Wayward Strand

I really like this game because it takes place over a peaceful long weekend inside a flying hospital. You slowly walk through quiet hallways, visit patients, and spend time listening to their everyday conversations, memories, and personal stories. It’s a very calm and relaxing experience, and it never feels rushed or stressful. What makes it especially interesting is how real the characters feel. Everyone has their own routines and things going on at the same time, so it feels less like a scripted game and more like you’re actually visiting a living place. As time passes, different events happen around the airship, so you can’t see everything in one playthrough. That made me slow down and just choose where I wanted to go and who I wanted to spend time with. I also really enjoyed how much focus there is on small, ordinary moments. You sit with patients, listen to their stories, and slowly get to know them through casual conversations. I never felt like I needed to rush or chase achievements. I just enjoyed being there and taking my time with each interaction. The game also made me think a lot about companionship, especially for older people. It reminded me of my own grandparents, and the time I spent with them just sitting together, drinking tea, and talking about everyday things. At the time those moments felt simple, but now I realize how meaningful they actually were. This game really captures that feeling of quiet presence and human connection. It turns very ordinary moments into something warm and memorable. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys peaceful, story driven games that focus more on people and emotions than on action or challenge.

For the record, works great on Steam Deck. It's like a cozy investigation game, where the whole boat is full of stories and people and what you experience is based entirely on where you choose to be at any given moment, or what plot thread you decide to pick at. Four hours, in and out. It's nice.

A good and unique game about interacting with patients in an airborne hospital. In this game you play as Casey, a 14 year old girl tasked by her mother to spend some time and help with the patients for 3 days. I think there's around 8-10 people that you can interact with, not sure about the number, but some characters only have a limited amount of conversation (like the chef Devin) Control is mostly point and click, with lots of dialogue options to choose from, some of the options have time limits though, but there is no death scenes, just that your dialogue options and who you chose to spend time with will affect the conversation at the end of the game. The Pros: -The game has so many possibilities, each of the patients has their own stories to tell, and you can also know more about a patient by talking with another patient, and some people may be in a different location depending on the time of day, so it's pretty fun getting to stalk them and also knowing their stories. - Game is fully voiced, and the voice acting is great in my opinion! - Lots of various characters on the ship, each with their own quirks/ personality, like Esther who is into mystical things, mr.avery who is a very talkative and nosy writer, and there's also dr.bouchard is pretty sad. I think the most normal one would be Ida, which is the typical cute, kind granny who knits you a sweater every year. I don't know who's my fave but most of the characters are likable in their own way. - Cute, cozy, cartoony style of artwork with amazing details in the background. Colors are simple but classic, nice to look at. Animations are nice too. - Music is pretty good in my opinion, each scene or character will have a particular music playing which is cool. - Controls are mainly point and click Cons : - No manual save options, like your game will only be saved AFTER you completed the day, which is huge bummer and also a pain when you are trying to unlock new paths/ stories but have to replay the whole day again (1 day in the game is like maybe 2-3 hours-ish?) - No skip/ fast forward option, which is also annoying when you've already seen a scene and just wanted to get over it, you can't even skip the beginning movie scene =( - Casey's notes gets wiped clean each time you replay the game, meaning that you can't track down which options/ tidbits that you have unlocked about a character, which i think is a waste because if they were kept, at least you'll know what else is there be unlocked in the game. Because of this, unlocking all the steam achievements is quite a challenge. - Some actions/ animations is a bit slow, like for the animation to listen in, it takes about 3-5 seconds to complete and by that time part of the conversation that you want to listen to is gone =( - Ending is not really that varied, it's mostly about the same and the only difference is what can be talked about with Casey's mum at the end. Your actions or choice of dialogue only affects what stories/ tidbits that you can know mostly, not really affecting the outcome of the characters in the end. To summarize, i do really love the game and the concept, just that the lack of manual save and no option to skip/ fast forward is making it a bit annoying at times. 8/10! Would love it if there's a sequel where Casey returns to the ship and there is more characters to interact with!