Developer: GoodbyeWorld Games
Publisher: Skybound Games
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Before Your Eyes – Review
Some games simply excel in a certain aspect. Some are just beautiful, others have an original soundtrack that will haunt you for years. Sometimes this is all a game has to offer, and rarely do you find something that takes your breath away. Before Your Eyes is one of those rare, breath-taking games. It really excels in storytelling but has a lot more to offer.
Story
You are dead. Your soul is fished from the river of the dead by a wolf-like ferryman, who then starts questioning you about your life. Before Your Eyes then takes you on an emotional journey of your own life. From whenever you were a small kid to wherever your life brought you, it’s the story of you. Each time you blink (when the game is open for blinking reactions) you jump to the next part of your life, discovering more and more of your life up until the point you died. Ladies and gentlemen, a fair warning, this is a story where grown men cry. This is such an engaging emotional, well-written story with some small branching choices, that it’s worth your money without a doubt. It flows seamlessly with smart ways of storytelling and details that you want to make put in the effort to know.
Graphics
Before your eyes has a very colorful, stylized type of graphics going on. This means the game feels a bit like an interactive animated movie. While some of the character models and certain animations aren’t top-notch, they do all feel very relatable. Every scene also has plenty of carefully constructed detail going on when looking around. On top of that, the way the graphics are presented by more than often hiding something out of sight, or actually implement more abstract pieces to represent i.e. sickness works really well.
Sound
There’s a lot of music and voice-overs included in Before Your Eyes, and they all add to an already very good game. From the voices of prominent characters to in-game music that’s relevant to the story, to the actual ending credits music, it all feels perfectly polished for the experience and handled with care. It exclaims the fragility of this game and the story it portrays. Professional, taken care of, original and creative, are the best way to describe the soundscape.
Gameplay
Before Your Eyes is a story-driven experience with an experimental touch. You get to use an everyday motion; blinking, as part of your controls. Right of the bat, the interesting fact bout the game is that it actually makes you try to control your blinking to make sure you get all pieces of the story. If there’s no interaction possible, it’s safe to blink as much as you want. Other times, there are directed objectives to look and blink at. When there’s a metronome visible on screen, it means that when you blink you will move on to the next scene. The latter means that as soon as you blink, the moment will pass and you will be in the next one. It’s almost like a literal translation of “In the blink of an eye” and a great reminder of how fleeting life is. While controlling your blinking might feel inconvenient, it gets the point across great. Every now and then there are even some small mini-games that allow for some blinking challenges.
The thing is, you probably can’t not blink for all complete scenes unless you are superhuman or cheat a bit (or turn off the blinking mechanic option). This way, perhaps some parts of the scenes go missing, which might feel bad because you actually wanted to know what a certain picture or piece of the story was about. Sometimes it might feel like a good idea to postpone your blinking, other times it doesn’t feel very vital. How good a scene feels to be in will probably decide how hard you will try to stay there. That’s why in many ways, the blinking mechanic contains messages about life that are preferably added to the core “movie” or “visual novel” that Before Your Eyes is, rather than playing without the mechanic. The game is a great little story to run through, and the inventively added mechanics are a well-crafted experiment that actually adds something original, where other games just rinse and repeat forever.
Conclusion
We can greatly value the story as well as the graphical and musical qualities that Before Your Eyes is willing to share. The gameplay really feels like it’s adding something with the original blinking mechanics and that’s why, looking at comparable story-driven experimental games, Before Your Eyes is a great game. Even with the game’s shtick turned off, the game still depicts a great story. Nonetheless, we advise you to at least give the original mechanics a try first to understand the game’s deeper meaning.
Before Your Eyes - Review,
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