OPUS: Prism Peak

As I grow older, I become increasingly attached to certain things. I’m an avid collector of old video games (The Xbox 360 is retro now, yay!), little bits from my childhood, and more importantly, photos. I used to laugh at my partner wanting to capture everything in photo form, but now I get it. I’m also, like so many people, just tired. Tired of work, the world continually burning, and wanting a moment to reflect in peace. I have those moments … and I have my reviews. And I managed to review a wonderful little game all about reflection, burnout, and capturing those moments in life that pass us by, becoming memories we ourselves can’t fully trust.

OPUS: Prism Peak isn’t a “game” game, but a reflective experience about oneself.

Everything is just a memory, even the future

In OPUS: Prism Peak, we take on the role of Eugene, a man many of us can relate to. Arriving in middle age, he reflects upon his life and sees that not everything has panned out as he wished. Taking a keen interest in photography at a young age, Eugene once had high hopes for his life, hoping it would matter and provide a sense of worth to both himself and others. It also doesn’t help that he’s stuck in a rut after losing his business, feeling as though both time and self-worth are in short supply. Time, however, is in even shorter supply, and Eugene learns this in the harshest way possible when he crashes his car during a storm on the journey home.

Upon waking up, Eugene finds himself in a place unlike anywhere he has seen before, somewhere that feels eerily peaceful. Oddly enough, he reclaims a camera from his youth, thought long lost, and soon meets a young woman named Ren, who has seemingly lost her memory. All she knows is that she is driven to return to a place at the top of a mountain peak, and Eugene, armed with his camera, agrees to help her get there.

Essentially, we’re playing a midlife crisis adventure that harbours elements of Spirited Away and No Other Choice, featuring photography and themes many middle-aged people will immensely relate to. Play as a tired man in his 40s stumbling through a spirit world, using his camera to take snapshots of a place that feels like a hazy memory, while carrying enough emotional baggage to fill a Boeing 747.

Yay!

What we get is a visually striking interactive novel of sorts, where we explore a strange dream-like world, capturing points of interest in photo form while accompanying a lost soul across a monumental distance to a place of divine significance.

Capturing fleeting moments before they fade from memory

Now, I’m not familiar with the other OPUS games. I’ve seen the visual novels under the same banner featuring different stories and themes, and I’ve heard they’re pretty good. I’m not a huge fan of visual novels, but I did enjoy things such as The Silver Case. Prism Peak, however, takes a noticeably different approach from previous games and actually feels more like a traditional game in how you move, interact, and experience the world.

The game is visually beautiful, with a wonderful anime art style that captures a bright sense of creativity, imagination, and joy that many other games fail to achieve. The warm yet melancholic atmosphere made me feel completely at peace, while the calming sound design paints this dream-like environment as a place I would genuinely love to explore. The new approach of allowing players to fully explore fleshed-out 3D environments also feels like a bold step away from the typical visual novel structure.

Now, I did mention Spirited Away, and it goes without saying that there is a clear Ghibli and Shinkai influence in both the art style and world-building. Those inspirations are certainly present, but never feel overbearing or outright derivative. The world is wondrous, weird, and carries the sort of charm only someone like David Lynch could pull off. Basically, imagine David Lynch making a Ghibli film.

As for the narrative, there was a strong resonance with Eugene and his strange tale of reconnection and finding peace. The game’s tone is generally peaceful and slow, a very deliberate design choice that contrasts heavily with the constant noise and stress many of us feel in our own lives.

Every one of us experiences moments of failure, burnout, and disappointment at not achieving everything we once wanted, rather than celebrating what we have accomplished. There are also strong themes surrounding memory and preserving what we lose through something tangible like photography. OPUS: Prism Peak does a masterful job of collecting these relatable yet difficult themes and presenting them with such gravitas, care, and compassion that Eugene almost becomes our spiritual representation in video game form.

I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Eugene and Ren as they journeyed together through this strange world, alongside the weird and wonderful creatures they met along the way. While the trope of a gruff person meeting a hopeful companion is certainly a familiar one, it remains an immensely reliable narrative tool that works especially well when dealing with relatable topics such as burnout, acceptance, and failure. Plus, it’s refreshing to play a game where the lead is a gruff middle-aged man learning acceptance … just like me.

I will admit, however, that Prism Peak can occasionally feel a little pretentious when over-examining ideas past the point of relatability. Some of the symbolism becomes so obvious that I genuinely groaned a little, and that rarely happens. Thankfully, these moments are few and far between, as most of the game’s thematic core really works. But when a smaller moment of reflection suddenly becomes — dare I say it — a bit wanky, I did find myself slightly pulled out of the experience.

There aren’t many exciting incidents here, but rather a series of calm, reflective moments focused on finding snippets of beauty and meaning at a pace that suits the player. There are exciting moments for sure, but the story’s core message, at least for me, was about continuing to move forward while never losing sight of what surrounds you. Not to push acceptance aside in favour of longing for a better past, because new memories and meaningful moments can still happen in the present. Even if it simply means taking a photograph of a friend, a place, or something beautiful before it fades with time.

A snapshot of a dream

As for gameplay … remember when I said this isn’t a “game” game? Well, OPUS: Prism Peak may be an evolution of a visual novel, but it certainly isn’t a blockbuster action adventure, nor is it simply a humdrum walking simulator. It sits somewhere comfortably in between.

The gameplay is intentionally light, focusing on exploration and soaking in the dream-like environments, while photography acts as both a mechanic and a personal means of capturing what you find meaningful. There are still tasks and puzzles to resolve, from taking photos and burning them to create fleeting memories for characters you meet, to decoding language through photographing translated stones.

There’s a cosy gameplay core here that never feels overly taxing, yet still provides enough purpose through exploration and light deduction. It’s a soothing experience overall, though my only real gripe is that the pacing can occasionally become jarringly slow, almost slow for the sake of it.

I understand why this approach works. Look at the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, such as Stalker or Solaris, and you can see how soaking in beauty and atmosphere through a slow burn can be incredibly effective. OPUS: Prism Peak occasionally slows itself down in a similar way, but sometimes there simply isn’t enough there to absorb. Perhaps it’s just a gamer thing where, the moment we’re told to walk slowly, we immediately resist it.

It’s a little like Hades, where, after finishing a run, you return to the House of Hades and spend several minutes slowly walking through dialogue and downtime. If you let me run freely, I’d probably choose to walk naturally anyway, and Prism Peak occasionally creates that same feeling. My brain often went: “Okay … do I really have to keep slowly walking after already seeing this area?”

At times, it can feel like slowness mistaken for depth, but thankfully, the emotional sincerity and warmth carry the experience through its rougher patches.

Overall?

Last year I played a game called A Dream About Parking Lots, and strangely enough, I found myself thinking about it quite a lot while playing Prism Peak. A game about searching for a car across endless parking lots ended up delivering a surprisingly personal thematic message by the end, though one I imagine resonated with some people far more than others.

OPUS: Prism Peak, however, carries a message and tone that I think will connect with far more people, and that’s wonderful to see. Games are often about escapism, but they can also be about confronting reality and finding ways to move through it.

OPUS: Prism Peak is a beautiful, cosy game that gripped me on a narrative level, made me feel at home through its warm problem-solving and dream-like world, and ultimately felt like a Ghibli film directed by David Lynch. (If the publisher wishes to use that line for its accolades trailer, please do.) It’s a soulful journey about reflection, acceptance, and pushing through burnout by rediscovering what truly matters to you, while learning to appreciate what you still have in the present.

OPUS: Prism Peak is a journey I’ll remember for a very long time.

+++ Heartfelt and emotional story that's relatable
++ Visually striking and dream-like beauty
+ Cosy, wholesome, yet interesting gameplay

- Can mistake depth for tedious slowburn in small moments

A review code of OPUS: Prism Peak was kindly provided by the publisher