Funcom’s The Park is a game that can only exist in the age of Steam. It came almost out of nowhere, got some interesting press, which made it stand out among most indie games. That’s a perspective near unique to the games industry these days.

Its developer is normally in the business of free-to-play MMOs like Age of Conan: Unchained and Anarchy Online, and even The Park has ties to one of their massively-multiplayer games. It is inspired by the MMO The Secret World and takes place in the same amusement park as the MMO.

The Park can probably best be described as a hybrid between Dear Esther and the first hour or so of BioShock: Infinite. It’s a walking simulator-style endeavor, wherein players wander an abandoned theme park looking for their missing son.

It is probably a divisive game, as these kinds of games generally are, but the truth is that this one is plenty good for what it is. While brief, hampered by lazy storytelling methods and a lack of variety, The Park is an eerie experience for fans of the genre. It also proves, yet again, that it is necessary to judge games based on their own rubrics, rather than some entirely objective sense of what a horror game “is.”

The set-up is simple: You play as Lorraine, a single mother who watches as her son scampers into the Atlantic Island Park at closing time. Atlantic Island has seen better days, however, and the scenery is more grim than gleeful. Lorraine must locate her precocious child, Callum, among the ruins of the nearly defunct theme park before a sinister force swallows him up.

The exploration takes players through the park, whose rickety rides represent the game’s narrative progression. As the player endures the bumper cars or the roller coaster, a sliver of story is revealed. Seems as though some…unsavory events took place at Atlantic Island Park some years back. Not the greatest place to bring a toddler, but hey, who’s judging?

Other than that, the rides don’t serve any real purpose, nor do they offer the player anything mechanically satisfying. Discovering them requires some exploration, but I balk at calling it puzzle-solving. You might end up getting lost while trying to reach certain minor targets, but there will be no lever-pulling, button-pressing, tomb-raiding objectives. Just walking. Lots and lots of walking.

Visually, the game looks fine. The character models are a bit glossy, and the world itself has an unrefined look that doesn’t always suit it, but it’s not a bad-looking game. The rides are well-designed, and the artstyle, especially when the story takes a dark turn, gives The Park quite a bit of textual depth. The game also runs pretty well. I experienced some framerate hiccups and other minor glitches, but otherwise the game performed okay, overall.

The Park sort of lives and dies on the strength of its narrative. That’s what people will be coming to it for, and so that has to be what is important. Overall, I think it totally works, and I became increasingly taken with what it was trying to accomplish, but this, too, is not without its problems. It somehow feels as though the game doesn’t go whole go on either story or gameplay, that one had to be sacrificed for the sake of the other.

The game has a twist, but the twist itself is less interesting and more obvious than the trip to get there. If you’re paying attention at all, you’ll get there before the story anyway, so sit back and relax. This isn’t a BioShock-level surprise, but you’ll nevertheless end up being horrified by what you experience.

It’s weird. As an attempt to fool the audience, the storytelling doesn’t do a great job, because the voice-overs and little bits of narrative are so heavy-handed, it’s almost impossible not to guess the conclusion before the game itself gets there. What benefited Dear Esther and Gone Home was the mystery surrounding the game’s raison d’etre. Here, it’s pretty clear from the start. It takes you down a winding staircase but ends up in the same exact spot you’d expect, if you paid any attention at all.

The Park is a fine narrative experience, but the accumulation of some minor issues requires addressing.

Lorraine’s son, Callum, is barely in the game, other than the opening sequence. He plays a more or less expositional role, drawing Lorraine into the plot. And yet an entire button is devoted to calling him, which is supposed to lead characters in the right direction. The game is linear enough that it doesn’t really matter or help, so it feels like a half-wasted opportunity.

Furthermore, the memos and other in-game notes are almost impossible to read. The font is microscopic, so small that leaning mere inches from the monitor is the only way to really be able to read it. It got to be so annoying that I, a lover of in-game notes, eventually just started skimming them to save my eyes.

The final and perhaps most expected issue in The Park is the game’s movement. While it’s a given that Lorraine won’t be sprinting around, Quake-style, her movement speed is less than ideal, even when sprinting. (Walking is an agonizing endeavor.) It’s the one aspect of these games that always trips me up: while walking makes sense, it is beyond comprehension why walking so slowly has to be the standard.

The Park will be arriving on PS4 and XB1 in the coming months, so perhaps they’ll be adding extra content, or giving console owners something else to whet their appetites.

The Final Word: The truth is, if you enjoyed games like Gone Home or Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, you’ll probably thoroughly enjoy The Park’s roughly two hour playtime.