What of Rime's title? It's signaling to Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, of course, another tale of seaborne calamity. But it's also making reference to a less known form of the word: "to make clear or vacant, to remove or take away." Something ceremonial lies behind the game's maneuvers and oblique incantations, a rite of sorts. Its final moments are commensurately heartbreaking but also bracing. They don't resolve the game's shortcomings — in games the journey must by definition upstage the destination — but the ending is beautifully handled, cleverly connected to the undertaking, and almost worth the price.
