How We Know We’re Alive ★★★★★

How We Know We’re Alive, it’s the regrets, mostly.

I haven’t played a walking simulator in a while and wanted to play another one and this game was one of the recent ones that caught my interest. It’s pretty short which was nice because I didn’t want to spend a ton of time in one and it was definitely worth playing.

• Developed by Motvind Studios
• Published by Motvind Studios

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Hello everyone and welcome to the second episode of Not Now Mom, I’m Gaming.

It is a few days past Thanksgiving and I hope you guys all had a good one with a bunch of turkey to eat.

We had a pretty big meal cooked by my mom and some by my sister-in-law. We had turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, of course, some filling, rolls, and some other little odds and ends.

We had a bunch of dessert, like good grief.

After we ate, we all played a game, a card game called Five Second Rule. There’s a little tube that’s supposed to be the timer and has little balls rolling down for five seconds.

Turns out, we just dismissed the five seconds. People just weren’t very good at answering things in five seconds.

It’s more like fifty seconds. Fifty Second Rule is what it’s called now, instead of five second.

I had a couple days off work and I know I’m a little bit late on this podcast, uh well I’m probably like a lot bit late on this podcast, if I’m trying to stick to a timeline, which I try not to stick to a timeline, because I suck at sticking to timelines, obviously.

But I was trying to figure out which direction I wanted to go with this podcast.

I didn’t really want to do gaming news, gaming updates, like what’s coming up, best sellers, stuff like that. There’s a whole bunch of other YouTube channels and podcasts and websites that do that so much better than I do. Plus I feel like that’s too much for me to keep up as a single person.

I started watching some of these YouTube channels where people 100% a game, and it’s just kind of them going through the game, talking about what they were doing and what’s going on and I kind of like that idea as a podcast. I can kind of vocalize it for listening only, as well as place it on YouTube for something to watch.

But I didn’t really just want to go about doing it that way, I want to do/mix in reviews as well.

So I decided to maybe do a review type of podcast for video games where I try to 100% a game and also talk about the pros and cons as you go throughout it, and I will say, what’s got me busy so far is playing My Time at Sandrock.

Oh my god.

I have 40+ hours of recorded videos and I’m not even done with the first year. So I’m probably going to separate that into, uh, multiple podcasts, thank you.

Already as of this moment, I’ve taken 8 hours and cut it all down to 40 minutes, and I’m not even done with the first month yet, (oh my god), but I had to start getting some of these videos off my hard drive cause it’s like…it’s filling it up.

Completely.

But for now, for this podcast, for this episode, I wanted to check out the game How We Know We’re Alive.

How We Know We’re Alive is developed by Motvind Studios. It is classified as a Walking Simulator, which kind of fits in with what we were talking about in the first episode of my podcast.

Talking about some of the genres I like and walking simulator is definitely one of them. I kind of did want to touch more base on them.

The about section says:

HOW WE KNOW WE’RE ALIVE is an award winning, hour long melancholy, point-and-click narrative mystery set in the bible belt of Sweden.

FROM SWEDEN WITH LOVE
Welcome to Härunga – a small industrial town in the bible belt of the mid–north of Sweden. You play as Sara, an aspiring writer who, after having been away for 10 years, returns home in order to investigate the tragic fate of her estranged best friend. The days grow short quickly this far up north – and the rain never seems to let up…

HÄRUNGA FOREVER
Lovingly crafted and richly animated, explore the melancholy atmosphere of a small town that time seemingly forgot. Meet old friends and enemies and piece together the mystery of what happened after your friendship tragically fell apart.

As in life, what you say will impact things in hidden ways and not everything may be as it seems. Who is telling whose truth and can you know the difference?

I’m not really good at mysteries. Like, I really like them, but I’m just…I’m not good at them.

And I don’t know if I was saying the town’s name right, and I apologize if I didn’t. It does have a symbol over the first “a” so…

Now I have written a review for this game, so I’ll probably be reading off script instead of just freeballing it. Cause I’m a lot better with wanting to say things if I read them than if I just like try to get my thoughts together. Cause then I miss out on stuff that I wanted to say before but forgot about saying.

In saying that I apologize if I sound a bit more robotic and less, you know, loose with my words.

Usually if I’m reading from a script I have a certain way of reading it that’s kind of like not in the casual way of talking.

It sometimes sounds like I’m reading from something, that’s basically it. But now you know why, if it does sound like that.

So without further ado, let’s go ahead and get into the review of How We Know We’re Alive.

And for those listening on the podcast there will be a YouTube video with visuals of the game as I review it. Also, this game does touch base on themes of alcoholism and suicide.

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How We Know We’re Alive is a beautiful, emotional narrative about a friend’s death and us trying to piece together how it might’ve happened. As with every self-detective hunt for answers, there are misread clues and wrong outcomes, but in the end, we get our answers.

It’s extremely well-written (aside from a few misspellings, mind you) and touches base on a possible suicide outcome in a religious, homophobic town in Sweden.

The soundtrack is melancholic and is blessed by the ASMR pattering of rain, as well as some other sounds here and there, such as birds chirping, depending on the scenes you go through.

There is no voice acting. The dialogue is announced by little blips of the characters speaking. Kind of like how Beacon Pines does, but I’m not sure if each character has their own tone to the sound of their words.

Speaking of characters…

We play as someone named Sara who’s come back to her former town after having moved to Stockholm some time back. The games starts off with our friend Maria texting us while on a bus. Though, it’s not her that’s on the bus texting us while we’re at our office job, it’s more of a memory of her texting us while we’re on the bus heading to our former hometown.

I’m not too sure if the constant flow of text are coming one after another on the same day, or if they’re spaced out over several days.

I want to say time passes between each text passed between the two of us, because otherwise Maria seems awfully needy and attention-hungry. Like she’s got nothing better to do than strike up a conversation with a friend that’s left her behind. And sometimes people are like that. We all have our moments.

The conversation basically ends with Maria wanting to talk to Sara about something important.

The lines she writes to Sara are:

Sara, there’s something I want to talk to you about–can you call me as soon as you can? ASAP, when you get this if that’s okay. It’s really important. x

To which we reply:

So sorry I missed this, I’m stuck at the office…and probably will be all weekend. 🙁 Next week will be better I hope.

This is the first bit of information that may be a red flag for some.

There are things to take notice of when we step off the bus. First off, it’s raining. Nothing good ever happens when it rains. Next, Sara mentions to the town that it’s not that great to see it.

And if you try to turn back around to the bus, Sara says:

“As much as I’d like to leave, I have to get into town.”

So obviously, she’s not a big fan of where she is right now.

As we walk through town, we pass by several buildings that hold memories that maybe aren’t great enough to have kept us here in the first place. The first place is the petrol station.

“Long live the petrol station,” Sara says. “The only place in town we could trick someone into selling us a beer when we were under 18. Piss-weak 3.5% beer…but beer all the same.”

So not quite a bad memory here.

It’s kind of interesting, maybe going through the town that you lived in, you look at certain places–especially if you move out–just returning and looking at certain places, memories just spark. Maybe they’re good, maybe they’re bad, maybe they’re like nothing to really bat an eye at.

But it’s interesting to get a look into someone’s life.

The second place we come across is Verona’s Pizza, where Maria ordered something like pineapple and barbecue sauce. And though Sara would never admit it, she actually thought it was kind of delicious.

You know, once upon a time, I would not eat sushi at all. Cause I just…whenever I thought of sushi I thought of fish, and I just don’t like fish, but then a friend of mine like told me to eat a piece of a sushi and when I did I was like oh my god, why is this amazing?

But I didn’t want to admit that I liked it.

So I can’t eat sushi with, uh, fish in it. It’s just, it’s too bland to me. And I don’t like anything fried or with something called crunch on it. I don’t like the texture.

At the local sushi place I usually order from, I always get the Volcano Roll. It’s so good. I know Volcano Rolls are all made differently in a bunch of different places though so I kind of have to watch how they make it. Like look at the image of it. It’s like hit or miss whether I eat different Volcano Rolls at other places.

But in regards to Pizzeria Verona in game, it seems to be one of the places they always went to post-exams.

Fun fact: When I worked at one of my jobs, my go-to place when I left for the day was Starbucks. I’d go there and enjoy my grande hot chocolate and sit in there for hours at a time reading or writing something. It got to the point that the staff knew what I wanted when I came in. That honestly happened with a lot of other places too–such as ice cream shop, pizza place, Borders cafe when Borders was actually open.

God that was so long ago…I miss it.

There was a coffee shop where someone worked and I knew him from the days when my babysitter would babysit me. So that was kind of funny.

But whenever he saw me walking up to the doors, he’d automatically make whatever drink it was that I ordered. I think Chocolate Monkey. And I’d just sit in there for an hour or two writing or reading. Those were the days when I knew how to relax. I don’t think I know how to relax anymore.

Continuing through the game, we come across a blue house, where someone named Sven used to live in, I guess. Who was very into drones. There’s also a blue car out front that looks like Sara’s first boyfriend drove.

I don’t know what I would do if I moved back into a town and just ran into my first boyfriend. I think I would bolt.

When we approach a green house, Sara says:

“The only house I ever persuaded Maria to throw an egg at on Halloween. She put a written apology through the door the next day, bless her.”

Personally, I’ve never egged a house or a car or anything like that, however, for some reason (and don’t ask me why because I have no idea, we were kids), me and my cousin when it was Easter would have Cadbury eggs, which neither one of us ate, I don’t think, and we’d have just a few of them and go around the block slamming them into the ground.

And breaking them, of course. Just splattering them.

I don’t know why. I don’t know why we did it or how it even like started, but it was a thing for a while. Maybe something about Cadbury eggs made us aggressive. But at least it’s better than like store-bought eggs, right? Give me some leeway here, right?

The next house Sara comes across is Maria’s parent’s house–where it’s stated that it doesn’t look like anybody’s in and the curtains are the same.

How often do you change curtains though. I mean really. And the fact this place always had kind of a sinister vibe, it looks like it’s gotten worse.

I don’t see how the house would have a sinister vibe honestly, just by looking at it. I guess it could look kind of creepy with the lights off and the curtain colors and some of the objects seen through the windows, but I think the sinister is more from folks being religious and Sara being averse to the path that everyone in town took.

Not to mention that I think the game references for us being a lesbian who took an interest in Maria, so I highly doubt Maria’s parents were very welcoming.

Another building is Systembolaget, the important alcohol vault, closed on a Sunday, of course.

Uh, Maria’s sister agreed to buy them wine, the cheapest rose, and Maria ended up getting sick like immediately, and that might be a critical fact worth noting for a future scenario when we start piecing things together.

There’s a park bench, where Maria knocked her front tooth…it says knocked her front tooth chips, so I guess she just chipped her tooth?

I remember visiting friends in Washington State and getting a cheeseburger from McDonalds, and that cheeseburger broke one of my teeth in the back. So…I don’t know what y’all fuckin feed your livestock, but make them a bit more edible, right? And less painful.

Actually wasn’t even painful, it just freaked me the hell out, mainly because I was out of town and a freakin cheeseburger just chipped my tooth.

Anyway, here it is, the moment we’ve all been waiting for.

We’ve passed by an empty bus stop, and empty gas station, a restaurant, several buildings, a liquor store, and now we’re meeting Elsa, a flower peddler, who just happens to prove this town is not a ghost of a place that we once lived. There is in fact human life.

Sure, it’s just one woman trying to sell flowers outside in the rain, but I mean what else is there to do in a small town with hardly anyone in it, right?

It’s here that we get a timeline for how long Maria has been gone from this town.

Ten years.

It’s also the first area where you’ll get a multiple choice answer. You can choose one or the other as to the questions she asks, and although the game says that there are changes as to what happens in the game regarding your choices, I’m not really sure if there’s really a huge play on changes.

I know at the very end when you’re speaking to Sara’s sister, and you can choose from several different answers, that each one of those answers elicits a different response to you, but I don’t know if these smaller choices during the gameplay, before you reach the end, actually does much as far as change goes.

Maybe it does.

I tried tinkering around with the different choices with a second playthrough, but it just, it doesn’t really seem like it to me. Unless they meant that the dialogue after your choice changes depending on the choice you make, which is kind of obvious.

I was hoping that they meant that they tweaked the storyline as a whole, depending on several of your answers to the residents of town, in which case I didn’t se that happening.

Also, it’s been one year to date since something happened. I’m sure you can guess what might’ve happened.

We’re buying flowers, and we’re in a hurry and not wanting to talk about…something.

Another building we cross is an ICA, which, I don’t know about elsewhere, but I do know we have an IGA grocery store around here. Quite frankly, I’m still surprised they’re even around, as it’s one of those really old grocery stores that seems to have survived over the years when you doubted it would. Although, if ICA is a play on IGA, I don’t think it would be a place for people to “hang out.”

Run into each other in a small town? Yes. Hang out? Probably not.

Next we come across a truck with Josef’s Frukt on it. I, I assume it’s called Yosef instead of Josef. Uh, one of the more creepier people in town, who’s apparently ancient by now, so shout out to all you creepy old people.

I kind of like how the game is kind of mentioning people that we hope we don’t see, and then there’s the people that we do see and talk to that we remember.

Cause with a longer game you would want to come across the people that are talked about, but for a short game, this works.

As we keep walking, we come across Pub Diset, which was originally named Paradiset, however the sign broke so they just decided to rename the pub instead of fixing the sign. I feel like that’s a little bit lazy, but maybe there’s just nobody in town that knows how to fix it, or they just don’t have the money to fix it, which actually kind of says a lot about the town, so…

Sara also can’t help but remember, uh, the song Take A Walk on the Wild Side as well as karaoke.

Now I have never been into a bar where there has been karaoke going on. Thank god. And if I have been to a place where karaoke’s going on, again, thank god my brain has blocked it out. I think there was times when my friends or someone, just, I knew, wanted me to go with them to karaoke or something like that and I’m just like, hell no.

I know I can’t sing. I refuse to make a fool out of myself, even if I have drank some.

I did however go to a strip club where my friend got spanked on stage for his birthday.

And it’s only a little bit awkward going from talking about a strip club, to going up to a police station in game. I guess one could follow the other, right?

She doesn’t really say much about the police station. A little mention of bad dreams regarding it, so I was initially going to say maybe it was the troublemaker in her regarding the town that would cause bad dreams of the police station, but looking back, the bad dreams come from the cops telling her what happened.

So of course she would have bad dreams regarding the police station. At least, that’s how I see it.

And of course since this place was mentioned to be, uh, religious, with religious folk there is the church. Sara says:

“I have a vivid memory of sitting in the pews for graduation…and promising myself it would be the last of the hundreds of hours I spent in here.. We’d really been looking forward to it.”

And that just goes to show maybe how much the both of them wanted to get out of the town, though it seems like the only one who made it out was Sara.

And then there’s the mention of everybody being in there on a Sunday, cause apparently it’s Sunday in game. I don’t know if it was stated before, but that would definitely make sense why there’s nobody out and about.

Plus if it is the anniversary of Maria’s death, then everybody would be in church, like, grieving, I guess.

It’s been so long since I last went to church. I remember when I did go with my parents, I would always have a handheld game, so like a Game Boy or a Game Boy Color, something along those lines cause it’s pretty far back.

I would just…I would go out of my mind if I just had to sit in the pews for the entire church sermon and not do anything. I had to have something in my hands. Even now, if I leave the house, and like go somewhere, I have to have something in my hands, whether it’s a book or a portable game, a notebook, something, even if I know I’m not going to use it.

One of the final places at the end of town is the cemetery. Sara says:

“I always found it strange that the only beautiful place in town was the one full of dead people.”

And that makes sense, because a lot of people care about their dead; their relatives, their children, grandparents. They like to keep their memory intact, so they usually keep flowers around them, maybe little things that matter to them.

So yeah, it makes sense that a cemetery would be a beautiful place.

I still think they’re creepy places though, quite honestly.

But the first gravestone we see is a fancy one and it belonged to the owners who founded this shithole. Absolutely zero respect there. Thank you, Sara.

Next up is our grandparents who we didn’t get flowers for, and I don’t really know what that means for our kind of relationship we had. Like, was that an accident that we just overlooked them because we wanted flowers for Maria or were they kind of on our shit list too?

Now, Maria’s tombstone is lit up with candles and I can’t really understand how that works, given the fact that it’s raining and they’re defying the water by remaining lit. Unless they’re those fake candles that need an outlet in order to turn on. That doesn’t work either.

I get it, it’s a video game and I’m looking too far into it, but it’s just really weird, all right?

Her gravestone reads, “Maria Berg… 1992 – 2019.”

There’s also a verse on her gravestone that reads, “And there are still so many paths I haven’t trodden.” A verse that isn’t familiar with Sara, but I don’t feel like it’s all that odd considering there are a ton of verses out there that people will cling onto for different reasons. And because of the fact that Maria died at the age of 27, I think the verse is rather spot-on.

At this point Sara doesn’t really know what to do, which is natural. Nobody really knows what they want to do when they confront a cherished one in a grave. But for now, she wants to speak to Maria, without really knowing what to say. One of my ordeals with speaking in a cemetery is the idea that there are too many ears listening in on a personal one-sided conversation. Sure, everyone’s deceased, but also, you’re still in a public place with a ton of people…who just happen to be six feet under.

To Maria, Sara says,

“…Hi Maria. I miss you, I guess is the first thing.. And I’m sorry I wasn’t here for the funeral.”

At this point, you have a few different options to choose from for your next response, ranging from the bland excuse of it not being your fault, to the fact that you couldn’t face it, which is understandable, and a choice of being too wrapped up in your feelings. Personally, I think not being able to face the reality of her actually no longer being here would be the best answer as far as any excuse goes.

In fact, there have been a variety of family funerals that I didn’t attend because I don’t do well when it comes to situations of death and it’s just…too much to know that someone is laying in a box. It just feels too impersonal unless the coffin is hand-crafted specifically to that person, and who the hell does that?

Not a lot of people, that’s who.

I chose my recommended answer for the game and Sara continues with the chat, including this piece,

“Sorry. But you should have come with me.”

Oh my God, (since we’re near a church), Sara. You can’t say shit like that. You can’t just tell Maria she should’ve gone with you and then none of this would’ve happened. You don’t know that.

For anyone who believes in fate and a set path for specific events, if she didn’t die here from whatever happened, she might’ve died somewhere else from something else on the same day and same time. It’s really not worth dwelling on, because it’ll never happen due to it having already happened. As for myself, I don’t really know what I’d believe as far as if I didn’t do this on that day, would the same thing have happened anyway? As someone with an active imagination, I do constantly think of different scenarios to events that have already occurred, but usually it all just rots my brain and needs to be dismissed.

But for fuck’s sake Sara.

Another multiple choice comes up from it not mattering now, to feeling angry toward Maria, to the audacity of her friend letting this place keep her.

While any of the choices are a pretty good statement to make, I went with the “How could you have let this place keep you?” question because it seems like something Sara would actually say in this moment.

At this point, we transition into a flashback of why Maria didn’t go with us.

This is the point in the game where things can get a little upsetting for people.

Standing there in a dress–I assume for the graduation event–wondering if it looks good or not, we soon decide that our outfits don’t make any difference; the booking of tickets to get the hell out of dodge are what matters most. Unfortunately…Maria drops the bomb that she’s pregnant.

Not that that’s a terrible thing, even though pregnant women creep me out.

It’s unfortunate because since she’s pregnant with her boyfriend’s (Jakob’s) child, she’s not leaving to Stockholm with Sara as they both had planned.

What happens next is kind of a short, stiff argument about booking an appointment with a doctor in order to plan an abortion. Maria wants the baby and declines the appointment. We start in one how Maria’s Jesus-freak parents can’t just make her have a baby, despite it being Maria and Jakob’s plans to keep it.

Looking back, it’s a shitty thing to get upset over. Even if the trip is something that’s been planned long in advance, feelings matter and just because one person has different beliefs on what a town wants doesn’t mean we should disregard the feelings of the person we’re trying to force into another situation that they don’t want.

Because we don’t align with the same ideas of a religious town, our aggression towards it boils over and we leave the room to book our singular, at this point, ticket.

I want to just take a moment to appreciate the emotion that was portrayed in this little flashback. From the singular word, “pregnant” that was said back and forth to each other multiple times as if to let it sink through, then Sara’s frantic, “Okay, okay, we can deal with this, we’ll just go ahead and take care of it this way.” But before the pregnancy word-drop happened, we–as the viewer–knew something was up with Maria due to her stilted responses as well as the way she turned her head away when she answered questions.

And then Maria slouches over when we walk out, making her hair fall forward.

This isn’t a game with a lot of graphical details to it. It’s a pretty simplistic looking pixel game, so the fact that they’re able to make little gestures like that and have it look naturally suspicious is so satisfying when it comes to connecting with characters.

As we come out of the flashback, we mention the last text Maria sent us–which was stated at the beginning of the game–and how we can’t seem to get over it.

I’m on her level, honestly if someone sent me a “hey can we talk?” text and then ended up dying afterwards, I’d go out of my mind wondering what they wanted to talk about. We also mention that it doesn’t make sense for Maria to be out on that road, whatever that means.

Eventually we see Lina, who’s come to pay her respects to her little sister.

It’s not a very happy reunion between two people and you can kind of feel the ire that Lina has toward us, since we cared so much for Maria but didn’t even show up at her funeral. Also we state that we didn’t expect to see her, which is an atrocious statement to make, considering it’s the anniversary of Maria’s death and we’re standing beside her tombstone.

That statement leads to a conversational choice of “I didn’t mean it like that” to “I wasn’t expecting anyone out in the rain” to “you know that’s not what I meant.”

I kind of feel like two of those responses are exactly the same, but I guess they can be conveyed in different ways, depending on how you say them, so I’ll let that slide just this once. The rain choice is kind of a dumb excuse, and so I tried to be the nice one and chose the first option that just seemed less irritable.

The conversation borders on passive aggressive as Lina kind of just rubs it in our face that Maria missed us, and isn’t it just a shame that life gets so busy you can’t even check in on your friends. Like, damn girl, I get it, I’m a piece of shit.

The rest of the conversation sort of feels like filler content, but probably isn’t as some of it is important to take note of.

We do ask if she keeps in contact with Maria’s son and…I guess husband? I don’t really know, and I’m not sure if the game mentions it, but I would think with it being a religious town they had to have gotten married before Maria had her son. There’s a multiple choice regarding her husband’s name and you better fucking get it right, otherwise I can’t imagine the amount of hatred Lina will give you.

I didn’t want to put it to the test so I chose Jakob.

Yes, I’m a coward. Confirmed.

She states she’s been helping with the son and it’s a terrible age to lose a parent. Thank you ma’am can I have another berating observation from you? She asks what’s kept us busy and another choice comes up for copywriting, in charge of copy at our firm, or writing. I didn’t really see how any of those could’ve been the wrong answer or how they might’ve changed the next response.

I don’t think Lina really gave a damn either way, so we asked about the line on Maria’s stone. Apparently, Maria wrote poems and that line came from a cheerier one. We learn she didn’t give up writing, turned her room into a study, and was in someone named Gunnel’s writing group.

We ask what else she’d been up to and Lina responds with mothering and church, to which another multiple choice response gives us the options of, “I didn’t know she was religious,” to “I’m a little surprised by that” to “When did the God-botherers get her?”

I’m sorry, but the third response made me laugh just buy how much of it is such a bitch statement.

I decided to respond with surprise, to which Lina responded with, “I daresay there are lots of things you don’t know about what Maria’s life was like here after you left.” And on that note, we decided it was time to no longer provoke the hissing cat with words sharper than its claws.

We went ahead and walked away and decided it was time to solve the mystery of how Maria died.

This is where the game is really good at steering you to a specific conclusion, but the ending kind of slaps you in the face for assuming everything. We’re also kind of going to speed things up here and skip a lot of the filler content, because you really should take the time to play the game, as it’s really good for how short it is.

We meet Gunnel at the supermarket who was the leader of the writing group Maria was in. Here we learn that Maria wrote about death a lot. At the police station, we speak with Sten Nilsson who was first officer at the scene where Maria died. She was on the main road south to Stockholm, where we had moved to. For some reason she went off the road and over the cliff. In her room, we find a receipt for two bottles of vodka.

It’s noted that she hated vodka, so the fact that she bought some is another red flag, you could say, along with her dark writing.

Fun fact: Back when I used to write almost every day, it would always somehow feature some kind of abuse or a death that had happened. In a book I never finished, in fact, the main character was periodically harassed by visions of his dead, abusive drunk of a father while searching for his child that was no longer among the living.

Another line from a story I never wrote was of vampire children singing a song below a man who was hung and being drained of blood. It went a little like this, “Drip, drop, blood won’t clot, how many drips til their last drop,” and then they’d start counting as if they were jump-roping or something.

Just because we read and write dark things doesn’t mean there’s something wrong. But I will admit I am a little fuckin twisted.

All right, so back downstairs we talked to Jakob who mentions that Maria got two tickets to a hockey game for a father-son thing the night she died.

Next we returned to Elsa for her to say that she saw Maria coming out of the store being all sneaky with bags of alcohol.

Filip who used to be our teacher is outside the pub and mentions that they were all at Maria’s house the night she died. She invited them all over. And then Sten shows up with the news.

After adding all this information up, I’m sure you’ve come up with the same conclusion that Sara has regarding her friend’s death, and when you go back to the cemetery and speak with her sister, you’ve got two options as far as what you want to say. One is the mild version of an ending while the other is met with hostility. Either way, the very end of the game is the same. You walk out of town and sit on the same car you and Maria sat on while contemplating your future of leaving the town behind.

I won’t go into what you say to Lina, nor what she says to you either way, but it’s easy to believe that Maria might’ve committed suicide at this point.

Let’s go through the details.

First off, she wrote about death a lot.

A lot of people think that if someone writes about depressing things or writes about death and violence and abuse that there’s something going on behind closed doors, and that’s just not always the case. I grew up with a family that loves me and I wrote about death in one way or another all the time. Sure there were times I was depressed when I wrote, but really, it’s all about the ideas that came to me and the genres that I enjoyed.

Just because I wrote about a man who branded his son’s arms with lit cigarettes doesn’t mean it’s ever happened to me. Sometimes people just write just to vent, just to get something out of their head that they’ve been holding onto for too long. Some people just write about fucked up shit, y’know? Have you read any of Richard Laymon’s books? Or J.A. Konrath? Good lord!

Second, she bought two bottles of vodka.

This felt a little odd to me, because while I’m not an avid drinker myself, I don’t think it would take two bottles of vodka to get fucked up. I think it would only take one, and maybe not even a full one, which meant getting two had another meaning to it. Not for someone to find one bottle and one full if she did have plans to go kill herself, because again, that wouldn’t make much sense.

An empty bottle is a lot more telling than a full one.

And since the road she was one goes to Stockholm, where Sara was, then I can only assume it was for us. But that still leaves the question of why at this point.

Especially since she used to not like vodka in the past. BUT! You have to also remember that people do change and I think that goes the same with what people like and dislike and tolerate. Maybe if we liked vodka, then she would be getting one for both of us, but it’s never stated by Sara her own tastes on the stuff.

The fact that she was coming out of the store stealthily with alcohol I could kind of wave off, because in a town that probably frowns on that kind of thing, she might not have wanted certain people to find out. Especially Jakob, as we don’t exactly know if he’d be acceptable of that.

Third, she got two tickets for Jakob and their son to go to a hockey game for a father-son bonding event.

This…didn’t really vibe with everyone getting together at the house. Did they go to the event and then get back to the house by the time everyone was there? Because it would be super weird if she gave everyone instructions to be at her place at a certain time and none of the people who owned the house were even there. Aside from that, the hockey game could’ve been a way to get them out of her hair for a bit, such as using that time to buy the vodka, knowing they’d be out for a while.

And it would be a happy event for the both of them before they came home to a chilling outcome…which is a bit barbaric if you ask me.

Fourth, getting everyone together.

It’s basically the perfect setup to introduce something big to everyone at once. So if someone did want to go out with a bang, and not have the news spread like wildfire, it would be perfect to get everyone you know in one area in order for the news to be delivered all at once to the people you wanted it to get to, rather than leaving a note for someone to read, and you not knowing who that someone might be.

Or even if they’d actually get a chance to read it before finding out about what happened in the first place.

To end the assumptions and place everything together, after being separated from her friend Sara and writing about morbid things for however long, Maria got Jakob and her son out for a bit while she probably bought two bottles of vodka. She told everyone she wanted to know to get together at her place, probably some time after her family got back from the event. She drove out on a road that was apparently dangerous with a cliffside that would lead to Stockholm and ended up going over, ending with the officer telling everyone at the house.

Outside looking in, it all kind of makes sense. Especially when you’re still distraught over someone’s death and really just want to know the why of it.

This game points at the obvious conclusion so well while also leaving you wondering if it’s really the case, and while I won’t get into the endings spoilers, it’s not. It’ll still probably leave you suspicious about how it all ended, but…the mystery is closed by the end of the game and you’re left feeling pretty disheartened and upset over it all.

Overall…it’s a damn good game for how short it is, and it’s very emotional.

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All right, so that ends our playthrough review of the game How We Know We’re Alive.

Did you make it through all the way? I wonder how many people did. I tried to get like not long-winded, and I did add my own little thoughts here and there that kind of strayed from the script that I wrote for the review. I said a lot more than I had written and I don’t really apologize for that.

I said what I thought about the game and I thought the game was really good. Hopefully you think it’s really good too regarding this review.

I tried not to like have a ton of spoilers. I know I went through it pretty thoroughly in the first half, but toward the last portion of the game I kind of wanted to scrape a bunch of stuff out. That way if you want to play the game, you can see how things end up yourself.

Also this recording took two days to do so despite the fact at the beginning I said it’s a few days after Thanksgiving, it’s even longer after Thanksgiving now, after releasing this podcast episode.

Hey, I had a lot to say.

Hope I can kind of stick to this kind of style when reviewing other games. I know some of the games that I play are super short, so I’m not going to really have much to say on them, so I wouldn’t expect to see a whole bunch of one-hour podcast episodes. They are going to vary in time.

But I’ve talked your guys’ ear off right now.

I will let you go and end this episode, so goodbye everyone, thanks for listening, and don’t get in too much trouble when you say, Not Now Mom, I’m Gaming.