The First Tree

David Wehle, LLC

About this game

The First Tree is a third-person exploration game centered around two parallel stories: a fox trying to find her missing family, and a son reconnecting with his estranged father in Alaska. Players take control of the fox on a poignant and beautiful journey that crescendos at the source of life, and perhaps result in an understanding of death. Along the way, players can uncover artifacts and stories from the son's life as he becomes intertwined in the fox’s journey towards The First Tree.

Features:
• Not a "fox simulator," but an emotional, intimate story by a one-man team with an ending you won't soon forget.

• Featuring a gorgeous, orchestral soundtrack by acclaimed artists like Message to Bears, Lowercase Noises, and Josh Kramer.

• A short story-driven game (about 2 hours long) with some light puzzle solving, platforming, and no enemies.

Please note: A fast, modern device with at least 2GB of RAM is required to enjoy The First Tree.

Ratings and reviews

Good visuals and audio, although the voice acting doesn't really feel natural. It's the type of game that tries to encourage you to keep exploring in order to learn more about the people talking and the connection to the fox, but even with the pretty environments I found the gameplay a little too boring to justify my time. You run around for a couple of minutes towards shiny stuff, get a bit more background or story, and then run around some more. Not enough for me personally.

Highly recommend it. It was a stellar experience when I played it first at launch, and that hasn't changed yet. Love this project david. Can't wait to see what else you come up with. A small thing to note- I don't know if you plan to do any patches, and, or bug fixing, but the subtitles don't scale very well. The background alone takes half the screen on a one plus 7 phone. Not a deal breaker as subtitles aren't usually essential, but they aren't usable in this case....

The gorgeous, surreal visuals act as the backdrop for a meandering slice-of-life narrative set in Alaska. Exploration is rewarded with additional story development in the form of conversations between a young man and his partner. These conversations would better serve character development if they sounded more like natural dialogue. Instead, they sound like two college students reading their work in a creative writing class. It felt at times as though I missed chunks of important dialogue.

What's new

First full release.