starts with an alarm clock. But our main character doesn’t simply awaken. We are subconsciously tasked with mashing buttons to stretch the obnoxious beeping of his snooze function until he has no choice but to slam it quiet in frustration. From🍌 here you wake up, get dressed, and commute to school like every other day of your young, uneventful li🔜fe so far.
This narrative adventure from developer Polychroma Games starts slowly, deliberately pulling you into the mundane existence of protagonist Mark Borja as he gives graded presentations with friends, flirts with 𒈔a potential sweetheart, and bathes in the melancholy of a fleeting way of life that is held back by some form of invisible oppression. It’s like the world this game takes place in was victim to some sort of strange disaster the player isn’t quite privy to.
Until Then has you walkingไ across different environments and interacting with select objects and people, but for the most part, it’s more of a tried-and-true visual novel.
Hailing from the Philippines, Polychroma Games brings its home country to life through its gorgeous natural environments and occasional interludes of industrialization that provide litter and decay. Everywhere you look is a new locale or character brought to life with pixel art that manages to convey sophisticated emotion in spite of its simplicity, many of which I have ꧃yet to unearth for myself. But the seeds are being planted, and it seems like Mark and the people around him are shackled by some form of invisible grief that dictates lives from the shadows.
It feels very Night in the Woods, with similar dialogue and exploration, like you’re only experiencing snapshots of other people’s lives as you go about your own, and must make dialogue choices that draw from your agency alone. Part of me wishes the opening hours provided a little more freedom to see this world for myself, but maybe it’s coming in future chapters. Like Night in the Woods, you find yourself trying to live life in a small town that is threatening to be left behind, all while you’re just powerless enough to n💦ot make any difference to how things are. It’s an unexpected combination, but a winning one.
After the first hour💙 or so, it becomes known that the world was recently struck by a series of natural disasters that changed everything, killing millions and leaving the younger generation somewhat lost and directionless. Until Then doesn’t outright disclose what its main character has lost, only that they live alone, are chasing a piano scholarship, and don’t bother when it comes to schoolwork despite being a pretty intelligent guy. There is something holding them back from greatness, and I have a fee🐲ling it’s a sense of loss we’re being protected from.
Here’s where the Your Name comparisons first rear the head. Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name has become an iconic coming of age story for my generation, while also basically being Freaky Friday: Anime Edition. It looks at how young people 🍰were displaced by Japan’s 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and must live in the aftermath of an event so tragic it has shaped their very existence. Until Then not only delves into that side of loss, but uses its music and visuals in similar ways too. It’s mundane, beautiful, and unexpected in all the right ways. Every character you encounter is still trying to figure out who they are as they are forced to make impossibly grand decisions.
I went into Until Then expecting for some epic tragedy to arrive during the early hours and♈ set us on a journey of♍ palpable grief that wasn’t subtle in the slightest, where our ensemble must confront personal demons and deal with a society that is changing constantly beneath them. Instead it seems to be about unearthing hidden grief that characters have been holding back for years, delving into memories that’ll shine a light on what really happened to change this world so much, and if there is anything we can do to change it.
You’ll also take part in the occasional minigame, such as competing with friends to stab fish balls in a local fryer merchant’s pot or pl𓃲aying piano back in your bedroom.
This is where the supernatural twist comes in, one I’m yet to explore in any real detail, but it seemingly takes this Your-Name-meets-Nights-in-the-Woods adventur♏e and throws in a pinch of Serial Experiments Lain for good measure. I’ve just reached a moment where a friend has asked to recall a memory, but the second I do, the screen becomes surrounded by a warping gamut of colours before returning to normality, like I am pushing myself to the brink and feel so close to a revelation. There’s a chance I could travel through time, change things for the better, or perhaps even the worse. Right now there’s no way to know, but Until Then already has its hooks in.
If you enjoyed la🦩st year’s A Space For The Unbound and Paranormasight or have a soft spot for Makoto Shinkai or Mamoru Hosoda, there is a melancholic softness to Un♎til Then that I heartily recommend. I have no idea where it’s going or how much it’s going to break my heart, but it doesn’t deserve to fly under the radar in a year already ripe with bangers.
