing all around you, like having a massive headache without the pain. Having the audio very close to your ears also allows subtle things to be more apparent and much like Hellbade, audio makes for enriching the experience since it is part of what makes the game work so well.
From a gameplay perspective, The Park doesn’t have a lot to offer considering you are pretty much just walking around, listening to Lorraine talk, and taking in the story around you, with some easy to miss moments if you don’t have the camera facing the right way or missing some much-needed info since it’s hiding in the dark. As long as you are focused on the supernatural element around you and are actively searching the locations thoroughly, taking in every piece of lore and narrative, then The Park is actually a solid experience with some pretty noticeable visual shortcomings. I didn’t love the game by any means, but I did enjoy what I got out of it. If you enjoy games that are built more around their narrative than their gameplay mechanics, then The Park is one attraction you just might get lost in.
A review code of The Park was provided for the purpose of this review and played on a Nintendo Switch.
All screenshots were taken on a Nintendo Switch.