Arctic Awakening Review
GoldFire Studios’ narrative walking simulator will remind you of Firewatch.
Arctic Awakening. Credit: GoldFire Studios
Arctic Awakening from GoldFire Studios is a first-person narrative adventure set in the Alaskan wilderness in the near future. In terms of gameplay and style, I'm most reminded of Campo Santo's Firewatch, a comparison the game clearly invites. The story is compelling enough and split across five episodes, all included at release, totaling around 10 hours.
You play as Kai, a pilot with a traumatic military past. While flying a routine supply drop over Alaska, a mysterious storm tears your plane apart. You crash-land, separated from your co-pilot, Donovan, who's injured somewhere in the wilderness. The only things nearby are an oddly abandoned research facility and automated drones that ignore you entirely. All communication frequencies are jammed. You must survive freezing temperatures, find Donovan, and devise a plan to get rescued. Your only companion is Alfie, a court-mandated therapy bot observing you for your child custody case.
Arctic Awakening. Credit: GoldFire Studios
You slowly unravel the mystery of your surroundings as you explore, while dialogue between Kai and Alfie reveals flawed characters whose growth should be as interesting as the discoveries you make. The problem is the execution feels flat. The game warns upfront that your decisions will affect characters and story, but in my experience there's only one central choice that matters—the final one—and it's abundantly clear when it arrives. Everything else creates small dialogue variations at best, making the supposed branching feel hollow.
As Kai, you explore in first-person and solve straightforward puzzles. You interact with environmental objects, pick up items, and manage hunger and stress meters. Hunger forces you to eat periodically, while stress gets relieved through breathing exercises at cairns scattered throughout the world. These mechanics fit thematically but aren't executed well; there's never actual risk of starvation, so they become busywork you perform every 20 minutes. They should've been excluded entirely or relegated to specific story moments where they'd have real impact.
Arctic Awakening. Credit: GoldFire Studios
The 3D graphics use a realistic but cartoonishly textured style that gives everything a Pixar-film quality, particularly the vehicles, structures, and technology you discover. The visuals are decent if unremarkable, but the voice acting brings genuine life to the characters, with performances that mostly land even when the writing doesn't quite earn the emotional beats it's reaching for.
The game ran well on my Steam Deck at native resolution with low graphics settings. I encountered bugs that caused progression blockers, but restarting from checkpoints solved them. It didn’t happen frequently, but often enough to where I feel compelled to note the issue.
Arctic Awakening. Credit: GoldFire Studios
Arctic Awakening offers a solid narrative adventure with decent pacing and an intriguing mystery that kept me pushing forward. The survival mechanics feel tacked on, the choices don't matter as much as promised, and it never reaches the emotional heights of its inspirations. But if you enjoy games like Firewatch and can forgive some rough edges, there's an enjoyable experience here.
Arctic Awakening is available now on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Overall Score: 6/10
Played on: Steam Deck
