FREERIDE

FREERIDE isn’t quite what it seems. At first glance, it’s an indie game with a dreamlike setting, vibrant low-poly characters, and a soft pastel palette reminiscent of N64-era platformers. But within minutes, it becomes clear that this isn’t your usual whimsical adventure. It’s more like a mirror—a quiet, strange, and sometimes melancholic reflection of you.

Developed and published by Flightyfelon Games Inc. , the game begins with a moment of disorientation. You play as Proto, who awakens at a mysterious train station. A glowing, magical train soon arrives and whisks Proto away to a colourful land filled with talking spirits, emotional crossroads, and decisions that matter more than they first appear.

While it plays like a narrative-driven exploration game, FREERIDE is more interested in understanding you than it is in challenging you. It doesn’t demand twitch reflexes or mastery of mechanics. Instead, it asks questions and watches closely how you answer.

Meeting Spirits with Stories to Tell

The world is made up of several imaginative regions, each home to its own cast of ghostly residents—spirits who haven’t quite let go of something. They might be struggling with anger, loneliness, or something harder to define. They may not even know what they need. That’s where Proto—and by extension, you—comes in.

The game’s main mechanic is conversation. Through various conversations, you interact with these spirits and influence the direction of their stories. Do you comfort them? Challenge them? Avoid them entirely? FREERIDE leaves it up to you. But it doesn’t forget.

Every interaction leaves a mark. The characters may respond differently later depending on how you treated them. More notably, the game itself builds a record of your decisions—one that’s revealed at the very end, fully at the very end. Between each act, it does a check-in with you as well as how you behaved in that specific act and what observations can be made based on those choices. What starts as a storybook fantasy slowly becomes something more personal. A quiet examination of how you see others. How you act under pressure. Whether you seek connection—or walk away.

Whimsical Characters with Emotional Depth

For a game that looks so playful, it carries surprising emotional weight. Some characters are laugh-out-loud funny—a muscular crab man running a beachside kitchen, for instance, or a chaotic duo named Kad and Dak who serve as both comic relief and emotional anchors. Others are more reflective. One character deals with bullying. Another grapples with self-worth. Several stories linger long after they end.

These aren’t morality tests. FREERIDE doesn’t grade your answers. It simply presents you with characters who need something and observes how you respond. That’s what makes it feel alive. Every spirit has a distinct voice, not just in dialogue, but in animation and design. The world feels inhabited—strange, yes, but also sincere.

A Dreamlike Visual Identity

The art direction is one of the game’s greatest strengths. Environments are soft and dreamlike, filled with glowing blues, faded yellows, and hazy pink skies. The retro aesthetic doesn’t feel like a throwback—it feels intentional. Every region Proto visits evokes a different mood. The game invites exploration, not for collectibles or secrets, but for vibes. That said, don’t expect traditional objectives. FREERIDE doesn’t offer quests in the usual sense. It gives you space. Space to wander. To wonder. To feel.

A Flawed but Forgivable Mechanic

Not everything in FREERIDE works as smoothly as its storytelling. The game introduces a telekinesis mechanic that allows you to move objects or gift items to others. In theory, this adds an interactive layer to the world. In practice, it’s clunky. You’ll often find yourself wrestling with the controls to line up just right or missing a timed interaction because the system wasn’t responsive.

One scene in particular—a moment where you need to protect a character from harm—suffers from this. I knew what I wanted to do. I did not quite understand exactly what the game was asking me to do. That mismatch between intention and execution is frustrating. The game interprets silence as a choice at times. So, when the mechanic fails, it’s as if you chose to do nothing.

Thankfully, these moments are rare. But when they do occur, they break immersion. A simpler system or context-sensitive input might have kept the focus where it belongs—on story, character, and reflection.

A Story That Changes Based on You

A single playthrough lasts around four hours, but that barely scratches the surface. The game offers multiple endings, each one shaped by how you navigated your emotional encounters. You may reach a peaceful resolution or something more complicated. There’s even a summary screen near the end that outlines your behavioural patterns. It’s not judgemental. It’s observational. And it’s effective.

You start the game not knowing who Proto is. By the end, Proto knows a lot more about you.

Final Thoughts: A Journey Worth Taking

FREERIDE is hard to categorise. It isn’t a puzzle game. It isn’t a platformer. It’s more like a playable diary entry written in a dream. It takes familiar mechanics—talking to NPCs, making choices—and turns them inward. The result is a deeply personal experience wrapped in a surreal, candy-coloured wrapper.

It’s not a perfect game. The telekinesis system gets in its own way, and a few moments of unclear direction may leave players wondering what to do next. But these bumps in the road don’t diminish what FREERIDE achieves at its core. For players who want something different—something emotional, introspective, and oddly beautiful—this is well worth the ride.