There’s not much to The Stillness of the Wind, a slim, ethereal and wilfully arty survival game that’s just launched on Switch, PC and mobile. There’s not very much to it at all. You’re Talma, an elderly woman who’s seen her friends and family slowly depart for the city over time, leaving her alone to tend to a farm shared by a handful of chickens and a couple of wiry goats. It’s a small, sparse space, bordered by tatty picket fences that don’t do much to keep the encroaching desert out. Beyond those fences, amidst those sands, there’s nothing save a few rocks and, after a handful of days, some sprouting mushrooms.
And those days are spent doing not very much at all. You can plant crops and tend to them, perhaps see to the chickens and collect any eggs, or take milk from the goats and head to the small outhouse to make cheese. You can take those goods and trade with the traveller that stops by every evening to gossip and pass on mail from the city. It’s Stardew Valley, stripped back and dosed up to dozing point on mogadon.
Or, you could do none of that; go for a wander in the desert, perhaps, or take the stick that sits in your tatty front garden and drag it through the sand, drawing crude pictures as you go. I picked up that stick some two hours into The Stillness of the Wind, having begun to feel frustrated at its lack of drive or urgency, at its reluctance to give me any sense or idea what to actually do. And when I dragged that stick out through the front garden, opened up the fence and decided to set about my own adventure out in the barren wilds, something strange happened. Talma, who’d been near mute the entire time, began to laugh; a playful, disarmingly natural sort of laugh that took glassy eyes of boredom and in an instant managed to prick them with tears.
Source: Eurogamer Stark and beautiful, The Stillness of the Wind is a game of rare grace