somethingstrangeinpavalonmeadow

[somethingstrangeinpavalonmeadow]

"Pavalon Meadow" 2025 remake promotional cover.

Illust. CHARMMOO

[somethingstrangeinpavalonmeadow]

MAY 6 1989

My family is of the elven faith, heavily so. She knew this. My dad knowing what we had done would probably make him very angry.

[somethingstrangeinpavalonmeadow]

www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/pavalonmeadow/review.html

6.2 - Fair

Something Strange in Pavalon Meadow is an unbearably tense modern fairy-tale with aesthetics reminiscent of Japanese horror games such as Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and Ringu. It’s packed with beautifully filthy (and just plain beautiful) environments and presents an intriguing mystery.

Unfortunately, its clunky controls, un-intuitive side quests, and glaring bugs make it nigh unplayable.

There’s nothing standing there, right…?

When picturing fantasy elves, most people would imagine a slim, beautiful character with flowing blonde hair and a crown weaved from thin wisps of gold. You’re probably conjuring images of long white robes, glittering chalices, and tall, ethereal beauties.

You’d be better off looking for those guys somewhere around Middle Earth. You won’t find them in the nauseating world of Pavalon Meadow.

RealYou’s Something Strange in Pavalon Meadow offers a modern, unglamorous spin on the typical fairy tale setting. Lush forests and magical kingdoms are juxtapositioned with ramshackle homes and run-down intersections. Here, fairies and satyrs are just as likely to haunt old corner stores (the kind that have bars over their windows) as a glittering wishing pool. Sure, you do eventually venture out of the titular Pavalon Meadow, but even the affluent districts within later areas are permeated with a layer of grime and age. The visuals are without a doubt Pavalon Meadow’s greatest strength.

The game begins with an eerie still of its two protagonists: Anxious shut-in Riley, and plucky witch Yevine. Despite both characters’ presence, only Riley can be selected for now. With Yevine being unlocked later, we’ll be sticking with the former for consistency’s sake.

Our two unlucky heroes.

As Riley, you learn that your uncle has gone missing. An eerie phone call implies that it’s more than the average errand-run. You’ll spend your first hour or so learning the ropes via requests doled out by your neighbors. This is the first big issue: This tutorial is agonizingly long. Even the most basic tasks– I’m talking about a simple sprint, people– have a dedicated quest meant to teach them to players. A word of advice, RealYou: Gamers don’t need their hands held. Most of us can figure out which button makes our character jump!

The afternoon is stuffed with so many chores that I began to wonder if this was truly a horror game. After locating a dog belonging to one of Riley’s older relatives, right as I’d reached the end of my patience with the lengthy tutorial, the park was suddenly bathed in orange– the sun was beginning to go down. Heading back into my own trailer, I couldn’t help but notice how quickly the sun was sinking. Then, Riley’s mother asked him to head down to the store on one more errand.

It was dark out. The intro was over. The real game was finally kicking off.

If the afternoon felt like it was stretching itself out for way too long, the night felt even longer. In fact, that very well may have been the case: the game operates on a constant clock, but said clock was pretty inconsistent. In fact, I’m fairly certain it was randomized entirely! As you’ll soon come to understand, it’s hard to say whether it’s due to a coding error, or if it’s intentional. At any rate, the swap could be considered a more frequent, lower-stakes version of Silent Hill’s infamous otherworldly transformation. NPCs and enemies have their own schedules and rotate out depending on the time of day. We’ll touch on that later.

After cautiously roaming the dead silent street for a few minutes, we are next introduced to arguably the most important mechanic in the game. Dungeons and Dragons nerds will be familiar with the “darkvision” ability that many of its supernatural races possess, including elves. It’s just what it sounds like; the power to see clear as day in the dark. Sounds like the quickest way to kill any tension in a horror scenario, doesn’t it? Keeping things dark and stormy is taught in Building Tension 101.

Oh, that’s not ominous.

Well, there’s a catch to this too-good-to-be-true ability. I had mentioned that an elf like Riley can see in the dark. But we aren’t elves. That’s right: in an admittedly unique twist, the characters are able to perceive things that the players themselves cannot. This is used surprisingly well – these otherwise pace-halting sequences don’t occur so often that they become annoying and they also aren’t so sparse that they feel pointless. While we’re discussing gameplay, however, there’s a pretty massive elephant in the room that desperately needs addressing.

The controls!

Many old survival horror games are rather infamous for their iconic “tank” controls. They’re clunky, yes, but they can be adjusted to with time. I can’t say the same for Pavalon Meadow. Ostensibly it plays just like any current-gen, over-the-shoulder horror joint. But controlling Riley? The more accurate word for it is “puppeteering”. For some ungodly reason, there is a noticeable delay when pushing him in any direction, as if he’s connected to a string. It can be immensely frustrating when dying to a group of enemies because he didn’t want to respond to your inputs quickly enough. At first, I wondered if my TV or my console might be the cause of the input lag, but trying it out on my backup setup yielded the same results. Gunplay is just as difficult, but the game implies that Riley isn’t very experienced with firearms, so I can forgive this a little more. In fact, the shaky aim and harsh recoil noticeably improved as the game progressed, meaning that this feature is, I think, intentional. I can’t say whether the same is true when it comes to the movement, but either way it’s seriously going to affect players’ enjoyment of the game.

While traversing the area, however much Riley fights you on it, you’ll want to note the various NPCs floating around each area during both day and night. Speaking with and assisting as many of your neighbors as possible, while not vital to unraveling the central mystery, can make all the difference when it comes to surviving upcoming enemy encounters. About halfway through your adventure, the difficulty spike is sudden and intense. If you haven’t been bothering to upgrade your arsenal, you’re going to feel it. You’ll want to make use of the helpful items you receive in return for completing side quests before you miss their window. Skipping out on the sidework won’t make the game impossible per se, but it gets pretty darn close.

Vital as they are, far too many of these chores travel down the “high risk, low reward” route. If you’re only in this for the main story, or perhaps you simply don’t care about these people’s problems (you monster!), fulfilling some of these requests straight up isn’t worth it.

This had better be good.

Let’s examine one of these detours to illustrate what I mean. One of the many NPCs in need of assistance is Riley’s neighbor, a fairy named Lanmei. She wanders the trailer park all afternoon and the forest at night offering useful healing spells. Speak with her every day and she’ll eventually mention missing a friend who suddenly moved away. Seems simple, right? Just find another fairy, report back to your neighbor, collect your reward, and move onto the next good deed. If only things were that simple! Not only are you given absolutely no hint as to where to look– or even what the boy looks like– but you may also be caught off-guard by the hidden time limit. Yes, nearly every quest has a limited window to complete. It’s possible to fail quests before even discovering them, and some characters can face consequences of varying severity. The poor girl’s fate upon failure is particularly disturbing. Guess how I found that out?

One reloaded save later I was led nearly as far from the park as you can get, to what might just be the most difficult area in the game. It’s a mansion, and its surroundings are swarming with some of Pavalon Meadow’s toughest baddies. The awkward puppet-like controls are more noticeable than ever as you try to guide your gangly elf through throngs of monsters and hostile NPCs that were all blessed with eagle eyes. The oft-uncooperative stealth mechanic made moving from room to room even more of a slog. And the worst part? Assuming you don’t give up before sneaking into the boy’s room, receiving his memento for Lanmei, sneaking back out, and traveling all the way back to the park, your reward for all that trouble is laughable: A few high potions and a couple thousand gold (An amount that won’t get you much in this world).

This sadly isn’t anywhere near the only example of the game’s lackluster side dishes, but it was one of the most frustrating. I don’t need things to be a cakewalk, but this would have been much more doable if players had been given more direction, and if the reward was proportional to the herculean effort it took to complete it. I need more than the sense of a job well done to make my work feel worthwhile!

Hmm...

Rushed side quests aren’t Pavalon Meadow’s only big problem. Throughout the entire game, beautifully rendered models suffer from severe clipping, especially long hair. Too many times, I was taken out of a frightening moment upon noticing Riley’s hair poking out of his back like angry little teeth, and Yevine’s long hair was almost always sticking through her midsection like an apron. Aside from the visual complaints, I encountered some pretty glaring bugs fairly often. Honestly, it had me wondering if there was any kind of quality control at RealYou. The most annoying of all was a consistent crash when traveling between areas too fast, a side-effect of mashing the X button while waiting for Riley to slowly careen into the door, causing me to desperately wish for some sort of quicksave button.

Most bizarrely, I would occasionally encounter an unnamed elf lurking in particularly dark corners. At first, I assumed he was another one of Riley’s hallucinations (it’s a long story) or maybe a rare NPC encounter. But he was impossible to interact with and not a single other character mentioned anyone like him. He’d pop up in just about any area, even during the day, but whatever it seemed to be leading up to never came to fruition. It seemed to me that he was part of a scrapped story line. I also wondered if I was simply overthinking a creepy easter egg, aside from the fact that his presence really messed up the FPS and would occasionally even cause some textures to frankly freak out. Honestly, with the slipshod presentation, the possibilities are endless.

Sloppy coding, to be sure, but it’ll certainly make a great urban legend someday. Maybe the kiddies fifteen years from now will be swearing that the mysterious elf NPC was appearing in their other games?

I want to love Pavalon Meadow. Its opening captivated me right away, the darkvision mechanic is delightfully stressful, and the beauty of its environments cannot be overstated. There are so many nooks and crannies that I left out, not only as a surprise for future players, but to keep this review from getting any longer than it already is. On the other hand, it seems that RealYou is putting too much of their focus on the glossy exterior. If you begin to to dig into the meat of it, not even very deeply, it’s clear that there’s still lots of work to do. As of writing, the negatives outweigh the positives in a big way. RealYou clearly hoped to invoke Grimm’s fairy tales held up in a modern light, but unfortunately, it just isn’t fun.

Something Strange in Pavalon Meadow is set to release this holiday season.

(written by @dbdonryo, 'lanmei'/ringabell the fairy belonging to her as well)

[somethingstrangeinpavalonmeadow]

SAVE1 - PLAYTIME 00:12:46

“Riley, open this fuckin’ door!”

There might have been a warning before that one, but Riley had been too occupied with his walkman to have heard it. “Whaaaat,” he whined, ripping his headphones off and casting aside his print blanket.

He cracked the door for his persistent mother. Having been in his room staring into space all day, Riley was only made aware of the passage of time when the brightness of the hallway light forced him to squint. Right, it was dark out already. Kathy-- Riley’s mother-- It was difficult for them to talk during the day, and he figured that was because she was busy with her other kids.

He wasn’t the only one subjected to a sensory shock, Kathy simultaneously scrunching her face up when met with the smells leaking from his room. “Grown fuckin’ man,” She grumbled, “There better not be something rotting in there.”

“There isn’t,” He responded with a sharp exhale, dragging a hand down his face and holding it there. Riley was certain that his mom was smelling him, not his room; His new hormones made it so he had shorter windows of time before he needed a shower. 

Pale skin covered in dry patches, long black hair slick with grease at the roots, chapped lips, dark circles--Well, not all of that could be attributed to hormones. Riley just wanted something to blame in his constant battle with looking or smelling good. However, having no reason to look or smell good for anyone, really, he found it difficult to bother. For a split second, he glanced over at the syringes atop his old boombox on the carpet.

Or, maybe his mother really was just smelling something rotten. He had a lot of dirty dishes in there. “What do you need, Ma?”

 “Jeff ain’t pickin’ up the phone. You try and call him, he’s probably pissed at me, or something.” She took that tone Riley was familiar with, the one where she would pretend she was being inconvenienced, when really she was just concerned. “...He owes me money.”

Riley groaned, leaning his forehead on the top of the door frame. “Now?”

“Why not?” Kathy reached up to flick the tip of his long ear. “Yes, now!”

“Ohhh my god,” he closed the door again, “Gimme a second-- I need pants.”

Kathy groaned in return. Kathis Whispertree was a plucky woman, standing a whole foot shorter than Riley, and always blinding him with some tacky, colorful outfit-- Complete with her naturally pin-straight blonde hair done up with rollers then teased out until it looked like a fine yellow mist. He wasn’t too fashionable himself, and he tried to be nice when he could, so he never said anything about it. Not even when she explicitly asked his opinion. 

If there was any time where he thought positively about his mother at all, it was difficult to convey.

Difficult… Difficult…

Change difficulty to Easy?

You cannot raise the difficulty again once it has been lowered.

He was getting distracted, he thought, moving to the trailer’s narrow hallway. The sound of running water indicated that Kathy had gone to wash the dishes instead, so maybe she’d forget about what she asked Riley, and he’d get away with just slinking back into his room. Like he’d be so lucky.

It was either calling his uncle Jephore now, or getting chewed out later. Riley decided to just get it over with.

The truth was that Riley was a little concerned, too, just as guilty of obscuring it in complaint as his mother was. He loved Jephore dearly, he was one of the people who practically raised him, aside from his parents. And he relied on him for most advice. He’d always say, mostly in heated arguments with his mother, “If all the Whispertrees were hangin’ off the side of a cliff, I’d go get uncle Jeff first.”

But in the Whispertree family, it was easier to pretend you didn’t actually care about anyone else. Riley didn’t know where the behavior came from, he assumed it had something to do with how they were all farmers in Kirova at some point. The tradition was to have as many kids as you could, then refuse to love any of them properly, because half of them were going to die to the plague, or the famine, or the evil sorceress who steals children. Whatever scary story was appropriate for the lesson being dealt at the time.

Unfortunately, alongside the old potions and cantrips, they now had tylenol, and IV drips. Riley was taught that most things in a hospital were worldly contraptions, the result of the short-lived’s greed. ‘They want what we elven have too desperately, and they will be punished,’ his aunt had said to him once. Yet, there he sat in the ER with his head in your lap for hours every single time he ran a high fever.

So, with the dark magic of modern medicine, every Whispertree ended up with a disproportionate number of children they couldn’t possibly love equally.

Riley shook his head, picked up the phone, and dialed.

A few rings. Nothing.

Swallowing his pride, Riley decided to be annoying. What always made him get out of bed and answer the phone when his mother wasn’t home was having it ring so many times he just couldn’t stand it anymore. He dialed a few more times, then a few more after that.

The distinct click of someone picking up got him to focus again. He knew it would work.

“Yo, uncle Jeff, my mom was--”

“Who is this?” The voice on the other end was stern, and deep, and didn’t have his uncle’s distinct Kirovan accent.

Riley swallowed. “It’s Riley?”

“Address?”

“Uhh…”

“Tell me, now.”

“Pavalon Meadow trailer park, unit 43, Anchorage Bay?” Riley’s heart raced, and his hands shook.

The sudden disconnect tone stung violent in his ear.

[somethingstrangeinpavalonmeadow]

MAY 7 1989

my mom talked about me when she thought i couldn’t hear. 

she said it was annoying that my long hair falls out all over the house. 

[somethingstrangeinpavalonmeadow]

SAVE1 - PLAYTIME 00:00:00

An elf boy sat on the roof of his mother’s trailer. The breeze tickled the sparse hair on his legs as they dangled over the ledge. It was the night of a relative’s century solstice, something he should have been celebrating in the yard with the rest of the residents of the trailer park. This young elf had other things to worry about, more important things, he swore to himself under his breath. Scribbling sparse ideas on a steno pad, his focus didn’t waiver as the stench of firework and barbecue smoke filled his lungs.

“evil traiter,

generater,

player, hater,”

It all seemed so clever to him at the time.

At thirteen, nowhere near his own century solstice, he was a sight to behold. Scrawny, yet tall to the point of overgrowth, even for an elf. While barely being considered mature to humans, thirteen was literal infancy to elves-- It was hard for him to be considered as much more than a nuisance by anyone around him. Someone who could barely even think for himself, someone who, though considered unfortunate in this culture, needed to be taken care of.

“Ow!” His shrill voice rang in quick reaction to a strike to the back of his head. “What did ‘ya do that for?!” He didn’t get an answer, opting to follow the movements of the perpetrator with the tip of his scrunched, red nose.

“I meant to flick you! I think I moved my arm too fast--” You could barely contain your laughter. “Sorry, Riles.”

“Like that’d be any better.” The boy pawed his surroundings, realizing how cold the paneling of the trailer’s roof had gotten in the night air of late spring. “Great. Y’made me drop my pencil down into the yard.” Your lips tightened into an awkward smile. “Maybe that was the plan. I reckon you go spend some time with auntie Mandy.”

Riley pulled his knees to his chest, unmoving afterward, leaving the query open.

“...Right. I take that as a ‘no’. You want me to bring you up some ribs, at least?”

“Mm.”

[somethingstrangeinpavalonmeadow]

MAY 3 1989

what a shitty thing your brain could choose to remind you of someone you loved, 

but i still catch myself smelling slim-jims at the grocery store sometimes.