Keep the forest safe
Wintersdawn in the Deep is a free adventure video game wherein you must venture into a forest that is full of dangers. Developed by Western Deep, LLC, this 2D pixel indie game takes place in the world of Beyond the Western Deep, a free webcomic created by the developer. This game can be considered as the promotional material of the webcomic, that serves as a short foray into the lore of the story.
It all begins here
Beyond the Western Deep is a free all-ages fantasy webcomic series written by Alex Kain and illustrated by Rachel Bennett and Jerome Jacinto. It tells the story of the land of Dunia, wherein four kingdoms and their respective anthropomorphic races are constantly at odds with each other. You follow the adventures of Quinlan the Tamian scout and Dakkan the Lutren warrior, who must stop an oncoming war between two nations.
However, in Wintersdawn in the Deep, the storyline delves into the past instead—before the start of Quinlan’s journey in the webcomic. Here, he’s just a newly-promoted scout who’s having family problems. The annual Wintersdawn festival has come but he’s been tasked with going on his first-ever solo patrol throughout the Western Deep forest. Fortunately, he’s got his buddy Dakkan to keep him company but he’s got to do a good job keeping the forest safe.
The game plays out in a top-down fixed viewpoint, with classic point-and-click mechanics. Simply click to where you want to go, click on points of interest to interact with them, and drag items to combine them. The story progression is quite linear—with only the lack of a running mechanic dragging things out. The dialogue is witty and interesting, however, and really intrigues players to check out more of Quinlan’s story in the webcomic.
A good starting point
All in all, while Wintersdawn in the Deep can be completed in just under a few minutes, it’s still quite an engaging indie game. The controls are easy thanks to the menu’s tutorial and the immersive pixel art graphics can be nostalgic for fans of old point-and-click games. It’s only too bad that you can’t run to progress things faster but that would have likely made spotting things harder since interactive objects don’t immediately stand out.
