You are a young woman named Kay. You don't know why you look this way, covered in gnarled, black tendrils. Your eyes are red. You amble around with a preternatural sense of loss. And you are lost. You, the character, in a game where the waters are murky, rumbling, and rainy and have flooded an entire city. "I'm still trying to piece it together," Kay says. "What is wrong with me. Where am I."

You, the player, are also lost—not exactly sure where you are, what mysteries you're meant to solve, and why the protagonist of this game looks like this.

This is Sea of Solitude, the newest game from Jo-Mei (an indie studio in Berlin), which releases today on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. You play as Kay, whose backstory is mysterious, and whose intense loneliness has transformed her physical appearance. It’s a gorgeous game, with much to love, but its dense, episodic narrative and repetitive gameplay occasionally obscure its core message. You begin the game sitting in a boat on troubled waters. You paddle your small dinghy towards the singular light source in the distance, the falling rain creating a pensive atmosphere. As the lighthouse appears, you're able to lower the water line—making it glassy and clear—and lighting the entire region. It is gorgeous.

You’re tasked with figuring out what happened to Kay—why she looks like this, what events in her past have inspired this transformation, and what lessons can be learned by pressing forward. To do so you traverse atmospheric seascapes and broken cities in a nearly empty environment filled with otherworldly creatures that the game refers to as "monsters." These monsters are often massive in scale, covered in black gnarls not dissimilar to yours. And as the narrative unravels, you learn they're each somehow connected to Kay—either as people in her life, or as surreal manifestations of emotions that can be interpreted in a more open-ended way.