Our Life: Beginnings & Always follows the main character (named whatever you want) from childhood to adulthood in the town of Sunset Bird and their relationship with Cove Holden. When it starts, you’re eight years old and Cove and his father have just moved in across the street. Naturally, being only two of a handful of kids in the area, you start hanging out. It’s a rough, emotional summer as you get to know Cove little by little and he deals with his parents’ divorce.

Then it jumps ahead to you and Cove being thirteen and spending another summer together. It’s full of new faces and more tense situations and decisions to make. It is shorter than the first part and felt quite rushed. After that, you move onto the summer after the end of high school and all that transitioning into adulthood means. While I liked the story and decisions in this part, I wasn’t fond of all of the characters introduced. They just got in the way.

Finally, there’s full adulthood. This part actually starts after the credits, so don’t leave yet!

Visuals

Our Life: Beginnings & Always looks great. The backgrounds are simple but really set the scene. The character design is also really nice. Everything is clear and crisp. The characters also have more dynamic faces than I’ve seen in other visual novels. They blink and change expressions when the story calls for it. No one is just static. The main character’s moms are pretty hot for drawings. Child Cove is also super adorable. Although something seems a bit off about Mr. Holden, but I can’t pinpoint what exactly.

There are quite a few different backgrounds. While the main ones are the house and the beach, we do get to see several other places in Sunset Bird. I think my favorites were the golf course and the Redwood forest; they just looked really pretty. The scenes also change a bit to show time passing.

I also appreciated that details mentioned in the text were actually shown in the scene. A character mentions a picture on the wall, and there is actually a picture on the wall. They mention having eight dining chairs, and there are in fact eight chairs at the table. It’s a small thing, but something I’ve been mildly annoyed at in other visuals novels. Why make a very specific reference only to not have it appear anywhere in the scene? Our Life: Beginnings & Always doesn’t have that problem.

Sound Effects + Music

I was pleasantly surprised by the wide range of musical tracks in Our Life: Beginnings & Always. It’s not the same song on loop, or even the same handful of tunes. Each scene has its own track which fits the mood and setting. Not that they don’t ever repeat, because they do, but there’s space in between so it doesn’t get annoying. I quite enjoyed most of the songs. They’re mostly calming instrumentals.

There’s some minor voice acting. The majority of the story is unvoiced, but occasionally a few words or a line will be voiced by the character. It was a nice touch, but it didn’t make much of a difference to me.

Gameplay + Controls

Our Life: Beginnings & Always does start with a text based tutorial which explains the ins and outs of the game, like how your choices affect how the story changes. You also customize your character’s appearance, which is quite fun, even though they never actually appear on the screen. You choose their name and pronouns as well, which is a nice touch, since anyone can insert themself into the story.

You get to make quite a few decisions in this visual novel and they do seem to affect what happens next. Previous decisions even get referenced in future text, which was surprising. The choices are all color-codeded (blue, yellow, green). As the tutorial explains, this are just to indicate a common mood/feeling if you want to stay consistent. You absolutely don’t have to though. Pick and choose whatever feels right to you no matter what color the option is. I do think it would be fun to only pick one color to see what happens, then do another playthrough and stick with another color, and so on. For my first time, I just picked whichever option I liked best.

There are also “moments” which are additional bits of story that you can play through if you want. They’re optional, as you can also choose to advance to the next phase of the story without completing them. There are five per phase, with more available as DLC. Since this was my first playthrough, and I wasn’t in a rush, I played through all of them. Each moment is pretty short (10-15 minutes) but gives you more insight into all of the characters. You also get to make several choices, and I wonder if those also contribute to how the story evolves. It seemed like some of these scenarios had “right” answers based on what followed my choice.

Replayability

Our Life: Beginnings & Always is totally replayable. Of course, you can make different decisions or choose different tones (direct, relaxed, anxious) and feelings (indifferent, fond, crush, love) to see what happens to the story. Or, like I mentioned above, you can stick to one color for the responses and play all the way through that way. Similarly, stick with the same tone for the whole story or the same feeling toward Holden. The Steam version also has achievements that you can go for which do cover most of these play styles.

Overall

I enjoyed Our Life: Beginnings & Always. The story wasn’t my favorite, especially during phase two, and the ending was abrupt. Some of that may have had to do with the previous choices I made, so perhaps it’ll be different next time. But overall, I was invested enough to stick with it and learn more about “myself” and Cove. I do think the optional moments are stronger than the main storyline though, so I wouldn’t recommend skipping those.

I also really loved how LGBTQ+ friendly the story was. The MC has two moms, you can pick your pronouns to start with. Later you can choose your birth sex, sexual orientation, romantic orientation, how you feel about your body, and you can even choose whether or not to date Cove. Just because he’s the focus of the story and presented as a love interest doesn’t mean you actually have to be romantically involved with him.

No início, julguei o jogo por puro preconceito - mesmo amando dating games -, mas quando eu decidi dar uma segunda chance, fiquei completamente obcecado! Não tem como não amar o Cove, mesmo ele sendo infantil algumas vezes. E digo com orgulho que comprei todas as DLCs. Essa visual novel simplesmente dá um sentimento quentinho no peito. A história é muito bem construída que, quando termina, você fica com um gostinho de 'quero mais!' e uma certa nostalgia do início do jogo. Ver o MC e o Cove crescerem e, aos poucos, se entenderem é lindo e gratificante.

A heartwaming and easy going visual novel, I really enjoyed it.

This was basically the first VN I ever played, and I found it to be very charming. The games prioritizes your freedom to have any kind of experience you want, without having to worry about it.

Cove will fall in love with you, regardless. So you don't need to stress about choosing the "right" answers. You may also customize your appearance, gender and pronoums to your liking.

The game also has an interesting system where Cove's personality is not set in stone. As you grow up together, some of your personality will change Cove as well, in his ways of thinking, acting and also his appeareance. As someone who is kind of sensitive and easily absorbs some traits from the people I like, this feature made me emphatize a lot with the character.

Of course, if you want your Cove to be a certain way without worring you'll change him into someone you're not too fond of, you can customize his appearance and personality mannually too.

This games tries it best to be welcoming to as many people it can, and brings you an endearing experience you can customize to best fit whatever you desire.

I'm look forward to buying all the DLC and trying new paths in this game in the future.

Definitely need to replay this eventually, but wow! Really surprised me. I have always loved dating sims (and visual novels in general) but my biggest gripe with the genre is just... how much you are railroaded into being the character the game wants or NEEDS you to be. to give your main character such a variable personality and a story that actually respects and acknowledges that is insanely taxing. despite this, OL:BA does just that, with a level of customization that i knew existed, but didn't expect to like so much.

OL:BA allows you a level of customization i've never seen in a any dating sim or VN before. you can customize your characters appearance, pronouns, personality & feelings towards the love interest, Cove, as well as help guide the relationship you and the main LI through menu options, selecting the amount of agency you'd like your character to have, or naturally as a result of the choices you make. after steps 1 and 2, or childhood and middle school years respectively, i was unsure just how much my choices would affect the story. it felt like they had, but without wanting to redo anything until i played it once through, i had no frame of measure. it was a pleasant surprise when i decided to switch my characters interest in the LI from "disinterested" to "crushing" between steps 2 and 3 that not only did the game respond according, allowing very different toned options to me, but also acknowledging multiple times how the relationship because my character and Cove went from that of not-really-friends to very close, all because of the attitude and choices i started to make. honestly, sometimes the amount of choice was a little overwhelming! i challenged myself not to really reload or select other dialogue options, just to really immerse myself, and i was pleasantly surprised to see just how much this customizability helped with that. i was generally not very interested in cove during steps 1 and 2, but the natural progression of the relationship was genuinely so fun to watch unravel i found myself really loving certain memories, dialogues, etc. and even teared up during step 4 lol... the game really builds itself around who you are as a player, while still not sacrificing the story and person it allows Cove to grow into as well. i don't tend to replay games much, but i am REALLY looking forward to replaying this one.

also, i must mention: this was free!?! im so used to vns/dating sims gating the higher quality cgs and content behind pay walls, but everything available to you in the base game is insanely high quality. im not surprised their recent entries will be more paid, because they definitely deserve to be paid for how much effort and love shines through all this.

of course, there are still limitations to this system. you have to read a LOT of menu-ing and really spend time in menus to curate your experience (it lessens after step 1, but really it was a lot to take in at first) but that was fine once i adjusted. similarly, for a game that takes so much of your input into question, it's a bit... mixed? for me on how much of your family you do/don't have control over. i can't think of a family dynamic i related to so little, which was nice but felt a bit at odds with the way the game wanted me to play. i felt so immersed, like i was really thinking as myself as a child/teen/adult/etc, only to get dropped into family dynamics i was Not accustomed to and didnt really care for. the moms and sister are fine! the cousin is cool! i just... did not relate at all, which isnt the games fault necessarily, but did make certain parts of part 3-4 have much less impact since it felt very jarring to go between. hope that makes sense...

still, a really good play. would definitely recommend if you have time to kill and want a new VN/dating sim to try. even if you don't vibe with cove or the other LI's (theyre trapped behind dlc), you always have the option to remain platonicly bonded with them which is very, very cool. what a fun game. i genuinely cant believe i got so invested. i really feel like my attitudes i chose in game reflected my progression with cove as well, which was so satisfying to play lol.