Blink: Before Your Eyes Review

Ever played through a game by just blinking? Yes, that's right - BLINKING.

Before Your Eyes developed by Goodbye World Games and published by Skybound Games is an hour long narrative, indie game you can download on Steam. It's a first-narrative adventure where you control the story - and affect its outcomes - with your real-life blinks.

It's only an hour long - based on my experience - it could be longer for others, I can't tell for sure but let's talk about this game and see why it's worth giving a go.

How it works

The game relies on your real-life blinks in order to progress the narrative/story. Yes, a webcam is required and yes the game uses the webcam to track your blinking. We've experienced games using webcams to track movement for the game but, personally, this blinking thing is something I've never experienced before. It's pretty straightforward and you do calibrate the webcam how to best detect your blinking.

The Story & The Game

The story begins after death, and embraces the myth-centered scenario of being ferried into the afterlife. This mythical ferryman helps you to pass on, but before that you must go through and relive key memories to figure out the meaning of your life. These scenarios play out in your screen and when you blink it will fast forward to a different time - how long into the future is uncertain.

It's such an experience as it really gives you that challenge of holding on to the memories by not blinking but eventually time comes up and you have to skip the memory. It's interesting, and maybe it's also an inspiration for this game, how the metaphor "Life passes in a blink of an eye" applies to this experience. It's emotional, it's personal and it touches on matters of family, aspirations and friendships. I will be lying if I said it didn't make me think or reflect on my own life experiences; choices, memories, perspectives.

Mechanics

There's nothing to it. It's a narrative adventure and you blink through to the end of it. I do have to say, it's best to spend time calibrating blink sensitivity of your game because I honestly had a difficult time not blinking and really experience each moment of the game. I had to cheat just to find out more details about some scenarios because I really wanted to know more of the story, because god damn it I blinked twenty thousand times. See candid photo below. 

That could be one downside of the game: not being able to fully experience everything because of the blinking challenge. But I guess that's the point of the game, that we can't hold on to the past no matter how we try. In any case, there are other interactions that require the mouse, not just the eyes but for the most part blinking is required to progress the game.

Why you should try it

The past couple of weeks, I've been searching for games that would replicate the feelings I had when I completed other story-rich games in the past like Kingdom Hearts, Hellblade: Senua, Titanfall2 and the list goes on really. My goal was to find something that would "touch" my heart since some of the games I've been playing prior had been competitive, etc. and I've been going into derealization a bit.

If you're looking for something that would give you a nice little warm feeling at the end, or a change in perspective about life as it is, or even just an intimate, immersive experience to get away from busy, noisy things... Before Your Eyes can be a nice escape.

*btw it's on sale on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1082430/Before_Your_Eyes/