“The video game industry is so huge,” Wehle says, “but there’s an audience now for smaller, more heartfelt games.” The First Tree compares to other atmospheric indie games like like Journey, Gone Home, and Firewatch. Obviously, Wehle hopes gamers will buy and enjoy the game, which clocks in around 2 hours for only $7.99 via Steam, but he also wants The First Tree to inspire people that dream of making a game but lack the coding know-how to make it happen.

When Inverse caught up with Wehle shortly after The First Tree’s launch on September 14, he offered an in-depth perspective of his development process. The mood is tragic and grave, but the stylistic execution builds an engaging atmosphere. They talk about him reconnecting with an estranged father.

The colorful third-person experience is presented as a dream, and as you explore the beautiful wilderness through the transitioning seasons, you find relics that trigger conversations between a man and his wife. In The First Tree, you play as a fox mother looking for her cubs. When technical artist David Wehle posted about his new fox adventure game to the Video Games subreddit, he unknowingly struck Reddit gold with his headline: “After 2 years of work and no knowledge of code, I still launched my fox adventure game today, The First Tree!” The post has over 116,000 upvotes and an outpouring of enthusiastic comments about the beautiful game’s art style.

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