Unravel is a puzzle-platformer starring a little guy made of red yarn named Yarny who travels through (mostly) natural landscapes and revisits the memories of an old woman.  It can sometimes be a rather emotional game, though not always for the reasons intended by the developers.  As I progressed through the game, I actually struggled to make sense of the memories and their significance, lessening the emotional impact they should have had on me.  Rather, there was a very personal reason this game touched my heart.

Nowhere was this most notable than the game’s very first level, Thistle and Weeds, which I played in Unravel’s demo.  Right at the start of the game, you leave the old woman’s house and explore her yard way out in the country, with grassy fields and trees as far as the eyes can see.  As peaceful and idyllic as this all was, this also awakened an old longing within me for a past, and a childhood, that’s long since been lost.

You see, I spent my earliest years in the country.  It was more of a desert landscape, so not nearly as lush as where the old lady lives, and we didn’t have nearly as much space as she did.  But we did still have a big yard situated in our little neighborhood, in our tiny town hours from the nearest city, where my mom planted a willow tree outside my window in the hopes that I would grow up with it.  Here, my parents and I would visit the wild, open mountains outside of town, littered with abandoned mine shafts and rickety old shacks.

At the age of 7, we moved to the suburbs.  At the age of 13, we got our land back.  And then, at the age of 15, we moved to a neighborhood with a busy road behind us.  The sound of honking was commonplace, along with a mysterious hum that emanated from the Walmart behind us all hours of the day and night.  Even when we initially looked at houses, the realtor pointed out a bank that got robbed often.  And then, one year later, at the age of 16, we moved to a big city.  One of the fastest growing cities in the country.  In the desert.  Gone were any of the wide, open green spaces of my youth or the thick, deep forests, nor did we even have the untamed mountains blanketed in wild flowers every spring or the creeks for fishing trout like we did in my very earliest years.

Now, the air was so polluted that my asthma came back with a vengeance, even our cats experiencing coughing fits from time to time thanks to the ever-present smog.  We now know the difference between fireworks and gunshots.  Neighbors shoot their spouses, and no one even bats an eye.  Our yard is tiny, the neighbor’s house mere feet away.  It couldn’t support even a small garden, though, because it’s far too hot and dry out.  And when we do leave the city limits, all we see is an endless expanse of brown, which will inevitably be covered in even more closely-packed houses.

After 17 years in the noisy and polluted desert city, my heart literally aches for the country.  Video games are certainly no stranger to natural settings.  But there was just something about the first level of Unravel in particular that really touched my heart, something nostalgic, like the old lady’s peaceful little home and idyllic yard was a part of my past, too.  A past that was taken away against my will, that I’m now struggling to regain.  I don’t want to live in the city anymore.  I’m a whale in a freshwater lake.  I’m a tree-loving squirrel in a wasteland.  I’m a bird in a cage.

As we all know, if these posts are anything to go by, music makes all the difference when it comes to how we experience video games.  That’s probably why this very same setting in countless other games doesn’t have the same effect on me.  It’s the music that plays in this level, First Steps, that really drove home that feeling of nostalgia, of longing for a past that’s been lost.  If you decide to take a listen, my favorite parts start at 1:52 and 2:55.

That’s the beauty of video games.  I may not currently be where I want to be, but at least in the meantime, I can visit the places of my youth and the places I hope to be in my future.  And anywhere else that I can possibly imagine.  I can feel the peace of nature and a childhood lost even if I can’t actually visit it, even if I can’t physically touch it.  Video games do a lot of things.  They are entertainment and relaxation.  They can make us heroes or transfer us to another place and time.  And it wouldn’t be quite the same without the right music to back it up, to make it truly feel alive and real.  Until my hoped-for future becomes a reality, at least I have video games to aid me in a little bit of time travel.