Posted on: March 13, 2024
FKAWMEWB
Verified ownerGames: 171 Reviews: 22
Serious and artistic narrative game
"Take a walk with me. I'll show you the fragments... Your past, your present, your memories... You will forget and remember. You will complete the cycle." In Back Then (2023) you play Thomas Eilian, a late-stage Alzheimer's patient who, nearing death in a nursing home, embarks on an inner journey through his past. This takes the shape of exploring his empty family home, while the voices of family members tell him what they couldn't, or wouldn't, while he was still aware. You're taken to other, more or less abstract and symbolic locations as well, like a labyrinth of empty bookcases or a similarly disorienting WWII trench. This game is clearly a labour of love. It started in 2019 as a game jam submission by a group of university students, so after the jam's 48-hour deadline they stuck with it for four more years. Their drive to raise awareness of the disease seems to be in part biographically informed. Still, this is no Depression Quest, but an artistic game about the ravages of time, the cyclicity of forgetting, and the power of love. I like how the family members are all fully realised characters with their own biographies, worries and regrets. At the metaphysical end, the poetic diction sometimes seems a bit much; still, the game's humanist and ultimately Christian outlook creates a cathartic finale. Gameplay is what you expect from a narrative game: It's linear, doors locking and unlocking on their own to guide you through the house. Tom's wheelchair sets the pace of the exploration. Puzzles involve finding items and taking them somewhere else; the most demanding aspect are the labyrinths, which I feel are overused. The voice acting is good overall (subtitles could use proofreading). The music plays a massive part in setting the emotional scene. While some parts drag a bit, others form a compelling gesamtkunstwerk- the episode with Tom's son Ben stood out to me in particular. If you like slow and serious walking sims, this is worth the 2 hours of your time.
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