Alright, I have to come clean. Way back in 2019, when Hideo Kojima, the little-known solo indie developer, claimed that he created a brand new genre in Death Stranding, I couldn’t help but laugh. Of course, there’s always room for game genres to grow and iterate and maybe even evolve into entirely new things. But I took this as a marketing gimmick more than anything else. This was before I started becoming a Kojima fan myself, and since then I have played Death Stranding, its sequel, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, Peacewalker, and more recently the MGS remake, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.
You know what? Maybe he was on to something, and I was too slow to pick up on what he meant.
For me, who has since praised Death Stranding (on the Pre-Order Bonus Podcast) for rewriting the fetch quest into something immensely enjoyable, I’ve wondered how the Stand game would actually take root, if it could at all. In a recent interview with Bennett Foddy, Gene Park reveals how the recent title BabySteps was inspired by Death Stranding. And it’s not the only one. Dozens of games have cited Death Stranding’s influence on their game design. Now, with Fading Serenades, I think we’re seeing just how the indie space is claiming the Strand game.
Fading Serenades wasn’t even on my radar, but by a stroke of luck, I crossed its path. It’s a small, well, Strand game. You play as Callum, a young adult who previously lived on “the mainland”. Callum travels to an island to take on a new job as a courier, running parcels between the few inhabitants there. Early on, he reveals to his AI robot companion that he also wants to investigate a defunct radio tower stationed up on the island’s cliffs.
The game tees up its story well. There’s a solid mystery at the core of the narrative. But it’s the packaging that makes it stand out.
Characters are few, but they’re well-written with occasional humour that lands, and you get the sense of what this island community’s culture is. The folks have been there for a long time, and each contributes to the local economy and life in their own ways, ways that have been long established in tradition.
Travelling around the island, you’ll learn more about the prevalent issues at hand. There’s an ominous purple substance, called the Fade, that has mucked up a whole lot, to put it simply. Locals will open up to you about the island’s history with the Fade, and Callum feels more at home with folks in the community.
As you venture deeper into the island’s corners, you’ll discover the reason for which the radio tower was built, all while getting a sense of the greater relationship between technology, pollution, and the diminishing space for human inspiration in the face of AI dependence. It’s poignant and unsubtle, but easily digestible. In short, the world-building is added upon slowly, in a way that rounds out your role as a courier for this island, emphasising your role as someone who provides human connection to residents who need it.
The story progresses evenly and culminates in an informed decision about what you’ll do, knowing the full history of the Fade and the island. I found the narrative pleasant and meditative. It slowly pulls you in with plenty of charm and leaves you thinking allegorically about what you do once you’re no longer ignorant regarding history. It’s a hit and has the flow and feel of a short story.
Fading Serenades doesn’t hide its heart in the story, however. That’s obvious the second you boot up the game.
There’s a stunning 16-bit-styled pixel art that greets you warmly from the get-go. The colour palette is inviting, with saturated hues from rust brown, pine-needle green, and salted blues in the ocean waves. The game begins with a CRT filter on, which, to my own surprise, I preferred over having no filter. Areas won’t stray from this colour palette too often, but that gave the island a sense of natural coherency.
This may sound silly to mention, but underneath the obvious beauty of the game, there was an apparent flatness, despite the game’s many climbs and cliffs. Yes, I get this is pixel art we’re talking about, and from a top-down perspective to boot. However, as much as you get familiar with the island, the illusion dissipates, and soon enough it feels like a grid of interlocked level design.
Of course, this is true of all video games. Strip away the exterior, and you see the developer’s hands in everything. Because Fading Serenades is a Strand game and you hustle between just a few locations and NPCs often, it’s hard for the game to maintain that illusion. You can’t help but optimise your routes from person to person, parcel to parcel. This compounds with the many shortcuts you’ll open in the small map space. The relative flatness speeds up the jump from the initial wonder to the eventual tuning out of the game’s landscape, as your mind will look at the orders for the day in the morning and set off zooming without stopping to smell the roses.
Scattered about are three main mini-games that serve to gamify the walking experience. The first is a rock hop across a stream. You’ll have to quickly, and I mean quickly, push the corresponding arrow inputs on your thumbstick or d-pad to get across without falling into the water. A balance meter appears whenever you gingerly walk across a log. These two mini-games are straightforward. You’ve probably seen them before, but an additional mechanic will impact their difficulty. If your pack is heavy, which is indicated at the top of the inventory whenever you open the menu, then timers on these meters will speed up. I fell in a few times due to absent-mindedness and overpacked loads. This damaged a few packages I was carrying, but luckily I never damaged any package beyond saving.
The third mini-game stood out. When you unlock the ability to scale cliffside paths, you’ll see two circles appear, tethered by a red line. Your goal is to move the red circle to the white circle quickly with the thumbstick. After four or five times, the game will complete, and you’ll scramble over the ledge to a safe path above.
Each time you engage one of these mini-games, the audio volume will slowly creep up and the camera will zoom in to raise the tension. I found this to be a thoughtful touch, one of those small details that kept me focused on the task at hand with the mitigation of the repetition of the games.
You can upgrade your stamina meter, which will lose a chunk any time you have to traverse difficult terrain, by lighting shrines across the island. Scouting these out was invaluable since, at the start of the game, it’s difficult to venture past the closest areas. Time will pass when you go from one location to the next, and purchasing pamphlets about the island’s geography will make the time jump smaller. These two mechanics worked well in tandem, and it felt like your days stretched far towards the end of the game, giving you more than enough time to complete tasks along the way.
Fading Serenades never lost its audio or musical appeal. Crunchy sound design coupled with delightful earworms accompanies you throughout the game. Additionally, the music will permeate the island in a way that neatly ties into the game’s narrative themes. The music, featuring full orchestral instrumentation, swells and flows within each area, changing across the island and the course of the day. My favourite track was in the post office. I would often linger for a minute or two to hear it play out before setting off with a route in mind.
By the time I had reached the game’s finale, I was immensely satisfied with the experience that Fading Serenades offered. There were a few hiccups along the way, primarily with the main quest getting buried behind side quests and me being confused with save points, but I assume that the more on-the-ball player won’t encounter any hitches as they deliver packages across the island. It’s a tight 3-4 hour game with something to say with a very human centre. It’s the kind of game that I appreciate more and more.
Fading Serenades is a wonderful exploration of humanity and connection that could not have been released at a better time. As the world feels like it’s encircled with the interminable implementation of AI in all of our digital spaces, Fading Serenades reminds us what the double-edged sword of posthumanist technology does for digital human communities as players as well as the natural communities that we inhabit.
