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This week saw the release of Year Walk for Wii U, a game first released in 2012. Developed by Swedish studio Simogo, initially for iOS and later for PC, this definitive version has been handled by Welsh Wii U wizards Dakko Dakko - and has the power to stop you cold. This is not, as I first thought, just a great game. This is the game that finally made me understand what Nintendo thought the future looked like when it was designing Wii U. Year Walk is structured around the eponymous tradition in southern Swedish folklore, and you play a character going through it. The idea behind undertaking a Year Walk was to catch a vision of the future, and avoid disappearing yourself. The game's design comes to toy with the idea of the future, as well as luring you into fascinating digressions about the society behind such legends - and the folklore underlying Year Walk makes such an impression because of these icy glimpses of a vanished way of living. You instinctively understand why someone might want to see the future, if they lived in such a harsh world.
The twist in myths like this is often that a vision of the future, if granted, either drives one insane or acts as a curse in your own time. Beyond even that there's the possibility of deception - a mirage bending human desires to serve other ends. So who would be a prophet?
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