Note -- What Never Was is NOT a full-fledged title, nor even a small game, its conception more akin to a demo or introductory chapter than a future release. Whether or not such a product will manifest remains to be seen, but if you’d rather wait I won’t blame you as this is an incredibly short experience that can easily be completed in 20-30 minutes. As such, this is less of a review and more of a, well, overview.

Premise is you’re a chick who, in the process of rummaging through her late-grandfather’s stuff, discovers he was onto something big prior to his untimely demise. It’s your standard thriller template that will ultimately be contingent on the consequent mystery. There are a decent amount of descriptions written for the various knicknacks in the old old man’s study, indicating the writing wasn’t shortchanged during development.

Graphically, this is an Unreal baby through-and-through. Photorealism possesses each object in your vicinity, and though some do appear like default assets, the majority are sheened enough to warrant being labeled personalized. While you’re not dealing with anything radical here, it’s still incredibly well-made for a micro team project.

That said, lighting is pretty blah. They’ve tried to add a pseudo-dynamism with sources like lamps and sunshine, but it just leads to a lot of overblown translucency. The base illumination is solid at least.

Music is limited to two compositions, and they honestly feel out-of-place. The first one, for example, consists of upbeat tunes amidst Grandpa revealing the existence of a hidden secret, whilst the other (IIRC) doesn’t beckon a sense of adventure.

This is too small a sample size to properly ascertain the SFX. I caught a few nice dins like a typewriter clacking, clock striking, and cello playing, so at least effort was put forward in certain respects.

Voice acting is okay. The main actress (Michaela Gilchrist) technically does a good job, though I felt she was trying a bit too hard to come across as sardonic/overly-familiar towards her grandfather. That said, a noticeable drawback is the microphone she used to record her lines; you easily discern an echo whenever she speaks.

Gameplay-wise, the puzzles are easy and do their job of showcasing how the game will work. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get accustomed to them keying the left mouse button for examining and right for interacting.

Overall, I’d recommend waiting for a bigger release. What Never Was is fine, but you won’t get much satisfaction from its deliberately cut-off nature.

This is a weird one to review because it's very clear that this is a bit of a demo for a larger idea that the developer wants to make in the future.

What we have here is a decent (albeit a bit cliched) premise of a young girl discovering the secrets of her grandfathers travels. It's a short slice of a larger puzzle game with simple mechanics that work fairly well for the 25 minute runtime. The voice acting is solid for such a small production, but I can't help but knock the fact that many lines very clearly sound like they were recorded at different times, with different levels of clarity and loudness throughout. The story is also pretty bare-bones, and I was hoping for more of a twist or exciting ending to really help this feel like it's own standalone adventure. But unfortunately that doesn't happen and it really does just feel like a mini demo for a potential larger project.

It's hard to rate this because it is being sold for a whopping FREE.99 but I can't say I'd recommend checking it out unless you were absurdly interested. It's a decent little tech demo but nothing about it is interesting enough to help it stand on it's own. Seeing that there is a longer version in the works however, I might think about keeping an eye out for that instead.

Although I gave this game a 6/10, this doesn't mean that the game wasn't great to play.

I really liked the overall story, although it was very short, and I enjoyed the overall design of the attic setting. I would have liked the game to have been longer, but I hope that after the developer(s) finish with Chapter 2 (and possibly more chapters after 2), they will combine all the chapters into one singular game for a more streamlined experience for players. Apart from that, I'm really excited about what is happening in chapter 2.

A short prologue to an upcoming project, it shows a lot of potential, with detailed environments, good voice acting and more than adequate puzzles that even comment on the player's wrong deductions, showing foresight on the developer's part.

It's a bit heavy on the pop culture references and the mouse controls require the veteran adventure player to rewire their brain to remember that here left click is examine and right click is interact (ahh my head!), but while nothing exceptional this will likely be a good game when more comes out.