Sumire asks us to confront grief, without being consumed by it

Sumire is a choice-based walking sim developed by Game Tomo, currently on Steam and Nintendo Switch. You play as Sumi, a little girl decked out in all shades of purple, who finds a golden seed in her room after it was thrown into her window. That morning, the seed becomes a magical flying Flower, set to help Sumi achieve what she wants for the next 12 hours. Sumi and Flower make a deal: Flower will help Sumi see her dead grandmother one more time, as long as Sumi shows Flower a good day.

They start out the day with a list of things Sumi wants to achieve: Settle things with her old friend Chie, talk to her parents about how she feels about their recent separation, make a new friend, feel loved by her crush, visit a beautiful place, and see grandma one more time. You show Flower around the town, help animals and inanimate objects on your side quests, and get to know more about Sumi, and the power of the beautiful wisteria tree in the woods. 

With karma based choices, lots of dialogue, and money to spend on gifts and accessories for the missions you work on through Sumire — keeping players busy and engaged. It felt even better that I was able to run it through Steam on my Macbook Air! 

This game was an emotional, but very pleasant experience. Sumire is a game packed with messages, but one that stuck out to me is how to get “un-stuck” between the time of moving on and being stuck in the past. I remember when I started this game months ago, I was greeted by a cat in front of my home, and it asked both Sumi and Flower “is it ok to forget someone you love?” I was not expecting such an emotional question from a seemingly cute game. Being caught during a pretty vulnerable time in my life, I had to close my computer, and think on that question – but it only brought many more. Am I keeping myself from forgetting and moving on from those who used to mean so much to me… because I’m scared? Am I ready to actually just get on with myself? How do I deal with this?

I didn’t expect such an adorable virtual cat to fuck up my night like that.

As I played, Flower got to know more about Sumi, her past friendship with her current bully, the big crush she has on the neighborhood boy, and the struggle she has with making new friends. And while being structured on this fictional foundation, the choices I was making honestly felt like Flower itself was getting to know me and my insecurities. Flower was trying its best to have a great day with Sumi, but it felt like it was also giving me just that – it gave me pieces of advice to push myself out of my comfort zone and confront the ‘what ifs’ in my brain. This was all too relatable for me, being in a new country and terrified to leave the house because I didn’t know how to speak the language here.

There is this significant moment in the game where Sumi confronts her bullies, but it doesn’t really go as well as Sumi wanted it to. They were mean to her, and I felt so bad. Flower asks what I would like to do with them, and I picked the bad karma option because I was so over it. But as I saw Flower become this giant orb of evil, I immediately regretted it. My choices of being vindictive or moving on have repercussions, and Flower was immediately affected – something that it didn’t deserve. Moving on the way that I’ve learned growing up, with this angry sense of closure and having a “gotcha” moment isn’t right, and I had hurt this precious little buddy in the process of learning that.

I tried to fix the pieces up with the nice karma choices as I tried to find my former bullies and Flower, but by the end of that part of the game, you can see that Flower is exhausted. It’s lost petals, it’s visibly sad – I only had a single day with it, but I spent it being bad because I was selfish, and not giving Flower the best day it wanted. 

I spent the rest of the in-game day showing Flower everything and the joy of whatever side quests I could find.

Sumire was built on Sumi moving on from the grief of her late grandmother, and having Flower grant her wishes. You see her throughout this game confront her old friends, her crush, and even her absent father. She was able to seek the issues that had been growing in her head, and find a way to come to peace with the resolutions that were given to her. Was each one ideal? No, not at all. However, Flower showed her that even though  moments of our lives and people are constantly changing, those memories don’t go away, – it’s okay to hold on to those nice memories, but they shouldn’t hold you back from living your life.

So, to the cat that caused emotional turmoil when I began the game: Is it okay to forget the people I have loved? It’s okay to not forget and still love them – however, there will be times I’ll have to continue my life without them. And loving them while living my own separate life is okay too.

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