Lake is a relaxing postal sim that makes you doubt your career choices

(Visualize credit: Whitethorn Digital, Gamious)

The postal service was much simpler back in the 1980s. Nary PS5s being snatched from porches, no more looming terror of Amazon obstetrical delivery drones, and no aggressive push for a speedier service. Gamious' indie stake Lake takes us back to that peaceful time. It's a driving sim set in the Pacific Northwest of the US, where you deliver mail service, talk to the locals, and, well, not much else. Lake is chill, has pretty visuals, and is right up my street.

You play as Meredith Weiss, a collective computer whiz WHO has stolen a break from her city job to spend deuce weeks as a postal worker in her hometown of Providence Oaks, Oregon. I say townsfolk, but that's a stretch. Providence Oaks has a tiny population, barely 100 people, many of whom hold grown up and never larboard since Meredith's initial departure 22 old age ago.

Delivering mail therein sleepy town is easy enough. You start every morning at the Post Office and drive to each location on your list, delivering the right parcels and letters to for each one address. Using the miniskirt-mapping in the butt corner to keep tag along of the circumferent area, you drive adequate to a house, skip out of your van, and put through the letters in the mailbox. It's really that easy. If IT's a package, you'll first-class honours degree need to fetch it out the back up of the van and manus it to the person directly—you make love how it goes.

You really can't go wrong delivering the mail. If you somehow walk up to the wrong postbox, the little icon letting you deliver the post doesn't pop up. At that place's no time limit or a specific Order for your deliveries, you just amble along in your wagon until all the tasks are done. Providence Oaks isn't evenhanded a suburban vicinity—you'll be visiting altogether kinds of places. There's a worn-down motel, rusty garage, attenuate video stash awa, and the huge lake that the full-page town centres around. Occasionally, you'll motivation to go off-road to discover both of the more hidden houses within the forest.

Stopping off at these locations surrounded by OR's halcyon wilderness is the trump part of Lake. Thither are picturesque mountains and hundreds of pine tree trees that envelope each road you driving along. Since in that respect's No timer on deliveries, I always take the retentive fashio around the lake, with my beat-up mail truck humming along nicely.

Information technology's not just Oregon's wild that has its ain charm, the van feels the likes of it has its own personality too. It's a huge hulking thing that can only disco biscuit 30 mph and you can even tactile property its weight as you thrust around corners. It also has a radio, and naturally you'll need to bang on the splasher to make work. Even so, it can only tune into a single base that's partial to sweet country ballads about heartache. My driving is terrible, but in that respect aren't really any cars around asunder from the occasional truck and battered station wagon.

It's weird trying to fit into a place where everyone other is so for good settled, and where everybody already knows you, but an old version of you.

Getting to know the residents in Providence Oaks is another aspect of Lake. At that place's a lot of personalities in this small township, the like the tetchy lady who owns the grocery store, the hermit who lives on his own in the forest, and the kooky grandmother with twelve cats. No of the residents really stood dead set me (although the preview I received lasted only an in-game workweek) but the overall feel of the neighborhood rattling caught my aid.

Meredith's parents stayed in Providence Oaks and are stock-still in the tight-cockle community, meaning lots of people she used to know from her childhood, and even or s strangers, know engorge about George Meredith without ever meeting her. Meredith left 20 years ago, but many an of the people she knew stayed invest. Information technology's strange trying to fit into a localize where everyone else is so for good settled, and where everybody already knows you, only an old version of you. You keister see hints of this when George Meredith speaks to an erstwhile puerility friend, Kay, a someone to who she hasn't verbalised since she socialist. There's a stress in that location that I tactile property Lake will explore in many depth.

Lake also touches upon George Meredith's past tense decisions about departure the town and what she should do about her future. The preview only hints at it, but Providence Oaks' slower rhythm is something that Meredith likes, which is very different from her city job. Did Meredith make the right phone leaving this slumbrous town for a high-pressure job where she's forced to work extra time perpetually and deal with a immense pile of work because her boss, Steve, can't be arsed to do it himself? It feels alike the game is heading in the management where you'll need to make a concrete determination about whether Meredith stays in her current job, Beaver State leaves IT to stay in Providence Oaks.

Lots of media set in the '80s tend to atomic number 4 bland throwbacks that focus on nostalgia, but Lake is not that. There's not really a pretentious write up hither, it's about microscopic-town life and the feeling of returning home after being away for a long time. I'm looking ahead to more chill driving and postal work in Lake when it releases sometime later this year. I'm as wel desperate for Meredith to relinquish her city job, tell apart Steve to shove it, and go off back to Providence Oaks, even if IT's only for a picayune bit while she figures her future tense KO'd.

Rachel had been bouncing or so different gaming websites as a freelancer and staff writer for 3 days before settling at PC Gamer indorse in 2019. She mainly writes reviews, previews, and features, but on rare occasions bequeath switch information technology up with news and guides. When she's not fetching hundreds of screenshots of the current indie darling, you can find her nurturing her Pastinaca sativa empire in Stardew Valley and preparation an mud puppy uprising in Minecraft. She loves 'lay of and feel the roses' games—her proudest gaming here and now being the once she unbroken her virtual potted plants alive for over a year.