Before Your Eyes

‘Before Your Eyes’ is an interactive, experiential story about a soul in the afterlife. It’s full of surprises and pathos, and one that I won’t spoil here. Aside from a few occasions where you get to make decisions, ‘Before Your Eyes’ is mostly a short, linear, but a powerfully emotional journey. While it may seem like a gimmick on paper, using a webcam when playing ‘Before Your Eyes’ actually enhances the experience. Don’t worry, you can play it without a webcam using keyboard and mouse, but if you do have one, I highly recommend using it for greater immersion. During several points in the story, you advance the narrative through eye blinks. Because blinking is semi-involuntary, you may unintentionally skip some parts of the tale. Given the story’s subject and theme, this mechanic makes sense and adds ambiguity to the whole proceedings. Regardless of how you choose to play ‘Before Your Eyes’ – with a webcam and/or with keyboard and mouse – you can be assured that the story will have its loose ends tied up. ‘Before Your Eyes’ is one of the more evocative interactive stories I’ve experienced to date. The subject matter hit me hard in a few ways, and I think it will evoke similarly strong emotions for some players. If you are curious, and are willing to give the eye blink story advancement mechanic a try, don’t pass up on ‘Before Your Eyes’.

I bought this game after hearing members of Whatculture Gaming praising it on their podcasts and shows. I wasn't blown away with the graphics but that is the art style and fidelity the creators were possibly going for to allow as many people to play this game as possible I would imagine, but the concept and story were second to none. This is 1 1/2 hours of gaming that I wish I could foget so I could go back and play it again for the first time. The mechanics of blinking your eyes to move time forward worked really well and I was playing it in the latter stages of the day so light wasn't at it brightest and to note I only own a £10 HD webcam (so nothing special) and wear glasses this wasn't an issue for the game. If people were to argue that games cannot be art, I would direct them to this!! I will be advising anyone who will listen to give this a go, especially if it is on offer.

I'm not sure if this has to do more with my own technology or with the fact that this game is one of the few of its kind that uses the webcam as input, but any shortcomings this game has had to do with the fact that sometimes doing the input with blinking could be really touchy or sensitive, and it almost got in the way of my enjoyment of certain scenes just because I would either accidentally skip something or else it wouldn't register my keeping my eyes closed. I'm still going to give this five stars, though, because it is a really unique mechanic and it works really well with the themes of the story itself, which makes for just about the best way an integration like this could go. The story itself is sad and reflective and beautiful, the voice performances are great, and despite some issues I had with the tech, I think this is a really successful experiment.

I haven't played many narrative games but this one definitely hit different. I was balling my eyes out in the ending scene. The clever metaphors, characters and mechanics are AMAZING!