I first learned about Before Your Eyes from StopGame, in particular from Dmitry Kungurov, who at the end of 2021 and in a podcast interview talked about the game as a very touching experience.
After that, I completely forgot about the game, one day I added it to my Steam wishlist and purchased this product during the Christmas sale. And so, one evening I decided to play through this game and did not regret spending 110 minutes (of which 15-20 I did not play).
Developers
Before Your Eyes was developed by GoodbyeWorld Games. Developers from the company, in search of innovation, decided to develop a game based on eye control, or rather on blinking. But such mechanics, naturally, brought many difficulties for developers.
There is literacy with game controllers and most people know how to use a keyboard – these are standard devices. But everyone has different webcams. There are many different lighting conditions, many different faces, many different skin tones, people wear glasses. All of these things are variables that make blinking unreliable.
Bela Messex, Lead Programmer
But, despite the difficulties, based on this idea in 2014, the developers made a demo called Close Your. The game shown at the indie game festival IndieCade caused a lot of emotions among the people who had the chance to play it. Despite the rather simple graphics, the game won the 2014 IndieCade Developer’s Choice Award for its unusual mechanics and story. The game also won an award from the IGF (Independent Game Festival) as the best student game.
Showcase of the game at IndieCade 2014
The peculiarity of the project was that we live a person’s life from beginning to end. And every blink took the player to a new episode of a person’s life. And so, despite how much a person would like to stay in one moment, blinking automatically transferred him to another part of the game.
Having received many praises and awards, the developers decided to develop Close Your into something more. They began working on a dynamic soundtrack, a unique art style, storytelling, and developing the idea of blink control.
Trailer for KickStarter 2016
As a result, working hard on the project, GoodbyeWorld Games showed Before Your Eyes to the public on April 8, 2021.
The unusual nature of the game
As you understood from the previous chapter, https://onlinepoker247.co.uk/casino-cruise/ the cornerstone of the game’s controls is blinking. You, of course, may not use your eyes as a means of control, but to be completely immersed in the world of the game you will have to.
With the help of blinking, you confirm the actions you take and also advance through the plot. If a metronome appears on the screen, then blinking will send you to the next episode of the plot.
Before the game there will be a small adjustment to easily track your blink. If you don’t have a webcam, you can use your phone’s front camera (I didn’t use it, so I can’t say how well it works).
But still, the game uses not only your eyes, but also the mouse, which you will move to point at the objects you want to see or interact with.
Also, since the game is in English, you need at least a basic level of proficiency in this language to play. After all, in a game with blindfolded mechanics, reading subtitles is extremely difficult and you need to assimilate all audio information by ear.
Sometimes the game will suddenly skip to another episode even though you didn’t blink. Either this is due to the fact that my webcam is not of sufficient quality, or the game has some problems with the blinking mechanics. But, given that most of the game goes without any errors, these phantom blinks are not very fatal.
Story
The plot of the game tells us the life story of one boy named Benjamin Brinn from the very beginning of his existence. And the beauty of the game is that because of its specificity, it’s as if you yourself become this Benjamin Brinn. You go through all the most important events of his life with him and sometimes you have to make decisions that will affect him.
And also, given my rather young age, I increasingly compared and identified his life with the life that I am now living and with the life that may appear in my future. From this point of view, we can say that the game allows us to look at Benjamin’s life and compare its rapid course and important events with our own path.
While I looked at Benjamin’s life, at his strange but still loving parents, at how he acquired new interests and hobbies, at everything that he goes through, it seemed to me that many people’s lives flow exactly like his. This is why I believe that for those who have not played this game, such an experience of interacting with someone else’s life directly, in the first person, will be an exciting and emotional experience.
I really don’t want to talk in detail about the plot of this game. After all, most of the emotions you will receive come from him. It is simple, everyday, but still, because of the well-written plot and the competent use of blinking mechanics, you fall in love with it. You become emotionally attached to the game and the characters become like family to you.
During some moments, when something really important happens, you don’t want to blink, but your eyes are very tense, and because of this, the number of goosebumps you get simply increases significantly.
At the end, when the gatekeeper asks you to close your eyes, I literally spent half the final credits sitting with my eyes closed, thinking that if I open my eyes now, I’ll die, the game immerses you so much in itself.
Technical execution
The art style of the game is unusual. It’s quite childish, in the sense that the world of the game is shown through the eyes of a very young child. And this style suited the game very well. Firstly, since this is still an indie game, the developers would not have the money for a graphically perfect style, instead they decided to concentrate on the emotion and the theme of the story: a sweet life story that starts from the very beginning. And thanks to this, the game looks absolutely great.
Considering that one of the main character’s hobbies is drawing, and Benjamin’s paintings sometimes turn out to be in completely unusual styles, one can understand that very talented people worked on the graphic design of the game.
The game’s soundtrack is very well done. It dynamically always matches the mood of the episode. For the most part, this is a pleasant and lamp-like ambient, emphasizing the importance of the life events of our hero. The soundtrack perfectly complements the story and graphic style, so I can’t help but note its beauty.
Full game soundtrack
And the final song, playing over the closing credits, with its simple melody and very soulful words, perfectly completes the whole journey we have been through.
Results
For an indie with unusual controls, a short length and a heart-wrenching story, the game received a lot of praise. The game won a BAFTA award, has 8,652 reviews on Steam at the time of writing, of which 97 percent are positive, and also my broken heart.
The game turned out to be very bright, sincere and therapeutic for me personally. As a rating, I would give nine out of ten, because although this is a touching experience that makes your soul cry, I still understand that in comparison with other larger-scale projects this game cannot be compared. But this only concerns my personal assessment, in my subjective and very pedantic assessment system.
If you think objectively, then the game as a work of art is very good. It’s short, it has unusual mechanics and a nice art style, it gives a lot of emotions, while playing it you will think about life on different planes, and that’s great.
P. S. I apologize in advance if any incorrect information was found in my article.