The exhausting, monotonous heat of the summer days was sweetened once again by the annual Steam sale, so Carl decided that a good mystery adventure game with a grim, but likeable main protagonist would be a worthy addition to his already monstrous collection of games.

Indeed, everything started just perfectly, with Carl's Marlowesque inner monologue on the long ride to a meeting with his new, wealthy client. Although bragging was not a defining trait of Carl's character, he had to admit that he made the perfect main protagonist for a survival/mystery adventure game situated in the middle of the Canadian wilderness.

The problems started when Carl encountered two game-breaking bugs in the first 30 minutes of play that forced him to restart the game several times. One particularly nasty bug that caused all translated text to disappear from the game was even reported to the developers in April, and they confirmed that it's on their todo list, but as of June 2017, it has not been fixed yet. Developers today, thought Carl, do they really think that they can build a faithful customer base by releasing poorly tested games?

When Carl approached his destination, he noticed wolves rummaging through some of the local trash. Wolves never dare to approach inhabited settlements, observed Carl's inner Marlowe. Drat, Carl thought, stopping his car on impulse. Could it be one of those games? But it was already too late. Carl soon found out that the whole area is devoid of human populace, and that he was trapped in a Unity walking simulator.

Well, at least the survival component will be hopefully up to par, Carl hoped. He has already found several survival necessities - pieces of wood, matches, duct tape, various hardware parts, beer, steaks, water bottles, cigarettes, and more. However, he soon discovered that the whole survival schtick is based on one simple trick - from time to time, you have to stay close to a fire. Fire is started with matches and logs, and thanks to local regulations, every fireplace came with an infinite pile of logs nearby. Starting fire outside of designated fireplaces was just unthinkable, and any survivalist worth his salt would rather freeze to death than do such an abhorent thing.

The other items were mostly irrelevant, except for few specific situations, like getting an item from a narrow hole. What could a survivalist do? He could try to poke the item out with a long stick, he could pour water in and hope it floated, he could enlarge the hole with a digging tool like that unpickable spade by the road or a crowbar. However, Carl soon found out that he could not. The only solution to the problem was apparently to tie a magnet to a wire. That, or die misearably in the deserted ghost town. At one time, Carl wanted to cook a nice juicy steak he found on some freezer, but he found out that it's not at all possible. Carl remembered his military training and decided to eat the thing raw, but even that was not possible. The only thing Carl could do with the food was to "throw" it, possibly to distract the omnipresent wolves that were the only living things around. A survivalist throwing meat around, Carl thought, amused. At least he could survive on a diet of beer, painkillers and cigarettes.

With those thoughts, Carl suddenly realized that he is probably thinking out loud some minor spoilers, but he was too tired, frustrated and angry to care anymore, so he just clenched his teeth and raised his imaginary middle finger towards his imaginary audience. At least he was fond of rummaging through other people's things, that's why he had became a detective after all. Drawers, cupboards, chests, folders, binders, and even an occassional safe, that was his forte. And he was in luck - all of the above, plus reading forgotten letters, journals and scribblings consisted of the majority of how he spent his time during this peculiar adventure. However, after a few hours, even the cute, folksy French yodeling that played over and over from the car radio, started to get on Carl's nerves, and with a grin, he remembered John Cleese losing his temper while visiting a certain cheese shop blessed with similar kind of musical ambience.

At one moment, Carl thought he found an exit from this hellish place, a road that would lead him back to civilization, but then a divine voice asked him in the Deus Ex Machina style: "Did you find all the steaks, all the matches, all the empty bottles? Did you rummage through all the drawers? Did you pilot the UFO to the moon and back?" No, admitted Carl, no, he did not. So back to the snow-covered hellhole with you, replied the invisible God-narrator, and Carl had to obey.

If I survive this, he thought, grinding his teeth with anger, my next job must take me to Caribbean, I will enlist on a ship and be a pirate in one of those endless, brainless Ubisoft open world games, because you can at least have a shootout or a swordfight there, besides much nicer weather, barrels of rum, and plentiful and willing wenches. Yahahahaaarrrgh!.

And with that final thought, we leave our valiant private eye hero, watching him as he slowly trudges through the endless waves of snow, until we finally lose sight of him...