NobleGamer Before Your Eyes Review

This game is for people who want an emotional narrative experience, can suspend disbelief & logic for a few hours, and ideally have not dealt with the grief of losing an immediate family member. This is so specific of a recommendation that I cannot bring myself to recommend Before Your Eyes to gamers at large on Steam. If you cannot relate to or imagine how your character's memories are formed under the circumstances, or if you disagree with how the character's parents handle you, then at best the player will be upset or hate the game at worst. People who have previously lost a spouse or child may not be interested in the story or the emotions it invokes. This review is spoiler free in that I do not reveal anything more than the Steam description. Before Your Eyes has an interesting core mechanic of using a camera to detect the player's eye blinking which can be used to reveal or interact with certain areas & items, though there is no player controlled character movement. Most importantly, when the important part of a scene is done, a metronome will appear and whenever the player blinks, time will advance. The mouse cursor (but not clicks) must be used for interacting with certain items that show circle icons, so blinking isn't the only mechanic. In the last few chapters, there is an icon similar to blinking, but instead you need to do what the icon shows when mousing over it. Here is what you need to know: +The step below cartoony feel of characters is well suited for the game along with the music and the solid voice acting. ?Based on the end of scenes where I kept my eyes open 20+ seconds past the metronome (which I managed for most scenes), the dialog that happened was never important. At worst it added nothing, and at best it provided a little context or backstory. Therefore... -I don't think the player misses anything of significance or substance when blinking as soon as a metronome appears. +The narrative is broken down into chapters, and any chapter can be replayed. ?It is my understanding that the choices in this game do not change much about the story, and although I haven't played through more than once to confirm, I think this opinion is affirmed by the fact that the Steam tags for this game does not include "choices matter". -The game is only about the "regrets we carry with us" to the extent that you believe the player's choice actually mattered, when in fact I don't believe it does. ?There are 2 main sets of memories in the game, most of the game takes place in non-repressed memories and then the repressed. -If I accept the possibility that all repressed memories happened but some non-repressed memories did not actually happen, then I find it difficult to reconcile some of the real events with what was non-repressed memories. ?Finding meaning of the non-repressed memories based on the repressed memories is very open to interpretation, but in my opinion it could have connected more dots between the two. -Although the game claims that the story is "about the impossible expectations we place on ourselves", I and some other reviewers think this aspect is much more about the expectations that someone else puts on the player.