Until Then [Review]
Cinematic adventure Until Then is an emotional gut punch.
Until Then. Credit: Polychroma Games, Maximum Entertainment
Published by Maximum Entertainment and developed by Polychroma Games in the Philippines, Until Then is a cinematic adventure game. It’s hard to not compare it to the recent 1000xRESIST, but Until Then is its own beast with great emotional depth and resonant themes. I’m thankful we’re getting to feast on such fantastic narrative-focused experiences so close together. Until Then packs an emotional punch and shouldn’t be overlooked.
It’s 2014, and just months before, the world suffered a global catastrophe known as the Ruling. Natural disasters struck places around the globe simultaenously, leaving many countries devastated. Areas in the Philippines were struck by an 8.2 magnitude earthquake and a destructive hurricane that caused many to become refugees in their own country, and reconstruction is ongoing. Mark Borja’s city was largely unaffected. He’s a high school student living a strained academic life, living alone because his parents work abroad. On an otherwise normal day, Mark is rushing to complete an assignment imminently due and running through the halls when he accidentally collides with Nicole, a girl who just transferred to the school from an area struck by the Ruling. This chance meeting sets off a series of events that reveal that something strange is happening with their reality.
Until Then. Credit: Polychroma Games, Maximum Entertainment
Gameplay focuses entirely on narrative. You walk through different environments, interact with and observe objects, and talk to people around you. The game is linear. You get taken from location to location as the narrative requires. You’ll often get choices in actions or dialogue, but they don’t seem to have any effect on the story’s outcome. The only exception to this style of gameplay are a handful of minigames, but more on those later.
Parts of the story happen on Mark’s smartphone, as he texts with friends, browses social media, and reads emails, an element of the game that’s impressively designed and implemented. When it’s your turn to send a message, you often get to make a choice of what you’d like to say, and then as you hold a button to type the message, you see in real time how Mark types, deletes, and edits what he’s going to send. I loved that detail; it reveals more about the internal struggles and mindset of the character. Seeing that the other person is “typing” creates a feeling of suspense, especially as you get into Mark’s head. Messages from different people and groups will come in, complete with onscreen notifications, letting you carry on multiple conversations at once, including sidebars with people already present in an active group thread.
Until Then. Credit: Polychroma Games, Maximum Entertainment
The phone’s social media feed is a functional Facebook clone, with the ability to like or comment on posts, which will sometimes have consequences. You can follow links you find in the feed to read web pages, including news articles that will give you deeper insight into what’s going on in the game’s fictional version of the Philippines.
While Until Then is ultimately a science fiction story, it’s just as much a slice of life story about a teenager that struggles with love, loss, and friendship. Mark goes to school and worries about his grades, meets friends at a carnival or the local convenience store, goes shopping for something to wear for prom. He sits in the principal’s office trying to talk to Nicole, whose art project he’s just ruined. He practices piano to audition for a spot in his school’s piano club. Mark makes dinner and takes out the trash as he thinks about his parents that are working on the other side of the world. All the while, Mark must also decide how he interacts with his friends, supports them or doesn’t, and how he can be a better person.
Until Then. Credit: Polychroma Games, Maximum Entertainment
To that end, all the minigames in Until Then always deal with the mundane and are always connected with story, characters, or culture. For example, Mark will converse with his friends when they compete in carnival games, or have a contest to skewer fish balls at a street food vendor’s cart. Later on, practicing the piano will include a Guitar Hero style music game. The one that was the nicest surprise was a minigame that could have been plucked right out of Rhythm Heaven about passing passengers’ fare forward to a bus driver.
Until Then features simple 3D environments with pixel art textures and is populated with 2D, pixellated, low-res characters. Character sprites are large and very expressive, animated for every action they take in the game. Earlier I called the game a cinematic adventure, and it is. The camera will get in closer or change angles within the game’s environment, but the game will often go to closeups or detailed cutaways that are fully rendered and animated with pixel graphics. The artists working at Polychroma clearly understand film language and use it to full effect within the graphical style of the game to create moments of emotion and drama. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of the game’s characters is a budding filmmaker.
Until Then. Credit: Polychroma Games, Maximum Entertainment
I didn’t know anything about Until Then or its structure going in, and the less said, the better. I was genuinely shocked by events far into my playtime, and was totally surprised by the direction the game actually went. The only negative aspect of the game’s novel structure is that unobservant or impatient players may miss crucial and substantive parts of Until Then.
Until Then is a must play. Everything about it—the quality of its writing, its emotionally resonant narrative, its unique setting and cultural context, the visual presentation—is excellent. Like 1000xRESIST, this game uses the language of its genre and medium to give its story an impact that would not be possible in the same way in another medium. I can’t wait to see what the team at Polychroma does next.
Until Then is available now on PC (Steam) and PlayStation 5.
Overall Score: 9/10
Played on: Steam Deck
