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It’s truly a beautiful soundtrack.īut Before Your Eyes isn’t just about music and art it’s about love and family. I spoke with the game’s composer, Oliver Lewin, who mentioned some of the inspirations that went into the soundtrack – Joe Hisaishi, Philip Glass, Nico Muhly, Aphex Twin, Chihei Hatakeyama – but he’s very much made it his own. It flows from moment to moment, with every piece of music creating the perfect backdrop for the action on-screen. But it’s the smaller, more delicate moments that make this ordinary family feel extraordinary.Įvery element of Before Your Eyes fits together like a jigsaw, but its soundtrack really impressed me. Without spoiling any more of the story, you’ll realise during your playthrough that things haven’t always been easy for this family, and Benny is often under a lot of pressure. Benny’s mother wishes to be a composer to impress her own father and you’ll learn that she wishes for you to be a musical prodigy as well. Watching Benny’s first memories feels like the perfect way to become invested in his life.īefore Your Eyes focuses a lot on two creative mediums – music and painting – and you’ll collaborate with Benny as he learns about both of these things, blinking to help him choose what he wants his painting to look like or following along with his music. And as we get older those memories fade a bit more. We might remember some things about our 10th birthday party, for example, but likely not every detail from the day. It feels like an authentic depiction of the way that people remember things. You don’t even get to see full rooms, only small areas with black around the outside. What’s really intriguing about Before Your Eyes is that, as you begin, you’re only getting brief moments to learn about the character. Your name is Benny and the game starts off at the very beginning of your life on your first birthday. He picks and chooses souls based on a ‘hunch’ and presents them to an almighty being by telling her the story of their life. He’s a story teller of sorts in charge of guiding souls to what is implied is the ‘afterlife’. But you won’t be getting the real, authentic experience this way.Īs Before Your Eyes begins, you’ll meet a strange creature on a boat. While the test worked pretty well for me and I only had to recalibrate twice, if you find that it doesn’t for you there is an option to turn off the blinking mechanic altogether and play with a mouse click instead. It’s easy to do as you can access the test with one button click, but players may get frustrated having to recalibrate two or three times during their short playthrough. There were also a couple of times I moved only slightly and I had to recalibrate. It’s worth mentioning that the test often detected extra blinks when I was wearing my glasses, so some players may have a bit of trouble with this. If you wear glasses, you have a darker room or you aren’t able to sit right in the centre of your webcam, the game can then compensate for those things. The point of the test is to make sure that the game recognises the factors in your room that may be interfering with how the webcam reads your blinks.
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From there the game will try to detect your blinks and you’ll let it know how accurate it is. It asks you to centre your head in front of your camera and blink a few times. Don’t worry, it’s not the kind of test you can fail. Since Before Your Eyes relies on your webcam, there’s a calibration test to start off. Read more: An Interview With Before Your Eyes’ Developers, a Game You Control by Blinking Blink too early and you just might miss something – but that’s the beauty of the game it’s all about fleeting memories and moments. The game follows a boy throughout his life and the player’s blinks moves the timeline forward between each important memory. But it’s the game’s mechanic that really sets it apart: with a webcam connected to your PC, you control the game by blinking. Judging it by its trailer, you’d be forgiven for thinking Before Your Eyes looks like a typical ‘walking simulator’. But Before Your Eyes from GoodbyeWorld Games really wants to stand out for being extraordinary. That’s why we have genres of games that have similar mechanics and why, when we play games, we’re reminded of others. Sure, there have been plenty of innovative games over the years, but very few truly try something completely different. It’s very rare that a video game does something entirely new that’s never been done before.