Before Your Eyes Review – An Emotional, Eye-Opening Experience

It is truly magical to blink for the first time before your eyes in Before Your Eyes. I don’t mean hitting a button to close your virtual eyes. Before Your Eyes uses a webcam to track your blinks and allows you progress through the wonderful narrative adventure game from GoodbyeWorld Games. While it might seem like a simple trick on the surface it is so cleverly used that it enhances already strong storytelling, that narrative adventure title fans will be wrong to dismiss it.

The role of Benjamin Brynn is that of a lonely soul, who has now passed away. At the beginning of the game, you encounter a canine ferryman who forces you to relive the events of Ben’s life, beginning at birth. All this is done to impress the Gatekeeper, who needs an honest evaluation of Ben’s character.  

By blinking when prompted, you’ll jump days, weeks, and sometimes years forward in Ben’s life. I’m impressed by how the game accurately recognizes eye-tracking. I never had an issue where a blink didn’t register or my camera needed recalibration. Eye tracking was a great tool for me. However, you may feel disoriented or uncomfortable. On that note, it’s good that there’s an option to play the entire game using traditional mouse clicks, but I think you’d be doing yourself a major disservice in doing so.

Before Your Eyes was played twice with blinks, the second using the mouse. I feel that the story is lost a lot of its magic when you use only traditional inputs. Closing your eyes, then opening them to a brand-new scene creates the awesome sensation that you’re reliving a life through an old-school View-Master toy. Ben’s memories are fleeting, and the mechanic sells that point perfectly. Although I did occasionally feel disappointed when I accidentally blinked and moved the story faster than I wanted, it was not a major problem. However, I didn’t mind it for long because I found that doing so lends to the game’s dreamlike quality and the sensation that even cherished memories eventually fade even – when we hope that they won’t.  

One of my favourite moments is when I close my eyes and allow my ears to hear the whispered conversation or my childhood best friend leave me a thoughtful note. It’s also just more fun to “look and blink” instead of pointing and clicking on objects. Even while playing with your eyes, you still use a mouse for other actions like connecting stars in the night sky to write a cosmic message or to keep in rhythm with a piano tempo. Although these interactions may seem simple, they are nonetheless quite enjoyable.  

No matter how you play, Before Your Eyes’ story is a heartfelt tale that had me close to tears at several points. Despite its pleasantly whimsical veneer, the narrative’s themes of depression and existentialism hit hard, as does understanding life’s meaning from the perspective of a person who, despite having a great family and being born with prodigious gifts, struggles to find personal fulfillment. Although the writing is honest and thoughtful, I found it hard to believe that this story would end in such a sweet way. 

Before Your Eyes features great characters. Ben’s parents, a caring yet demanding mother and a lovably goofy father, are sweethearts. The same goes for Chloe, your mischievous neighbor who comes off as a genuinely endearing kid you can’t help but want to impress and hang out with. It was surprising how quickly I felt attached to the cast. However, the excellent performances and the well-written dialogue did their job and made me feel comfortable with the characters.   

Throughout the story you’ll make some choices, but I was disappointed in how little they impact the overall narrative. Don’t stress too much over whether to sneak out with your friend or get much-needed sleep for your big piano recital; this is one of those games where you’re merely choosing what colors to paint the road as opposed to creating whole new paths. Since the game only takes about an hour or so to get through, it’s worth replaying just to see a few of those scenes, but I wish my decisions had more weight given the large number of choices presented.

Before Your Eyes’ story left me reeling by the end, and it’s a memorable journey worth going out of your way to play. It’s rare to find many first-of-a kind experiences in video games, but Before Your Eyes does a great job of executing its main hook. It’s a concept I’d love to see further explored in a follow-up, and I couldn’t be happier that something like this exists.