Gibbon: Beyond the Trees

I went in expecting a mobile port dressed up for Steam, and I came out sitting quietly at my desk for a few minutes after the credits. That does not happen often. Broken Rules, the Vienna-based studio behind Old Man's Journey, built this thing over three years alongside Southeast Asian locals and environmental experts, and that collaboration is legible in every brushstroke. The world shifts from durian-dotted canopy to scorched logging sites to palm oil factories without a single word of dialogue, letting the changing palette do all the narrative heavy lifting. It is one of the tidiest pieces of environmental storytelling in recent indie history, and the fact that it fits inside a single sitting makes it hit harder, not lighter. The core mechanic is brachiation, which is the actual biomechanical term for how gibbons swing. One shoulder button swings you branch to branch, the other lets you run and grind along surfaces. Time your release at the apex of a swing and you get air. Catch enough air and you can backflip, which rewards a clean landing with a speed boost. Later chapters introduce a partner-launch move where two gibbons link hands mid-air and fling each other forward, and that moment alone is worth the admission. The traversal system is genuinely expressive: you can hug the canopy above, weave through mid-level branches, or drop low through human settlements depending on how confident you feel. What some critics call repetition, I read as intentional rhythm-building. The game is coaxing you into a flow state before it pulls the floor out from under you. The three modes deserve a mention. Story mode spans roughly an hour across ten chapters and strips out all score, timer, and collectible pressure so nothing interrupts the narrative. Liberation mode is a procedurally generated endless runner where you play as Lilac, the family's blue-hued offspring, freeing caged birds as you go. A daily run mode was added post-launch, giving a leaderboard-chasing option for players who want something to return to. The PC version runs cleanly, no performance complaints worth flagging, which is a relief given that the Switch port took real criticism for stuttering during busy scenes. The weaknesses are real and worth naming. The story mode is short enough that players looking for mechanical depth will feel shortchanged. Swinging is fundamentally a two-button system, and outside of the partner-launch and the backflip boost there is not much complexity added over those ten chapters. A subset of reviewers found the repetition genuinely dulling before the finale arrives. If you need a skill ceiling or build variety, this is not that game. If you need progression systems or dialogue, also not that game. What it is, precisely, is a focused, handcrafted argument that a small team can pack genuine emotional weight into a form as simple as hold-and-release. Composer Andrew Rohrmann (scntfc) wrote a score built around tuned percussion and orchestral swells that locks into the movement in a way that is hard to explain without just playing it. The soundscape underneath it, gibbon calls and forest ambience bleeding into industrial noise, completes the picture. This one is for players who respected what Flower and Journey did on consoles and want that sensibility on PC, or anyone who watched a deforestation documentary once and thought: I wish I could feel that, not just observe it. Go in knowing the runtime. Respect the runtime. It knows when to end.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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