FALLOW: BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION
in the past year, fallow has gone from a game i "sort of liked" to one of the most personally important pieces of art i have ever interacted with. over that year, i have written 3 (imperfect) reviews of it. i have compiled them all on this page. the first 1 and 1/2 reviews are spoiler free, but if you'd like to remain blind, i'll sum up the game in two words. they're in the title. read the title of the post. idiot.
1
we can talk in circles about the art that may have inspired fallow, we can waste time talking about the long lineage of story-driven rpgmaker games that led up to this behemoth; that won't stop fallow from haunting me.
it is infinitely more than another sob story or moody indie game. it is the metaphorical place where all of us who have been outcast from society reside, brought to physicality. stroll down the dusty hallways of the fallow residence and relive memories that are not yours - and yet they are ours.
when i hear the credits theme, "shame", i do not feel the grief i so often do for characters i've loved or fictional worlds i had to leave behind; i feel something watching me over my shoulder. a comforting kind of sadness that will cocoon me even as everything i loved crumbles away.
on the wall above my desk rests these words: "my sisters and i had a secret wish to die in a place that cared for us". i think i will remember them in those final moments.
2
if you have played this game and have not finished the sealed door/red squares areas, do it. they feel like fallow's hand in killer7 - dubiously canon, but still painting a clearer picture of the world. there's a guide on steam if you don't know how to access them. on that note, the first bit of this review will be free from major spoilers for fallow and its hidden areas.
when you enter the hulking door to fallow's hidden areas, the text onscreen tells you that these areas are outside the boundaries of the story. although they may be literally "out of bounds", i think they are 100% necessary to the full experience of fallow. i don't know what i was expecting from cut content, but it certainly wasn't something this thorough.
you find yourself dropped onto a small island, a misty refuge from the crushing depression that's built up by the third day of fallow. there are no objectives (at least, not at first). there are no directions. you just... walk, and the game opens up around you. fallow is a game that often relishes in its quietness, which makes its busier moments (like alburn manor) stand out sharply. outside of its boundaries, fallow gives way a mesh of jarring textures and abrasion. we delve deeper into isa's mind, the lines starting to blur, seemingly disconnected set of spaces bleeding into my perception of the world they surround.
OK SPOILER TIME DO NOT READ BELOW IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED PAST THE SEALED DOOR PLEASE
i won't pretend i fully understand every scrap thrown at me by the (surprisingly cohesive) cut content in fallow, though i understand the story more than when i went in.
this is gonna be kinda all over the place because i have about 200 thoughts in my head right now.
it's so strange when you're exploring and you find yourself on the other side of the barriers of the main game. little paths of trees or rocks that i assumed were just normal video game boundaries. the map ada created for fallow is far larger (and more complicated) than you think. what a wonderful surprise! i love when developers put effort into shit even if most people will never even know it's there. there's a whole world crumbling and abstracting around what you can see in the main game, which is a hella meta way to play on the themes of the main story.
speaking of surprises, the dancing ghost room. it's the only time in fallow that you hear a voice. that alone makes for an unforgettable moment, nevermind that song. AND IT'S ENTIRELY POSSIBLE TO MISS IT, EVEN IF YOU GET ALL THE RED SQUARES.
the very, very blunt final note to mother that you find in the abandoned house feels like a real message to someone's mother. i wonder if it is.
so much of this area exhibits a mastery of subtextual storytelling. each vignette is littered with evocative things, from npc dialogue to the notes, or just rooms with eerie atmospheres. don't even get me started on the music. these unused tracks get me in my feels.
can we talk about angel for a second? the brief interactions you have with them and paige in the city (which i am confident is part of the city where isa used to live) are so true to the uneasiness of revisiting people from a place where you were traumatized. confiding in and yearning for angel for only a moment to have her disappear like that, it's horrifying. real-life horror. no scares, no monsters, only the unrelenting fear of a world without someone who loves you. my stomach hurts.
listen to the tower of the furnace ii from the soundtrack. you can find it on bandcamp, along with all of ada's other tunes. let it soak in. maybe listen to it twice.
the dialogue between the fallow sisters found in the red squares is some of my favorite in the game. it hits on a few themes and leitmotifs that reminded me of ada's lyrics. i can't help wondering why they were left out, along with vivianna's message to isa before the final day.
these were the couple hours i needed to fall all the way in love with the world of fallow. when i finished up, i exited to the main game with as many answers about the ambiguous fate of isa and her sisters as i went in with. hell, there's hardly even a "finish", only a final room that unlocks when you collect all the seven red squares. that final room is a very fallow conclusion: a contextless mysterious machine with faint ghosts of the dynen spinning overhead. it hit me weirdly hard. i want to play through the game again with a new perspective from the cut content. yeesh. the only thing this content is cutting is my heart, wide open.
i'm going to break down crying if i talk about this game more, so i'm gonna end this here lol
3
i'm still marinating my emotions. please forgive me if this is undercooked
a eulogy?
i don't mean to join the ranks of the seemingly ubiquitous black dresses fans who feel the need to evaluate the work of ada rook through the lens of that one project. but today the band's final album, laughingfish, released and i was brought back to this game once again. i said in my last review that fallow is "haunting" me no matter how much i play or write about it, and clearly that's still true.
if there's been one constant in the anything-but-consistent past 4 years of my life, it'd be the work of ada rook. her music has soundtracked 4 years of queer discovery and struggling; in particular, i favored her music with black dresses (same as pretty much everyone else on this planet, apparently). even the darkest pieces the duo made were shining beacons of hope from two incredible queer women pushing through the struggles of life and making art out of it. now, that's all gone, and my tiny emo heart is in shambles.
the hopelessness of laughingfish is ever-pervasive. i know that the album acknowledges hope, that the end of everything you ever loved is the beginning of the future. it's still the end of everything you've ever loved. and in a damn near catatonic state on the floor of my garage after i finished listening, i was reminded of fallow. fallow is 5 hours spent grieving before the end arrives. the final scene of the game sees our character, now named "harriet" (is she the same as isa? i don't know) on The Island On The Cleft: somewhere new for a new beginning. a girl you met moments prior asks her what she's going to do now, and harriet simply responds, "i don't know". i don't expect her to, really. i wouldn't either.
a new beginning punctuated by the aimlessness of a lonely and tattered heart. still, forever we push on.
edit: i don't think that hopelessness is the message of fallow or laughingfish. i was caught up in the sadness of the goodbye, which is... fitting. i have it in me to be more optimistic now, about the future n stuff, and i hope harriet does too. i think the endings of both laughingfish and fallow are brighter than i gave them credit for. idk. just didn't want to end this on a downer note.
edit 2: i think laughingfish might be the best album ever
END GAME REVIEW