Review: Your Future Self (2018)

Original post: https://misthold.dreamwidth.org/9163.html

Your Future Self (2018) is an interactive fiction game set in the future, post-worldwide catastrophe. You play as a genderless protagonist trapped in a time loop, ordered to convince your future self not to commit a terrible crime.

It's a very intriguing storyline, with very simple gameplay. You're trying to match up your dialogue choices with the current mindset of your future self: the more matches you get, the more they trust you and the further you can go into the game. But it's not that easy!

There's another group outside of your area trying to make contact, and of course the time loop keeps resetting. Each replay has similar dialogue but slightly different emotional variations, which makes it tricky to get 100% right.

I don't want to spoil it too much, but the ending was unexpected! I liked how the game sort of subverted whatever standard story expectations I might've had. That said, I don't particularly understand what gaining insight points did, since “leveling up” didn't seem to do anything. And failing dialogue options still gave the same dialogue information, I just had to loop a few more times until I got the right correct percentage.

Also didn't much enjoy the graphics. The old school computer style was really neat, but there was a LOT of flickering and juddering, even after turning it “off” in the settings. After an hour or so of playing, my eyes were NOT happy with me.

Still, it's a neat little game with some clever twists.

Price: $2.99

Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. I played the Mac version.