There is absolutely no instruction or hand-holding as to what to do next, but the game is designed to help the player instinctively figure out simple puzzles to advance to the next level. The story progresses as the fox runs through vast and beautifully rendered seasonal landscapes and uncovers artifacts (literally by digging them up) and picks up star-like objects that lie along her path. In The First Tree, the player takes on the role of a Mother fox searching for her 3 kits, who have been carried off by a wolf. This is one reason the story and character expression in The First Tree are so relevant and poignantly easy to believe. Wehle also voiced the main narrator, which is fitting because, admittedly, the experiences of the main character are real events from the developer’s life. He used the Unity engine, which allows a developer to create the game while the engine does all of the behind-the-scenes heavy programming work. It’s very interesting to note that David Wehle designed and created this game by himself, in 2 years, with no programming knowledge. These games seek to create an engaging, emotional play experience that centers around three basic elements: A carefully crafted unfolding of a heartfelt, tragic or grave narrative, an antagonist-free gameplay model (nothing to defeat or be defeated by), and a breathtaking and immersive graphical environment.
In the last few years, a genre of gameplay has begun to evolve that I like to refer to as “Emotional Adventure.” The First Tree, and other games like Gone Home, Tacoma, What Remains of Edith Finch and Firewatch, are examples of this genre. Wehle also voiced the narration of the main character and did all the coding in the Unity engine, with no previous knowledge of programming.
The First Tree is a 3rd person exploration game published by David Wehle in 2017 for PC, Playstation, Xbox and recently released for the Nintendo Switch.
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