Spoilers Ahead! (Before Your Eyes)
To better understand narrative architecture and interactive fiction, I played Before Your Eyes on my Windows computer, a $10 Steam game developed by GoodbyeWorld Games and published by Skybound Games. Throughout the game, the player walks around in the body of Benjamin Brynn, reliving his past life with the caveat that blinking advances time — ranging from a matter of minutes to a matter of years. I played the entirety of the game within two hours. The game on Steam can be found here: Game Link.
But before our game analysis, first, a mindmap from our sponsor. (me!)
Figure 1: Narrative Architecture mindmap
The game mainly utilizes Embedded Narrative, progressing the player through a pre-authored fixed storyline. This is because Benjamin’s life story is a complete, pre-written narrative that players uncover chronologically through the blinking mechanic, but (to my knowledge) there is no way of getting an “alternate” ending, nor is there a way to affect the plot to substantially modify the ending. However, the player has a bit of agency in telling the story that reaches this ending, such as deciding to call Chloe their “best friend” or “lover”, or accepting or declining a contract to become a paid artist. In this sense, the narrative may resemble a bit of an Enacting Narrative, since the player has control over certain decisions by blinking their eyes over a set position (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: A section of the game where you can blink over a certain area to interact with it
I would not categorize this game as either an Emergent Narrative (because of the fact that the player does not really define what the narrative is about), nor an Evocative Narrative (since the article describes evocative narratives as stories that “do not so much tell self-contained stories as draw upon our previously existing narrative competencies”, and this story is, as far as I can tell, original). Despite it not falling under this definition of an evocative narrative, however, the game definitely has its moments where it excels at evoking a certain mood within the player. I, for example, really felt captured by the last few moments when disease starting taking hold of Brynn (see Figures 3 and 4). The game’s designers did a great job at conveying what Brynn was internally feeling through a physical manifestation of his disease, and applied color theory and sound effects well to label this as an overwhelming threat.
Figures 3, 4: Brynn experiencing the physical manifestation of his disease
Out of the types of interactive fiction games, I would label this game as a Visual Novel, hinging on its little amount of player interaction to keep it from being a Kinetic Novel. Although player choice was not zero, the game unfolds in a very fixed, linear sequence with virtually no meaningful choices that change the plot. It creates the illusion of player autonomy through letting them make minute choices in the plot, until revealing that none of the initial playthrough was truth (as the player was making up their “ideal life” rather than their lived experiences). The wonderful part is that this game creates all of this through the sole mechanics of moving the mouse. This involves blinking in general, blinking over certain areas of the game, closing your eyes shut for a few seconds, etc. (see Figure 5)
Figure 5: A moment in the game with a “metronome”, where blinking skips an amount of time
Some aspects I loved about the game were its subtle use of color schemes to convey certain emotions (red = bad, blue = desolate, yellow = happy) (see Figures 6 and 7), forcing of the character to live out certain experiences (such as making the player type a self-deprecating letter as Brynn to show his self-hatred in Figure 6), and clever use of narrative devices to explain certain mechanics of the game. For example, in the game, it is revealed that the player’s lack of speech throughout the later part of the game is due to the fact that they fall ill and can no longer talk. I also liked how the mechanic of blinking was very explicitly stated in the game as something that would naturally occur when trying to re-imagine a lived life. These narrative explanations kept me immersed in the game, so that I could fully experience the story.
Figure 6, 7: Moments in the game with the same typewriter, but different vibes
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the main type of fun that I experienced while playing this game was through Narrative. The video game puts you into a situation at the very start of the game that is difficult to explain (who is the character in the boat? are you dead? who is the gatekeeper?), leading the player to explore the plot to discover what is happening. The game successfully put me in such a curious first-person state with just the right amount of player agency that I ultimately felt that I was Benjamin Brynn, experiencing feelings of happiness, grief, anger, and depression (see Figure 8 for a happy moment). I think that the familial bond is such a strong one, that I deeply resonated with all of the characters in the story. I could feel the sadness of the mother after failing to achieve her dreams, the grief that the father felt after the mother passed away, the self-hatred of Benjamin after realizing that his life had amounted to nothing, and the frustration of Chloe after not receiving any messages from Benjamin.
Figure 8: A moment where the player can “freely” paint onto a canvas! How charming…
In my game that I create for P2 (interactive fiction), I want to utilize some similar factors of plunging the player in media res, utilizing color to signify certain emotions, and making use of shared human experiences (family/friends) to create more emotional immersion. I do not want to force the player to commit to certain actions like this game, however, because I want there to be multiple endings (as a dating simulator). Ultimately, I would recommend Before Your Eyes for a captivating story and to gain some exposure to an interesting mechanic! My eyes hurt quite a bit by the time I finished the game.
