Before Your Eyes, a game by GoodbyeWorld Games in early 2021, is an absolutely brilliant game portraying the human condition as a microcosm within your webcam. Utilizing the mechanic of your own self blinking the game mechanics are fairly simple, just don't blink, or do, you'll need to progress someday. For only being around 2 hours in length this game manages to pull you in and truly care about the small cast of characters surrounding our main character named Benjamin. Although this is a 'choose your own adventure' type game there are some choices that just make sense to do over others, at least for me it was obvious sometimes in which way you were being swayed to decide, this however does not ruin the game or dampen the experience in the slightest, in fact going back and choosing some of those other choices may be an interesting experience... however, the replayability of this game is one I would not personally recommend, it is one in which I believe that going in to achievement hunt or even finishing and then going back strictly for achievements, not saying not to replay ever since you should someday when you want to reexperience the game itself instead of just collecting online tokens, definitely seem like it could dampen an experience and make you percieve at as strictly 'gotta blink to get here' instead of following its narrative and getting that attatchment, my beliefs on achievements within this game even stretch to thinking that although achievements are kinda cool, I would say this game could even be better off without that incentive or 'need to get this/that'.

Overall this was an absolutely fantastic experience and one that I wish I'd gotten around to sooner

I haven't really written reviews for games before so hope this is alright.

There's a category at the Bafta Game Awards called "Game Beyond Entertainment". About an hour and half ago I would have ridiculed the idea that art and entertainment are such separate bodies. In 2021, Before Your Eyes received said award. When games like this and Assasins Creed exist with little differentiation, perhaps art like this should be raised above the pack, and placed on such a pedestal.

This joins a very very small list of games that made me cry, and an even smaller list of games with something to say.

Yes, I have my eyes full of tears, BUT this game has a few flaws.

The blinking using a webcam, the way it matches the purpose of the game is great, but it doesn't work that well, maybe because I wear glasses and it reflects the monitor, Idk. So I changed to play just with the mouse, and there I had some bugs too.

When there were those scenes with "close your eyes", I wanted to hear the entire dialogs, so I pressed til it ended, and after this, the screen of the game wouldn't unturn black. I had to go back to menu and restart the whole chapter. I think if I didn't experience these kind of bugs, I really would've enjoyed it more and go for a 5 stars, but with all of this, I just can't

Still, a great game

Irei admitir que sou meio chorão, mas eu raramente choro jogando video games. Algumas exceções que eu posso listar de cabeça seriam Undertale, Nier (franquaia), The Beginners Guide e Before Your Eyes, que é o mais novo a entrar nessa lista. Before Your Eyes tem uma mensagem muito poderosa e eu acredito que seja impossível pra mim colocar em palavras o quanto esse jogo é lindo, lindo em todos os sentidos da palavra. O jogo só não é perfeito porque eu pisco muito e a camêra do meu pc e meio merda, então não pude experenciar o jogo da maneira entendida. VAI JOGAR, AGORA.

9/10 (É difícil dar nota pra um jogo tão pessoal quanto esse, mas irei dar nota 9/10 porque como eu havia dito antes, a mecânica principal do jogo não funcionou pra mim.)

There's a widely reported phenomenon in people who have near-death experiences called "life review", a simultaneous and instantaneous rapid series of visions depicting memories from their past. The layman's term for such an occurrence would be to say that your life flashed before your eyes. And, presumably, if this sensation occurs for each near-death experience, then there's reason to believe that it would occur in actual-death experiences as well. The appropriately named Before Your Eyes, the debut title from indie developer Goodbyeworld Games, tackles this theory head-on. Playing through the eyes of Benny Brynn, you awaken in a purgatory-like space, where you recall the story of your recently ended life. It's certainly an interesting concept on its own, but the real draw of BYE is the way you interact with it; instead of a typical story based game where you click through text, progression is controlled by your eye movements. And this is not just in game, either; the game progresses with your blinks-as in you, the player. Utilizing webcam technology, Before Your Eyes is able to tell a short and often touching story, in an incredibly innovative way.

Of course, with such a unique gameplay progression aspect, that is naturally the area that discussion of the game generally focuses on. Before Your Eyes plays out as a series of memories where your interaction is limited; for the most part, you are watching memories play out chronologically throughout your character's life. And just as with real memories, their relevance is inconsistent; they're just as likely to be character defining moments as they are to be one off, random thoughts. In that way, BYE creates a unique sense of relatable nostalgia; everyone has those memories from childhood that seemingly offer nothing other than the fact that they're remembered. And similarly, the story progresses in a relatable yet bittersweet way. After a certain point in each memory, blinking will progress to the next one, and often, you feel the urge to blink before everything in the memory actually happens. Some cases will have you straining your eyes, trying to force them to stay open, just to see what happens next, just to stay in the moment for a second longer. Especially considering that these are the memories of a recently deceased person, it adds a layer of somberness; just as you (the player) want to see everything that happens in the game, the character is trying to cling to their last memories before they end up passing on.

Here's the thing though; as innovative and immersive as the blinking-as-gameplay concept is, and as well as it works narratively, it's still unfortunately faulty, even with the best webcam. Quite a few times you'll find the game progressing even when you aren't blinking, and the tracking works inconsistently unless you are constantly keeping direct eye contact with your screen. It's understandable that an indie developer utilizing such an idea would not be able to perfect it on its first try, but nevertheless it can unfortunately detract from the experience and cause the player to miss key story points, which in heavily narrative-driven games such as BYE, is quite a large setback. There is an option to disable the blink-based progression, but that removes far too much of the game's personality and uniqueness to really be considered a viable option.

The narrative is quite good, though, and it's worth suffering through the potentially frustrating controls to experience at least once. Before Your Eyes is certainly a game that should be played blind (excuse the pun), and it's pretty easy to breeze through in one or two sittings. It's full of impactful and relatable moments that are bound to trigger thoughts of your own childhood. The twists are a little obvious to see coming, and as a result BYE can sometimes struggle to make the long-lasting impact that it's aiming for, but it provides a unique way to experience the medium of video games throughout its short runtime. Its narrative premise is a bit generic and it seems designed more to overwhelm your emotions rather than create a genuinely compelling story, but its innovative approach towards gameplay and evoking nostalgic feelings do enough to make it a good and meaningful experience.

A simple yet effective story incorporating some interesting mechanics.

While many of the plot points and setting aren't completely relatable for me, the main theme of feeling like you have to be more than just "good enough" does strike home. And the game does a great job at not just showing that, but showing why people might contribute to such an unhealthy obsession. Characters throughout the story are flawed, they feed into the obsession but their motives are realistic and their flaws don't make them villains. It just makes them like everyone else.

My only negative mark for this game is that, while the blink feature is interesting, I find that for people who may have some form of eyelid droop (or they're even just tired) they might find themselves accidentally skipping forward. Calibration does exist to try and fix these issues but after 3 or so calibrations in a row with the game still thinking that me looking at the bottom of the screen was me blinking, I decided that I'd rather just accidentally skip stuff and deal with it. You can play with a mouse instead, and that will work to prevent any accidents. But with the blink feature being a prominent method of gameplay I feel it's still a valid criticism.

I did not have a webcam and tried to click along to my blinks, I certainly got dry eyes now - even though the creators are certainly trying to make you teary-eyed. Emphasis on trying, because even though it's definitely balancing between a happy and too short youth, I didn't feel much. Maybe because it never felt like too much you're missing out on by involuntarily blinking and skipping through time. But also maybe because the tragic moment was introduced well with a nice representation and not just shoved onto you.

I did quite enjoy the subversion of the talented protagonist trope, like an antidote to Eliza, as well as the furry fisherman-turned-Charon. I do wonder about the significance of the Gatekeeper and the stories - if we're told it's okay to be who you are, what is it judging? Is it judging at all? Is the gatekeeper ourselves, some kind of invocation of self-love? But what's the significance of the tower then, along with its transmission towers - I initially thought it's some kind of evil machine sucking your stories out of you and using it to power... something. What’s with furry Charon wanting to turn a profit?

I think I'll go with the self-love interpretation, it's nicer. But maybe more than the game is able to convey.

The Great Life of Benjamin Brynn

This game contains the most immersive experience I had in a video game, passing through even Red Dead Redemption or The Last of Us. Here we are living a situation where we navigate to the afterlife with accompanied by some kind of Charon, who has the obligation to tell who we are to the Gatekeeper (kind of the guardian of the next world) and, because of that, he asks us to tell our story to him. The problem here is, we do not remember the story, so we have to live all our memories again with the purpose to transmit them to the navigator.

The gameplay aspect is impressive, even being pretty “simple”, I think we can say that it is a focus. We interact with the game by blinking, like in real life, so I feel like a webcam is necessary. Every time we blink, the memory which we are living passes and doesn't come back, the game basis is this, try to understand the protagonist’s story as much as we can, because we cannot keep our eyes open one hundred percent of the time. I must say that the game has some issues with glasses, because sometimes it registers a blink when you had not blinked, or it doesn't register a blink while you are blinking.

The Story is, with no doubt, the strongest point, but I don’t want to speak anything because anything can mess your experience. The only problems here are that it doesn't have subtitles in Portuguese (my native language), and it also has some scenes where you cannot read subtitles at all, which kind of obligates you to speak English.

I got extremely impacted by Before Your Eyes, living Benjamin’s story was an unforgettable experience and, if I could, I would love to live it again for the first time. I highly recommend this masterpiece!