Only If is a surreal first person adventure-puzzle game. You play as Anthony Clyde, who, after a heavy night of partying, wakes up to find himself in an unfamiliar bed with no memory of the previous night's events. Unfortunately, escaping these unfamiliar, opulent surroundings will prove to be no easy task, as an unseen, menacing, radio-bound antagonist will stop at nothing to block Anthony's path at every turn. The game's mechanics are designed to be experimental and unpredictable, to defy the logic of "What you see is what you get". Is the environment changing around you, or is it your imagination? Will jumping to your death kill you, or will it save you? Could the wrong answer actually turn out to be the right answer? In Only If, you will fail a lot, you will die a lot, and you will undoubtedly be confused. Or will you?
Reviews View More
One of those games that's more an "experience" than a game. I enjoyed it.
the story and narration was strange... my brian is also smol and so i dropped the game :^)
This review contains spoilers
...what?
There is some promise in this one. There are some genuinely interesting set-pieces, and some of the more pretentious sections get dangerously close to seeming like they actually mean something. But terrible implementation and an inexplicable frat boy-ish edginess bury this game under a little too much shit to be worth digging through.
The game looks the part though. The music is fine, and the voice actors... well, the guy on the radio is doing his best with what the writing he has to work with. The main character though is honestly absolutely insufferable; barely half a second goes by before he makes some sarcastic quip about how none of this makes sense, and it really is difficult to bear. I think if you stripped 90% of the dialog out from this, it would be much closer to achieving the dreamlike Superliminal-esque vibe that I think it's going for.
But where the game really falls down is in the puzzle/gameplay design. Again, much like with the game as a whole, there are one or two cool ideas in here: I liked the couple of puzzles where you had to type words to talk to an NPC, and the platforming section where you smash jars to increase your size / jump height was pretty inventive. But then you have parts like the extended Amnesia homage, where every puzzle devolved into 'I pulled a lever, which of the many, maaany doors in this place has opened now?'. Or there was a part where I was trying to hide from a guy with a gun; the game all but tells you to stay in the bushes, but the solution is in fact to /not/ stay in the bushes and wander out into the open. Then you have to randomly guess which way to follow a branching cobblestone path, because straying from it causes instant death. Overall this game has an awful lot more misses than hits when it comes to these kinds of gameplay elements, and I had to look up a guide for an awful lot of the answers.
The game is pretty poor on a technical level too. There's no ability to save; having to use passwords to track progress is absolutely baffling for a game released in 2014. Nor are there any options besides screen resolution, which was an issue for me because the default camera sensitivity is outrageously high, the text size is very small and there was no way to change either.
Story-wise... there's nothing much to tell, because the game is a classic 'it was all a dream' jobbie that deliberately makes no sense. I'm not one of these people who thinks that that can never work as a narrative device, but the issue with using it here is that the dreamscape doesn't seem to present any consistent tone, themes or lessons for you or your character. You don't learn anything throughout the duration of this game...
Well, you learn one thing, when the big reveal turns out to be the fact you slept with your sister by accident. It comes out of nowhere, means nothing, and you kinda just laugh it off because 'lol incest'. And with that, I'm done. Fuck that ending. Fuck that creepy-ass anime poster in the first level. Fuck the incessant dick jokes. Fuck Anthony's voice acting. Fuck all the layers of cringe that this game is drowning under. Because I genuinely think there could be something interesting at the bottom of the cesspool... but it's all just too much shite for me to handle.
There is some promise in this one. There are some genuinely interesting set-pieces, and some of the more pretentious sections get dangerously close to seeming like they actually mean something. But terrible implementation and an inexplicable frat boy-ish edginess bury this game under a little too much shit to be worth digging through.
The game looks the part though. The music is fine, and the voice actors... well, the guy on the radio is doing his best with what the writing he has to work with. The main character though is honestly absolutely insufferable; barely half a second goes by before he makes some sarcastic quip about how none of this makes sense, and it really is difficult to bear. I think if you stripped 90% of the dialog out from this, it would be much closer to achieving the dreamlike Superliminal-esque vibe that I think it's going for.
But where the game really falls down is in the puzzle/gameplay design. Again, much like with the game as a whole, there are one or two cool ideas in here: I liked the couple of puzzles where you had to type words to talk to an NPC, and the platforming section where you smash jars to increase your size / jump height was pretty inventive. But then you have parts like the extended Amnesia homage, where every puzzle devolved into 'I pulled a lever, which of the many, maaany doors in this place has opened now?'. Or there was a part where I was trying to hide from a guy with a gun; the game all but tells you to stay in the bushes, but the solution is in fact to /not/ stay in the bushes and wander out into the open. Then you have to randomly guess which way to follow a branching cobblestone path, because straying from it causes instant death. Overall this game has an awful lot more misses than hits when it comes to these kinds of gameplay elements, and I had to look up a guide for an awful lot of the answers.
The game is pretty poor on a technical level too. There's no ability to save; having to use passwords to track progress is absolutely baffling for a game released in 2014. Nor are there any options besides screen resolution, which was an issue for me because the default camera sensitivity is outrageously high, the text size is very small and there was no way to change either.
Story-wise... there's nothing much to tell, because the game is a classic 'it was all a dream' jobbie that deliberately makes no sense. I'm not one of these people who thinks that that can never work as a narrative device, but the issue with using it here is that the dreamscape doesn't seem to present any consistent tone, themes or lessons for you or your character. You don't learn anything throughout the duration of this game...
Well, you learn one thing, when the big reveal turns out to be the fact you slept with your sister by accident. It comes out of nowhere, means nothing, and you kinda just laugh it off because 'lol incest'. And with that, I'm done. Fuck that ending. Fuck that creepy-ass anime poster in the first level. Fuck the incessant dick jokes. Fuck Anthony's voice acting. Fuck all the layers of cringe that this game is drowning under. Because I genuinely think there could be something interesting at the bottom of the cesspool... but it's all just too much shite for me to handle.
You play as Anthony that more than likely gets something put in this drink. Story feels convoluted and has no specific direction of what exactly is going on. The visuals are… okay? I’ll give the game credit I didn’t see the ending coming. Only if I never pressed the “Install” button.
Need to use some of your brain for this :D. There's alot of mysterious sentences which can confuse you. Should try it.
I remember playing this back in 2014, back when I was on my "Slowburn indie walking simulator lookatmeiamverysmart" grind and thinking it was really profound. When I think about it, I was probably just stoned out of my mind when I played this. Because the thing is, I also remember playing this back in 2020 and thinking it was a huge pile of pretentious garbage.
These days I'd say it's closer to the second, but I still think this game deserves some form of actual review because there clearly was some effort put into this, seeing how this was essentially made by a single person.
It does have a few interesting moments. The horror segment is weirdly intense. The visuals aren't terrible for a free game on Steam.
I'd say the biggest problem with it is that it tries to be way too many things at once without ever really nailing any single aspect. It can't decide whether it's a walking simulator, a puzzle game, a horror game, some avantgarde surrealist experience or even something unique entirely; instead it simply is all of it at once, depending on what the situation calls for and, as mentioned, never really gets to the essence of any of the experiences it tries to emulate.
The voice acting - yes, there is voice acting - ranges from acceptable (for the protagonist) to a grating caricature (for the antagonist) The antagonist, Vinnie makes no goddamn sense in the narrative, as he is never truly explored or contextualised. Is he even real? Some figment of the protag's imagination? A clever metaphor for something the game is way too far up its own ass about to explain? The game clearly doesn't care to go anywhere with it all, so why should you?
The Italian-American accent implies him to be some kind of mobster but the game ultimately doesn't really explore or explain the conflict, neither implicitly nor explicitly. The voice acting isn't... bad? It's just unbelievably misplaced. It feels like it was recorded for a totally different game. I have no idea why they went with this.
Which characters this bland and terrible, you can probably surmise that the dialogue - of which there is quite a bit, to my chagrin - is equally grating. It feels forcibly quirky and witty to the point where the characters don't feel like real people anymore, despite the attempts of going for a more naturalistic style.
As mentioned before, the game does have a few interesting ideas here and there, like having you type stuff on your IRL keyboard to solve a puzzle, or featuring pretty impressive surreal environments. I do like the section in the park, where you have to literally "find your words". There are some other things too. Which sadly kinda circles back to the main issue:
The problem is that none of these ideas and impressions feel connected, neither thematically nor through gameplay. None of the individual gameplay elements play off or reinforce each other, they all get introduced and vanish just as quickly. It feels like the dev went "Oh that would be a cool thing" and added stuff in without thinking about how that would add up to a cohesive game.
And really, that kind of sums up my issues with this game; there's just not a whole lot of thought behind it. And that's even worse considering how unbelievably up its own ass the game is about its story half of the time.
The suffocating air of pretentiousness does very little to mask what a profoundly shallow experience this game is.
I do not use that term lightly to describe art, as I firmly believe that almost always it's used to disparage any nuanced thing a piece of art might have to say.
This, however, truly feels like a game by someone who knows enough about games to copy ideas they enjoy, but lacks the artistic talent to actually thread these ideas together into a coherent piece.
3/10
These days I'd say it's closer to the second, but I still think this game deserves some form of actual review because there clearly was some effort put into this, seeing how this was essentially made by a single person.
It does have a few interesting moments. The horror segment is weirdly intense. The visuals aren't terrible for a free game on Steam.
I'd say the biggest problem with it is that it tries to be way too many things at once without ever really nailing any single aspect. It can't decide whether it's a walking simulator, a puzzle game, a horror game, some avantgarde surrealist experience or even something unique entirely; instead it simply is all of it at once, depending on what the situation calls for and, as mentioned, never really gets to the essence of any of the experiences it tries to emulate.
The voice acting - yes, there is voice acting - ranges from acceptable (for the protagonist) to a grating caricature (for the antagonist) The antagonist, Vinnie makes no goddamn sense in the narrative, as he is never truly explored or contextualised. Is he even real? Some figment of the protag's imagination? A clever metaphor for something the game is way too far up its own ass about to explain? The game clearly doesn't care to go anywhere with it all, so why should you?
The Italian-American accent implies him to be some kind of mobster but the game ultimately doesn't really explore or explain the conflict, neither implicitly nor explicitly. The voice acting isn't... bad? It's just unbelievably misplaced. It feels like it was recorded for a totally different game. I have no idea why they went with this.
Which characters this bland and terrible, you can probably surmise that the dialogue - of which there is quite a bit, to my chagrin - is equally grating. It feels forcibly quirky and witty to the point where the characters don't feel like real people anymore, despite the attempts of going for a more naturalistic style.
As mentioned before, the game does have a few interesting ideas here and there, like having you type stuff on your IRL keyboard to solve a puzzle, or featuring pretty impressive surreal environments. I do like the section in the park, where you have to literally "find your words". There are some other things too. Which sadly kinda circles back to the main issue:
The problem is that none of these ideas and impressions feel connected, neither thematically nor through gameplay. None of the individual gameplay elements play off or reinforce each other, they all get introduced and vanish just as quickly. It feels like the dev went "Oh that would be a cool thing" and added stuff in without thinking about how that would add up to a cohesive game.
And really, that kind of sums up my issues with this game; there's just not a whole lot of thought behind it. And that's even worse considering how unbelievably up its own ass the game is about its story half of the time.
The suffocating air of pretentiousness does very little to mask what a profoundly shallow experience this game is.
I do not use that term lightly to describe art, as I firmly believe that almost always it's used to disparage any nuanced thing a piece of art might have to say.
This, however, truly feels like a game by someone who knows enough about games to copy ideas they enjoy, but lacks the artistic talent to actually thread these ideas together into a coherent piece.
3/10