Whenever I got to see my grandma she usually only ever talked about how women can do the work that men can do and vice versa. She was big on equality and she loved the zoo. It sucked that she lived on the other side of the country, and she passed away so early on during my life.

But I did get to experience a short time with a funny, wise-ass grandma.

This week I decided to take it slow again and play a game that has a lot to do with taking your mind off the stressful things and a little to do with penny bun picking. This week I played Lieve Oma.

Lieve Oma is a top-down 3D game from Florian Veltman. It was released in 2016, won a bunch of awards, is on Itch.io, and is only $3.

• 

• 

As noted above, it is penny bun season and your grandmother has brought the protagonist out to the forest to help her with collecting them. If you don’t know what penny buns are, they are super thick-looking edible mushrooms. It makes decent bread or risotto. Anyway, the player, being a child, is reluctant to help and stays quiet as her grandmother talks about life, Minecraft, and, most importantly, home life.

Homelife is quite difficult for the protagonist with moving away from friends and her dad, but grandma is there to reassure you through a metaphor:

“Ever since the forest fire years ago, they decided to actually take care of it nowadays… but with time and care, the forest became healthy again, and now people can hardly remember the way it looked like back then.”

• 

• 

The game, towards the end, gives us a glimpse of the future where the protagonist is older and alone picking mushrooms for her grandmother.

• 

• 

It’s a nice tale.

Lieve Oma is essentially a walking simulator, so just walk.

The music is primarily a small variation of Debussy’s Arabesque #1 by Timothee Goguely. It is a nice tune to walk to.

The game looks alright, it has nice colors.

Lieve Oma is a short experience, being only about forty minutes, but it has a lot of emotional weight to it. I cannot imagine the weight that divorce and moving have on a child. Taking time to just take a walk and forget about those stressful things is important to self-care.

Grandma is right.

I like Lieve Oma. I like that it was short, I like that it was $3 and I like that I could experience having a grandma again. It is reassuring to have someone there that has seen it all and can tell you that everything is going to be okay.

What are you waiting for? Play it, it is only $3.