Games that offer a strong narrative coupled with social impact are few and far betwee, but one of these is making the jump to the Nintendo Switch later this month. Named Lydia, the game was first released in 2017 for the PC through Steam. According to developer Platonic Partnership, the game is now under the new publishing label Nakana.io, where it is set to release for the Nintendo Switch on January 17.
Lydia is based on the experience and painful memories of its developers. In particular, Lydia address a rather serious issue as it focuses on children that have to deal with alcoholic parents. The game is simple and straightforward as players control the titular Lydia and interact with characters and items. While there are various dialogue options that can activate different reactions, all of them lead to the same final path. The story takes about one and a half hours to finish.
Giving the game a grim and anxious climate are the gray-scale graphics that have been hand drawn by artist Henri Tervapuro. Meanwhile, the music and voice acting brings out the emotion, with original songs scored by renowned film composer Juhana Lehtiniemi.
DLC Charity
With the announcement of the upcoming release to Switch, a DLC expansion has also been announced. However, unlike other DLCs, this one instead serves as a donation system in order to support the non-profit organization Fragile Childhood. Fragile Childhood works to prevent and diminish harm caused by parental alcohol or substance abuse.
Publisher Nakana.io is going to distribute the DLC for $1. All net revenues are going to be transferred to Fragile Childhood. In return players get an in-game coloring book of monsters that Lydia can only paint with happy colors. This actually serves as a metaphor to help make monsters less scary not only in-game, but more importantly, in real life. You can learn more about that here.
