The First Tree doesn’t have a ton of game play to it but it makes up for it with a fantastic story and voice acting. The game play it does have is good for what it is as well but on it’s own would be a bit disappointing to some. You play as a fox looking for her cubs. You engage in some light platforming and very light problem solving to navigate the levels. While this goes on you listen to the main character tell childhood stories to his wife. As the fox you can also optionally find mementos from the man’s childhood and collect stars which do serve a slight purpose later on but are still optional. The game works by combing these as on it’s own the great story that gets revealed as you are the fox would just be an audio book on it’s own and without the great story the platforming would just be a very simple game. Together they work better than alone. I do wish that more was revealed about the middle portion of the main character’s life. We learn a lot about their childhood and some of their adult life but not much for the gap in between. The graphics take two forms. While you’re the fox it is almost a cell shaded type world that while not overly detailed has a good style to it and is full of colour. As the man it is a more realistic style. That world is a little less impressive because it relies more on technical detail. It wasn’t an eye sore but at the same time won’t wow you. The music was also superb. I will also say that the few hints the game gives were well done. They didn’t spell things out so much as provide a drawing of what you needed to do which I thought was a nice touch. I am also happy to say that the keyboard and mouse worked just fine which isn’t always the case with some games with platforming sections.
I played The First Tree on Linux. It never crashed. I did notice one possible bug where in the options menu AA is listed as “unavailable”. The game auto saves at the beginnings of levels but it doesn’t say it is saving on the screen which would have been a better way to do it or simply allow manual saving. There was just one graphics option aside from resolution and the unavailable AA. There were no audio options, it would have been nice to adjust the music or voice volume on their own. Alt-Tab didn’t work. Performance wise The First Tree ran the gamut. For the most part it ran great but there were times where it could drop to the 50’s in frame rate and I have to say the graphical detail doesn’t really justify that. I want to blame Unity as their OpenGL games often suffer from this I find.
Game Engine: Unity
Graphics API: OpenGL
Disk Space Used: 2.29 GB
Input Used: Keyboard and Mouse
Settings Used: Ultra; 1920x1080; no AA
GPU Usage: 0-100 %
VRAM Usage: 967-2245 MB
CPU Usage: 12-47 %
RAM Usage: 3.5-3.8 GB
Frame Rate: 58-144 FPS
If you enjoy games such as Firewatch; Kona; The Station; Tacoma or What Remains of Edith Finch you will probably enjoy The First Tree. You get great music; voice acting; story and decent game play as well. I finished the game in one hour and forty five minutes. It is worth it’s current asking price of $11.49 CAD.
My System:
AMD FX-9590 | 16GB DDR3-2133 | XFX RX 590 8GB Fat Boy | Mesa 22.1.7 | Samsung 870 QVO 1TB | Garuda | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 5.19.8-zen1-zen | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz