Closer the Distance review: Good grief

A thoughtful take on life sims and life in general

Osmotic Studios

Saying “The Sims for grief” is a cute little way to describe Closer the Distance from Osmotic, and it’s accurate on a surface level. You manage little people going about their little lives – but the problems they deal with are so much heavier than any failed exam or sad breakup in Maxis’ life sim. Osmotic uses a single tragedy in Closer the Distance as a lens to explore grief, but that’s just part of what gives it a strong identity. It’s as much about human nature, the complexity of relationships, and what to do when it feels like your life ends, but you still have to keep living it, as anything else. Despite a few structural quirks and a script of questionable quality, Osmotic handles all these issues and more with care and understanding.

Closer the Distance starts with an unsettled family. Angie, the eldest daughter, is out late. Her mother is angry, her father tries to placate her, while her sister, Conny, is forgotten upstairs, and you get the impression this state of affairs is the family’s norm. The police arrive and say Angie died after a car ran into her bike, and right as that happens, Conny hears her sister speak to her.

I’ll get the game’s most annoying part out of the way first. Closer the Distance’s writing mystifies me. It fluctuates from elegance to stilted awkwardness, sometimes at the metaphorical drop of a hat. Conversations between two characters often end with “let’s continue this conversation at a later time,” or something similarly clunky. No one speaks like that, and Closer the Distance’s characters definitely shouldn’t speak like that. Even some of the better-realized characters suffer from tone changes on occasion. I eventually just got used to it, since the intent behind the words is still easy to grasp. However, crafting a game with as much intricacy as this and not crafting an equally solid script is a massive oversight.

Late-night sewing, a desperate bid to regain some normalcy / Osmotic Studios

Anyway, this spiritual link with Angie is one of Closer the Distance’s smarter ideas. Conny is, ostensibly, the main character, but as the fallout from Angie’s death settles, your understanding of what’s happening gradually unfolds. Once you regain control of Conny, you see a needs and mood panel pop up, not unlike the kind Maxis uses in its cozy life sim. It has categories for standard needs, such as food and sleep, as well as unique ones, including solitude, relaxation, and routine. Your job is figuring out the best way to meet those needs while still maintaining something that resembles a normal daily schedule.

Eventually, you can guide other characters as well. Managing a network of broken people and trying to find positive outcomes for them all gets complicated, and it’s almost inevitable that you’ll make more than one mistake, even with Closer’s laid-back pace and tools for balancing several tasks. Making messes – and figuring out how to, hopefully, fix them – is part of the experience, though.

Angie is the reason you, and other characters, eventually, have an understanding of their needs and what might help other people. The whole point is that Angie’s carrying on her efforts to unite the village and heal the wounds festering under everyone’s relationships, and she’s doing it by making everyone aware of their emotions, what they can do to help others, and – just as important – help themselves.

Angie's spirit helps people reconnect with important events from their past / Osmotic Studios

That elegant setup makes Laul, the wandering guitarist who barges into Yesterby about halfway through the game to play itinerant therapist, a bizarre choice, like an early idea that got shoved in later when it should’ve just been retired. Laul pushes people to engage with their emotions, but the way Closer the Distance works, there’s hardly a need for that. Letting the villagers grow or not depending on your actions, and gradually revealing their lives and thoughts through Angie’s spectral influence is a much smarter storytelling method than having some rando turn up and play god.

Even when things get a bit forced, Osmotic still makes interactions important and lets them tell little stories of their own. Closer the Distance’s character models might lack sculpted features – like faces, for example – but Osmotic makes up for that with exceptional attention to detail. When Conny finishes sewing, for example, she gives the wheel a small back turn to lock the needle in place, just like you (should) do with a real sewing machine. She automatically lights a fire in the living room if she enters it while in a low mood. Leigh makes it a point to shut the TV off when Conny speaks, so she can give her undivided attention. So many little details like these make every moment feel meaningful, and that injection of personality keeps Closer the Distance from feeling repetitive as time wears on.

That attention to detail extends to how Osmotic depicts the listlessness and difficulty of living with loss. When you guide Conny for the first full day, you’re left wondering what to do. Nothing will fix her problems or anyone else’s, so you have to just poke at it blindly and hope something works, even though you know nothing will. With everything thrown out of order, Conny’s routine need was in the red – another example of how well Closer the Distance’s mechanics tell its story – so I decided to try one of her favorite hobbies, sewing. It helped a little, but then on a whim, I suggested she should write in her diary to get her thoughts out. 

No rocking chair and knitting for this senior citizen /

Yes, it was the middle of the morning, and she had plenty of other things to do. But it had a soothing effect on her wellbeing, so she could function better and interact with other people later. It’s a subtle reflection of what living with loss is like, a quiet affirmation about taking care of yourself, and a central gameplay mechanic, all wrapped into one instance. Closer the Distance sprinkles several such moments throughout the rest of the game and encourages you to look past initial impressions to understand people on a deeper level. What people do in Closer the Distance often says more than their words, and Osmotic tells as much of its story – and shapes your perception of it – through actions as it does through dialogue. 

You can follow characters who aren’t Conny and see their mood panels even before you can influence them. Little notifications pop up when “important” scenes happen, scenes with some bearing on the main plot, but Closer the Distance wants you to see how other people live their lives outside of that as well. For instance, I let Conny go to bed the first night after the tutorial and followed her mother, Pia, instead. Pia cried alone in her bedroom, then – ignoring her completely empty exhaustion and hunger needs the same way she ignores her younger daughter – went to the backyard shed and spent hours sewing, not returning to the house until just before dawn. Knowing what influenced her behavior gave me a different perspective on how I approached resolving her issues, though meeting her needs didn’t necessarily make her a better mother or person.

Closer the Distance doesn’t shy away from the fact that relationships have messy endings despite the best intentions, and sometimes, you just have to live with the pain and learn to grow around it. Certain events, including those you control, leave permanent scars on a character’s personality chart so they can never completely satisfy specific needs or emotions again. They, and you, have to learn new routines and ways of living in the hopes of still feeling fulfilled. That’s a heavy concept, and one I’ve been grappling with recently after a string of losses over the last five years. Most depictions of grief don’t even try to tackle that reality, but Closer the Distance is brave enough and smart enough not to just mention it, but to explore it in meaningful ways.

Sheep don't judge. Well, if they do, we can't understand their judgment. / Osmotic Studios

It gives Closer the Distance depth and makes it painfully relatable, and it’s hard to take in sometimes. I don’t mind saying I lost it after the needs cap tutorial and couldn’t play again for the rest of the day. It’s clear Osmotics’ writers thought deeply about how multifaceted grief is and how it changes us, and while that makes it cathartic in a way most games aren’t, it also means you’ll want to consider your emotional state carefully before playing.

I was leery approaching Closer the Distance. Games about grief and difficult emotions have become increasingly more common since Thunderful’s Spiritfarer, and, frankly, more than a few lack the emotional intelligence to handle their topics well.  And then there was Life Is Strange: True Colors, a game that places everyone’s emotional burdens on one character and expects her to solve them without question or complaint while ignoring her own needs, which no one else in the game seems to care about.

Despite tackling so many sensitive topics, Closer the Distance never feels out of its depth and shows a surprisingly well-rounded understanding of human nature. Angie might push Conny to be the one who helps others, but her friends in the village have her needs in mind as well. And sometimes they don’t, because sometimes, people just suck. How you deal with that is up to you, and the way you do or don’t resolve the village’s issues will have lasting effects on the people who live there. There’s plenty of replay value, but like with Spiritfarer, I don’t think this is a game I can ever play again.

Closer the Distance review score: 7

Version tested: PC