What you read at the top of this piece is in the past now, and what you’ll read below will join it momentarily.

It’s one thing to live in the moment - and for the sake of mindfulness, it’s essential - but only if you’re capable of recognizing the inherent pastness of the fleeting present. Both tactics felt like cheating, which in a game as intimate as this resembles the same kind of unconquerable guilt that results from trying to forget the past or ignore the future. On another occasion I ducked out of the way, meaning my webcam no longer registered my eye movements. Regardless of how much you want to stay in one memory, to forget about everything before and after, you have an obligation to move on, whether that’s backwards, forwards, sideways, or towards some kind of mythological otherworld only visible in dreams.Īt several points during the game, I held my eyelids open with my hands to see what would happen - the fear of missing out on the end of a scene was biting and unforgiving. This is compounded by the fact that you, as a human being, are biologically required to blink - it’s in your design. It’s not a particularly long game, although playing it involves such a commitment to concentration that seconds seem to morph into hours. That idea - impermanence - is the true driving force behind Before Your Eyes. No matter how awful and soul-rending another moment is, it is designed to abide by the exact same inherent impermanence. No matter how incredible a moment may be, it is, by definition, momentary. Before Your Eyes presents you with scenes you’re dying to stay in, but scenes that - like vignettes from real life - are transformative and transient. This isn’t a game where you blink to shoot, or select visual novel dialogue options, or drift a four-litre Subaru around a hairpin turn. On the contrary, Before Your Eyes recognizes the need to integrate its core mechanic with the context of the story it’s trying to tell. There are plenty of fascinating projects that build on a novel idea to the extent that it becomes their entire premise, which can lead to the rest of their makeup becoming pretty shallow.

The most important thing to note about Before Your Eyes’ signature blink system is that it isn’t gimmicky, which people would be forgiven for prematurely having concerns about. Related: Before Your Eyes Interview - A Game Where Your Eyes Are The Controller Since writing that, though, I’ve regularly found myself thinking about just how excellent Before Your Eyes is - it’s an enduringly stunning adventure, and any of you who are even remotely interested in video games should absolutely play it as soon as possible. Around a month ago, we published an interview with the team behind the game about what goes into developing something like this, where traditional gamepads are substituted for webcams designed to read retinal movements with astonishing accuracy. As opposed to being based on conventional player input, where you mash buttons on a pad or guide a cursor around a screen, Before Your Eyes transforms your pupils into a distinct, deeply intimate controller. You close your eyes, open them again, and everything is gone - life waits for no one.īefore Your Eyes, developed by indie studio GoodbyeWorldGames, is a dizzyingly unique and relentlessly ambitious experience. It’s a lovely little scene, filled with the pervasive love and dreams of a young family striving to build a comfortable and fulfilling life together. Your mother and father playfully bicker over the complex physics of peehole distance, children’s toys litter the floor around you, all while a pristine piano - the real object of your toddlerish fancies - sits stalwart against the living room wall.

Before your eyes endings