In ZIPIT’s splendid story-driven photography sim The Wide Open Sky is Running out of Catfish, you are a young witch living on the back of a huge, aerial catfish – a benevolent flying island of trees, fountains and windchimes that puts me in mind of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.
The catfish is sad that the skies are so empty nowadays, so you must use a magic flute – see, we’re definitely in Zelda’s orbit – to transform into a similarly gravity-agnostic eel, which eats clouds and poops them out as various creatures. Snapping photos of those creatures grants you seashells, which turn into more clouds when thrown into the fountain.
It’s saying something about my sensibilities that all of this excited me less than the presence of a working photo printer in the witch’s cottage. And a camera charger that lights up when it’s done! And a fax machine that makes an absolute racket! I love when developers fill their snowglobes with believably functioning gadgets. I bet you can fax photos to people in The Wide Open Sky is Running out of Catfish, but alas, the demo ended before I could try it. The full game is out today. Here’s a trailer.
Aside from the printer and fax machine, there’s a desktop computer with an internet browser and a Dolphin Chat app. Some opening banter with friends over Dolphin reveals that your character, Jet, is something of a recluse, wobbling on the edge of applying to college, but fearful of the hurly-burly human landscape beneath. There’s also the slight mystery of your absent mum, whose loving Post-Its deck the cottage. Also, if I’m reading some emergency faxes correctly, there’s a coven of sorcerous enforcers who disapprove of your sky-rewilding antics.
Turmoil in the offing, then, but in the shorter term, this game feels like a holiday. It’s a fabulous yet coherent pocket universe of disarming detail – stuff like your mum scrawling longer messages across multiple Post-Its, or the fact that the power-off icon on the computer is tucked inside an animated clamshell, or the way proximity audio for those windchimes makes a little, unspoken game of whether you go right or left of the rocky shrine by the catfish’s head.
Again, the full thing’s out on Steam today. There’s also an older alpha version on Itch.io. If you’re a photography nerd who has no time for impossible sealife and finds the simplicity of this game’s handicam stifling, I recommend Lushfoil Photography Sim instead.
