Before Your Eyes

Before Your Eyes has a really interesting concept, but for me it worked much better on paper than it did in practice. The main gimmick of progressing through the story by blinking is genuinely clever. It is a great idea for a game about memories and the passage of time, because something as simple and involuntary as blinking can suddenly make moments disappear before you are ready to leave them. The problem is that the eye tracking did not work consistently for me. There were several moments where the game registered a blink even though I had not blinked, which became frustrating very quickly. I eventually gave up on the camera tracking and switched to manually clicking whenever I blinked. That fixed the problem, but at the same time it removed a lot of the immersion that makes the whole concept special in the first place. My bigger issue, though, was the story itself. For most of the game, I simply did not find it very interesting. It felt quite generic, and there was very little that made me genuinely curious about what was going to happen next. Since this is a game almost entirely carried by its narrative, that made most of the experience feel pretty flat to me. What did work was the final twist. That was the first moment where the story really caught my attention, and it completely changed the way I looked at everything that came before it. I think the ending is easily the strongest part of the game, the problem is that it is difficult for me to recommend an entire experience just because the ending is good. If I spend most of the game feeling uninterested, a strong payoff at the end can improve my opinion, but it cannot completely save the journey there. Before Your Eyes has a clever central mechanic and a very good ending, but for me the story in between was simply not engaging enough, a great idea, an effective ending, but an otherwise pretty average experience 5/10

I liked the concept of involuntary blinking cutting moments short. It's ok to not experience everything in life and appreciate what you have. However the writing in this is borderline sterile. The parents speak using perfect grammar and vocabulary. It's voice actors acting the part of parents. The dialogue has no real intimacy to it. The way a real parent talks to their real child.

the consensus is good apparently, still not the first indie I'd grab

If you take away the eye blinking mechanic, you're left with nothing more than an average story, a simplistic art style, and a decent enough soundtrack. The eye blinking mechanic itself is quite finicky to get to work just right, and it can break the flow of the game when you have to hit the Space bar to recalibrate it several times in a game that's shorter than 2 hrs. It's especially frustrating when it keeps not working correctly if you wear eyeglasses, as it tends to just count any slight movement as an eye blink and will move on to the next scene even though you didn't blink at all. I found the story predictable and generic. It's told in a way that tries to be sincere and seem deeper and more meaningful than it actually is, but in the end, none of the characters are detailed enough for them to come alive and feel distinct. Might be worth it for the gimmick if you get it at a heavy discount, it's pretty short and I did enjoy the soundtrack most of all.