The game’s heroine is Gerda Larsen, a nurse in Tinglev. It’s February, and the place is creaking with snow. As with 11-11 Memories Retold, another wartime tale, Gerda’s story has a dappled blur; unlike that game, though, Gerda’s story is still. She says, “Our lives became more muted” after the occupation, before taking heart in the comforts of home. Life’s simple pleasures remained, maybe stronger than ever.
These pleasures are viewed from above. It’s a clever touch, making Gerda’s workaday errands seem like a carefully fought battle as she travels between locations. That’s what they become as the plot unfolds. Anders, Gerda’s husband, has an anti-German fervour despite his gentle mien. As his wife is half-German, he has to not only navigate Nazi rule, but also stay on Gerda’s good side. It’s said that “scarcity made itself known,” that “indulgences became more modest, until a pinch of sugar became a luxury.”
The key to Gerda: A Flame in Winter is this courteous juggling act. It’s a game of manners, where pinning a swastika on your lapel seems as explosive as picking up a gun. Like This War of Mine, the focus isn’t on soldiers but on those at home who feel the shocks of war differently. It’s not like the forbidding game with its besieged tenements filtered through the hues of a black eye. Here’s a pretty landscape. Rather than softening the stress of its time, this adds irony. A candlestick indicates progress on the loading screen, whose colours smear and run like darkened slush. She gives out a reassuring glow, but is thoroughly exhausted.
As Don’t Nod’s publishing debut, we shouldn’t be surprised to find branching dialogue and moral dilemmas. Throughout Don’t Nod’s games, their heroes are endowed with supernatural powers; as such, their villains are surplus to requirements. Life is Strange’s Max isn’t just facing temporal oblivion, but also a predatory photography teacher. The hero of Vampyr, Jonathan Reid, spent so much time protesting his newfound nightlife that I can’t remember if he had a solid foe. The state of affairs is perfect for Gerda: A Flame in Winter, where state affairs are all the more perverse because they’re faceless.
Not that we don’t have our share of brutes. There’s Reinhardt, a sweaty soldier who digs through the doctor’s cupboard for pills, and Kriminalinspektör Stahl, who collects knick-knacks and, on occasion, people, in the cells of the local police station. You get a sense of a woman straining against crosscurrents more than anything else. With a plaintive piano score and Freya Miller’s brittle narration, the atmosphere is just a little too striving. Clearly, PortaPlay wants to warm your heart, but you want to tell them to take a cue from Tinglev. Gerda: A Flame in Winter gives us a lot to enjoy. It may not come with action, but its star flickers with power. It reminds us that even when we’re thrown by things out of our control, the simple things still matter.
