by Amr (@siegarettes)

• Nairi: Tower of Shirin
  
• Homebear Studio
  
• Hound Picked Games, Another Indie
  
• PC, Switch
  

Good hand drawn art always gets to me. Despite how impressive games look now, with all the variety of art styles, there’s a certain warmth to hand drawn art and the effort put into them that never fails to charm me. Nairi: Tower of Shirin is one of those charming entries, and it takes full advantage of that warmth with a strong storybook vibe.

Set in the desert town of Shirin, the game follows the titular character Nairi as she is whisked away from the comfort of her home in the rich district, captured in the desert, then returns to her home to uncover the secrets which await in Shirin’s mysterious tower. It’s a straightforward adventure, but it drew me in with adorable character designs and kept me around with smart pacing and good humor. 

Each background scene is lovingly rendered, and story transitions that would otherwise be handled with basic narration in other titles get their own unique art, unfolding like a storybook. I had a lot of fun watching the reactions each character would give me as I spoke to them, and even early on there were a lot of cute scenes with Nairi and her animal companions.

These are broken up by some simple navigation and puzzles. The way spaces connect sometimes gets confusing thanks to the changing perspectives on each shot, but the game doesn’t give you more than a few rooms to worry about at a time, and movement through them is pretty linear so I got to grips with what turns to make fast enough, even if I didn’t have an idea of the overall space. 

Puzzles are light challenges, with straightforward solutions that test your observation more than anything. The objects needed to rig a solution are often nearby or a short walk away, so there are no absurd treks to find obtuse answers. It gives you enough to challenge you to explore an area, without dragging the pace to a crawl.

It was also nice to see characters with Arabic names in a game. Sure, part of it was because of its mythical desert setting, but for the most part Nairi avoids the traps of the Oriental fantasy of the oasis city. Either way, it made me happy to see cute characters with my own name, and even one who had the same name as my brother. It’s not a common sight, so I’m glad Nairi had them without also attaching them to an ugly stereotype.

Nairi’s story eventually begins to unravel into a much grander tale, with a lost civilization, prophecies and encroaching calamity, but it never loses its intimate tale. It roots the loss of the past civilization in small vignettes, giving them a personal touch to ground the grander events occurring. 

It’s not elaborate, but its solid storytelling with likable characters, and it never loses sight of that. It’s a warm, storybook tale about a young girl, and its simple charms ensure that’s more than enough.