In Closer to the distanceis my first impulse to comfort Conny. She has just lost her sister Angie in a tragic accident – a few hours after a heated argument with her mother Pia. While Pia was lamenting her daughter’s terrible life choices, Angie took her last breath. I can only order the teenager Conny to hug her parents, write in her diary and spend time with her friends.
As the days after Angie’s death pass – at first agonizingly slowly, then so quickly that I’m afraid I won’t be able to get everything done in the days before the funeral – I take control of more and more of the small town of Yesterby, with its 14 residents. I learn that Angie’s father, Axel, spends hours tending his flock of sheep, avoiding the tensions at home. I try desperately to get Zek, Angie’s boyfriend, to open up to his father, who drinks too much. I take control of Galya – Pia’s best friend and Yesterby’s only doctor – and go to work, helping Pia with the laundry and comforting her through the pain of sleepless nights.
In between playing, I take a break every few minutes to shed a few tears, have a little cry, or text a loved one to tell them I love them. The game keeps me busy even when I’m not playing it. I’m still processing the death of my husband’s grandmother, who was like a second parent to him and another grandparent to me, who passed away earlier this summer.
Closer to the distancedeveloped by Osmotic Studios and published by Skybound Games, was released on August 2 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. I dove right in—I love life sims. I played nonstop for about a week, driven to keep playing until the next deadline: Angie’s funeral. I really wanted to help the town grieve and prepare to say goodbye, which is often the role I take on in real life when death enters my orbit.
The voice acting is wonderful, and characters like Conny (voiced by Coco Lefkow) portray exhaustion and pain despite the game’s relatively short dialogue. The art style is bathed in a muted tone that reflects the way grief feels—things that should be bright and shiny are gray and dull. Gameplay is most similar to The Sims, with the player controlling multiple characters at once. Players choose locations or people for the characters to talk to, and once they arrive, begin activities like making dinner. Sometimes your choices trigger cutscenes that pause the rest of the game until you focus on the characters in the cutscene. This keeps the timeline from getting too chaotic while you juggle a town full of grieving adults and children.
Each character – playable and non-playable – has a sort of dashboard that displays their needs and wants. Conny, for example, craves connection. River, the daughter of the town’s resident capitalist and Angie’s partner on an urban renewal project, wants to be perceived as helpful and intelligent. These dashboards point to a truth about death and grief: Each person affected by the death of a loved one needs different things to carry on. Not all of these things are healthy. Angie’s boyfriend craves relaxation, and unless he’s ordered to do something, he’ll sit on his couch all day watching TV as his need for connection fades.
Closer to the distance is beautifully written and tells a heartbreaking story – but not without reason. But I can’t bring myself to finish the game.
After a few weeks of playing, the sense of grief the game conveyed became palpably real to me. When Angie’s funeral was over, I didn’t know what else to do. I lost all motivation to continue processing her death, so to speak, and the thought of keeping the city running was exhausting. I had learned so much about how important Angie was to the city—keeping River’s ambitions in check so her urban renewal project didn’t become a gentrification project, for example—and the more I learned about her influence, the less realistic it seemed to keep everyone healthy and happy.
I couldn’t stop Angie’s boyfriend from angrily wanting to move out of town. He was depressed because “there was nothing left for him” in Yesterby and angry about his father’s alcoholism. I inadvertently neglected Eli, River’s younger brother, who didn’t understand why all the adults in his life were so desperate. And in real life, I had a desire to move on, to push the difficulties aside and focus on things that didn’t constantly remind me of my grief.
Closer to the distance is so good at recreating grief that I couldn’t keep playing. It took me several weeks to even extol its virtues, let alone continue playing the game itself, because its theme is so truthful to the life experience of grief. And that’s no bad thing—in fact, I think it’s one of the most impressive and profound parts of the game. Because it reminds me that grief doesn’t come in a series. I’ll probably return to the game in a few weeks to catch up with Yesterby when I’ve further processed the deaths in my real life and in the game. It will probably continue to teach me things about how to support others during difficult times. I expect it to bring me to thoughtful, melancholy tears again, both while I’m playing it and when it seeps into my memory as grief becomes a part of my everyday life again.