Before Your Eyes review

…do you ever try time travel? I know this sounds silly, but sometimes, when on a vacation or somewhere with a long journey ahead, I stand still and imagine it’s already over, and I am looking back. I think in a way, it helps remember and cherish these fleeting moments of happiness - by reminding me how quickly they pass. When I try hard enough, it works.

I vividly remember the first day of a summer camp, as our counselors told us how the next month will flash before our eyes. And just as vividly I remember sitting by a campfire 30 days later, feeling like not a second has passed.

Before Your Eyes is a game about time travel.

I first heard about it from this video by Jacob Geller. It captivated me by the same pitch that interested him - “you live out a character’s life, and time moves forward when you blink”. For the first time in possibly ever, I listened to advice of a man on the screen, closed YouTube, and checked out the thing being reviewed. 2 hours later, a game made me cry for the first time.

Of course, being heartless, it was due to dry eyes and not the touching story. But perhaps these causes aren’t that unlike eachother. The game’s gimmick is beautifully connected to the story’s premise. That being, you are dead. A ferryman fishes you out of the sea of souls and offers to be your speaker at the gates of afterlife. There is something special about you, he says. But to do a good job, he’ll need to know what made you so AB-SO-LUTELY great.

So back you go on one last trip. You’ll get to live it all out again. Your whole life, on a fast-forward! But no matter how much you want, no matter how much you try, you can’t stay.

Hopeless battles are a great trope. Many remember the ending of Halo: Reach or Battlefield 1’s prologue. However, at the back of my head, I always felt a tiny amount of frustration at my defeat. I could’ve won that! If only I aimed better, if only I ran to that ammo pack earlier, if only…

Before Your Eyes gives you a fair battle you cannot win. You relive out your life, from birth. But every time you blink (detected through a webcam), time skips forward. A couple minutes, an hour, a day, sometimes several years. You can try to linger in the moment, to Stay Here just a little longer. But you can’t keep your eyes open forever, can you?

BYE is a simple game about complex things. It’s a game about first love, it’s a game about first loss, but above all it’s a game about trying to make the most of your life. Or, perhaps, understanding that you don’t need to try.

The story is elevated by masterful voice-acting and cozy, stylised graphics. The black void shrinking and expanding to show only relevant parts of the scene really sells the fuzzy feeling of memories. Gameplay mainly consists of looking around and blinking (or trying not to), your eyes are the only way of interacting with the world. While I’m not sure if its intentional, I particularly loved the ending using the fact people tend to blink a lot when they cry - but no spoilers.

If you like indie games, crying, and blinking 15000 times a day, Before Your Eyes will be your cup of tea.

And if you have a webcam, of course :)