Having seen some seriously messed up events over the course of my lifetime, and the evolution of how people have tended to deal with them, the world is a bit of a broken place, for sure. People seem to have become increasingly good at compartmentalizing things like pain, and things like social media and cell phones have proven to be great tools of distraction. Until Then is an odd, and at times quite dark, exploration of all the above, mixing together the mundane, the horrible, a bit of love, and how modern life can somehow be all of these things in parallel.

What first struck me about the title was actually its visual style, which generally leans into pixel art, but by adding movement to it, as well as some layers, there’s just something more striking about it. I suppose I’ve gotten lulled into thinking games with a more narrative focus must somehow be bland more often than not, so here the effort was a pleasant surprise. What also got me was that the characters, on the whole, just tended to feel more organic and genuine than I’m used to. Interactions feel more honest rather than forced, and that also helped to suck me in. There’s also then the mystery of the game, and working to discover the truth, but even before that ramped up I was already charmed, which is unusual for the genre. 

That isn’t to say I didn’t run into some problems. Twice I somehow managed to get myself locked up when interacting with social media within the game. I was searching around, reading through people’s posts, and somehow I got to a screen that I then couldn’t back out of, no matter what I did. Thankfully in neither instance did I lose any meaningful progress, but it was an odd issue to run into. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I also wish some of the stretches without really having any choices weren’t as long or frequent. Thankfully the experience as a whole isn’t as much of a slog to read through, but a reduction in the illusion of being on rails at times would have been nice.

Even so, this felt like a case where the ride was justified. Perhaps it takes a little too long at the beginning, feeling a bit more ordinary, before drawing the player in, but that can be a matter of taste. Regardless, in terms of character and world building, Until Then feels like it’s a step above many of its competitors, and that’s before taking into account its more striking visual style as well. If you’re a fan of story-driven fare, this is one of the stronger choices out there.