Warning: this article assumes you have finished Rime. If you haven't, you should! It's only at the end you understand something very important about the game, which makes it very special - Rime is much more than the serene Mediterranean adventure it seems. If that sounds like a spoiler to you, look away, but please come back again when you're ready for more.
On a porch warmed by the Mediterranean sun, Raúl Rubio Munárriz, creative director of Rime, tells me the moment which changed his life forever. "It's pretty stupid," he says. "One day I nearly drowned."
He was dating a girl who wanted to swim off the coast of Spain and, eager to impress her, he agreed. And so they started swimming, and swimming and swimming, into the sea. Soon they were one kilometre out, but Rubio was out of his depth. "We are very far," he called above the water, his body getting tired. "We should go back." But the girl was unfazed. "Oh come on," she answered. "Let's reach that buoy and then go back."