Until Then attracted me so swiftly with its Pixel Art animations. I knew I had to download it as soon as I saw the trailer. After playing the Demo for 2 hours, here's my First Impression Review!
"Until Then" follows Mark, a normal student who goes to school, hangs out with friends, has a crush, and plays Piano.
The game plays like an adventure game, though the story progresses like a Visual Novel. There are times when you get multiple choices, but most of the time you'll use a keyboard and mouse to move around and interact with people and objects to move the story forward.
Here's the Game's Steam Page!
The story begins in the protagonist's room and teaches you the controls by as he wakes up and changes clothes. This is where you get introduced to the game's unique visual quirks and dynamic camera. Until Then puts 2D Pixel Art characters and objects on a 3D screen with beautiful lighting effects. Everything is animated well, resulting in a beautiful package.
After a quick mini-game of buttoning Mark's shirt, the game opens its story. Mark has forgotten to do his part on the school project and thus he has to cram it in at the last minute with his friend. The situation is explained organically in a way that made me laugh more than once.
There are various choices for dialog that showcase different sides of Mark's personality or his friends. Mark is awkward and lazy. Ryan loves sports. Louise is smart and mysterious. I like Cathy. Everyone has a crush on Louise, Playing this game felt like watching a slice-of-life anime.
At certain points, you get to explore the Internet through Mark's phone. Through there I realized, there's an interesting lore for this game, the story is set in the Philippines in 2015. Some earthquakes have happened recently. (Which is apparently true to the real world.)
The story reminded me of my college days, especially Mark's conversations with his friends while cramming up for their project, and after school when discussing crushes with Cathy.
The main events in the demo are mostly about things normal high-schoolers experience. School Projects, Romance, Chess Championships, Planning Parties. However, that's not everything. There's a hint of supernatural during more than a few conversations.
Louise keeps mentioning that it rained recently while Marks proves that it hasn't. There's a sense of Deja-Vu in many conversations and some close-up camera shots were intentionally eerie. I don't know if the full game will go the supernatural route, but it certainly could.
There were unexpected emotional moments such as when the bubbly girl Sofia received a call from her family about her grandmother. Louise consoled her before she went. I loved that scene.
The ending scene in which they talked about rain is also great and felt like the end of a prologue to a long story. That one scene reminded me of my college days. One of my life's most memorable moments was talking with a friend under the rain.
For the few complaints I have about Until Then, I felt the typing mechanic was a bit slow. If it is made faster, I believe it'll be more fun while keeping the novelty of it.
I also had a tough time playing the fishball picking mini-game. An Easy Mode or a Story Mode that lets you skip mini-games might be a good idea.
Those are my only complaints about the Demo. I believe everything else plays beautifully well!
What Do You Think?
This demo was one of the few Demos I tried out of 1000+ demos offered on Steam Next Fest, and I'm happy that I got to experience it. The demo ended on a mysterious end-point.
The fact that this game is set in the Philippines makes me happy, even though I don't have anything to do with the Philippines. I like seeing game projects in uncommon countries like these.
I downloaded the Demo during the Steam Next Fest and I don't know if it'll be around after the Fest's duration. If it's still around, you could download it via the Steam page for "Until Then." The game is also set to be released on PS5.
- First Image is taken from the game's Facebook page. All animated screenshots were recorded by me. - People who supported me in some way recently @jongolson, @magnacarta and @smjn share 6% of this post's rewards. Become a Supporter Now!