Before Your Eyes Review: Blink To The Past | Screen Rant
Before Your Eyes is a first-person storytelling game for Steam that is developed by GoodbyeWorld Games and published by Skybound Games. The game tells a beautiful and memorable story about the life of a young man, with the player seeing the world through their eyes, via their webcam.
It's difficult to go in-depth when talking about the story of Before Your Eyes, as it's a relatively short game and its twists are a major part of the experience. In broad terms, the player controls the soul of Benjamin Brynn, who has passed away and is being taken to meet his maker. Benjamin is riding on a ferry to the afterlife, accompanied only by a coyote spirit that acts as the Ferryman. The Ferryman asks Benjamin questions about his life, wanting to learn the truth about him before stating his case to the Creator. Benjamin is sent back in time to his childhood, viewing snapshots of his life leading up to his demise.
Before Your Eyes is seen entirely from Benjamin's viewpoint. The player controls his head movements with the mouse, while they select things by blinking. The game uses the player's webcam to read their facial movements, registering how the eyes move. The player can select items using the mouse and blinking. Whenever a metronome appears, time will jump forward whenever the player blinks. There are no point-and-click puzzles in Before Your Eyes, but the game does some amazing things with its unique premise and the way in which the player reacts with the world.
The story of Before Your Eyes is phenomenal, managing to switch from joyful to heartbreaking in a moment as the truth about Benjamin's life is revealed. This is helped by some amazing vocal performances, with the actors who portray Benajmin's parents bringing a level of humanity to their characters that makes them feel like the stars of the show. The graphics fit the tone of the world perfectly, with the other characters resembling the NPCs from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker in terms of their design.
The best aspect of Before Your Eyes is also linked to its worst. The biggest issue with Before Your Eyes is the control scheme. In order to play Before Your Eyes, the player needs to sit in front of a webcam and stay still. The effectiveness of this method is going to vary greatly from player to player, as moving out of the designated area can cause the camera to stop registering the movement. The player can press the pause key at any time to recalibrate the webcam, but it yanks them out of the experience. The need to keep synchronizing the controls is akin to resetting the Wiimote in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. It happens just enough to be distracting and take the player out of the story. The need to do this is going to differ for each player, but people with a tendency to fidget might have trouble playing the game without needing to keep fixing the controls.
Another frustrating aspect of the game is that some puzzles involve starting at the screen without blinking, which doesn't seem like a healthy idea when facing a laptop screen or a monitor. If the player blinks during these segments, then their progress is saved each time, so they don't have to start the staring contest over, but it would have improved the game to give players an option to skip these sections if they're causing discomfort.
Before Your Eyes is a difficult game to discuss, as so much of its appeal comes from reveals that would spoil the story. The game offers a truly unique experience that utilizes the medium of the video game perfectly to enhance its story. The technical flaws are frustrating, but they're likely impossible to avoid in a game like this, and people who can overlook the control issues will find a phenomenal story about life and death as seen through the eyes of another.
Before Your Eyes is coming to Steam on April 8, 2021. Screen Rant was provided with a digital code for the purposes of this review.