When The Past Was Around
Last updated: 2025-12-30
- Emotional storytelling through stunning visuals
- Beautiful hand-drawn art style captivates
- Captivating soundtrack enhances emotional depth
- Tedious gameplay mechanics slow progress
- Short playtime reduces overall value
- Technical issues and bugs disrupt experience
Emotions
Players consistently praise the game's artistic and auditory design, highlighting its beautiful visuals, soundtrack, and emotional storytelling. The integration of music and art to convey deep themes without dialogue is a recurring cause for admiration, along with the game's attention to detail and philosophical depth.
The game evokes nostalgia through its themes of love, loss, and memory, often reminding players of personal experiences or other beloved games. Its portrayal of past relationships, shared moments, and the bittersweet nature of recollection resonates deeply, creating an emotional connection to the characters' journeys.
Players report frustration due to confusing or illogical puzzle design, unresponsive controls, and technical issues like bugs, performance problems, or lack of autosave features. The game's difficulty spikes, obscure mechanics, and occasional lack of emotional payoff despite personal relevance also contribute to this emotion.
The game's narrative, centered on grief, loss, and irreversible separation, elicits strong emotional reactions, often reducing players to tears. The portrayal of the protagonist's visible grief and the tragic, unresolved nature of the story amplify this emotion, making it deeply personal for many players.
Players express disappointment when the game fails to meet expectations in storytelling, emotional depth, or technical execution. Common causes include rushed endings, shallow symbolism, repetitive puzzles, and unpolished elements like poor audio balance or abrupt narrative twists that undermine the experience.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 89% · Negative 11%. Score: 11 / 100
Positives:
- The game excels in conveying deep emotions without dialogue, using illustrations, symbols, and music to tell a resonant story about grief, love, and loss. Players consistently praised its ability to evoke strong feelings through subtle narrative techniques.
- The game’s hand-drawn visuals were widely praised for their warmth, detail, and ability to complement the emotional tone. The art style enhances the storytelling and creates a cozy, immersive atmosphere.
- The soundtrack, particularly its violin themes, was highlighted as a key element in enhancing the game’s emotional depth. Players noted how the music perfectly complemented the narrative and evoked strong feelings.
- The game effectively explores themes of grief, loss, and moving forward, resonating deeply with players. Its portrayal of these emotions was described as comforting, hopeful, and beautifully executed.
Negatives:
- Certain mechanics, like clicking musical notes or backtracking for puzzles, are described as slow, tedious, or poorly paced. Some interactions lack polish or feel forced.
- The game’s length (~1.5 hours) is frequently cited as too short for its price, leaving players feeling underwhelmed. Many refunded the game or questioned its replayability due to the brief experience.
- Players encountered progression-blocking bugs, softlocks, and crashes, particularly with puzzles or fast interactions. Some issues were fixed in updates, but others persist, like resolution problems on ultrawide monitors.
- Characters lack backstory, depth, or meaningful development, making it hard for players to connect with them. Symbolism (e.g., feathers, music notes) is criticized as shallow or underutilized.
- The game lacks reliable autosaves, forcing players to restart chapters or scenes if they quit. Fixed save points and irregular autosaves lead to unnecessary repetition.
Gameplay:
- The game is primarily a point-and-click adventure with puzzle-solving mechanics integrated into its narrative. Players interact with objects, solve logical puzzles, and progress through rooms or scenes, often involving backtracking or item collection.
- Puzzles range from straightforward to moderately challenging, often requiring logical thinking, item interaction, or symbolic interpretation (e.g., musical notes, clocks, or safes). Some puzzles involve note-taking or creative problem-solving.
- While not a traditional hidden object game, some mechanics involve finding or interacting with hidden items or details. These elements are often tied to achievements or narrative depth rather than core progression.
- The game emphasizes a strong, emotional narrative told through chapters, often without dialogue. The story focuses on themes like grief, memory, and acceptance, using visuals, music, and puzzles to convey its message.
- The game is relatively short, typically completed in 2-3.5 hours, but offers replayable chapters, achievements, and optional content to extend engagement. Some players may find the length appropriate for its narrative focus.
Performance:
- Persistent resolution/zoom issues (partially fixed in updates) and screen setting bugs affect visual clarity. Some players needed restarts to resolve these problems mid-gameplay.
- Softlocks during the prologue and after extended play sessions (e.g., 50 minutes) force players to restart, breaking progression. These bugs severely impact core gameplay.
- Players report unregistered playtime and unresponsive controls on Steam Deck, impacting handheld gaming experience. These issues persist despite hardware optimization efforts.
- Unprocessed screen edges and filter-related glitches on ultrawide monitors disrupt immersion. These issues are specific to non-standard aspect ratios and may require UI scaling fixes.
- Broken achievements and lack of Steam Cloud sync disrupt completionists and players who switch devices. These features are expected in modern PC releases.
Recommendations:
- The game is highly recommended for players who enjoy emotional, story-rich experiences with puzzles, particularly fans of point-and-click or indie games. Comparisons to titles like 'Florence' and 'Journey' highlight its appeal to those seeking deep, introspective storytelling.
- Many reviews suggest buying the game, particularly at a discounted price, due to its high storytelling quality and emotional impact. The short duration is offset by its value as a one-time, immersive journey.
- The game’s themes of loss and grief may be triggering for some players, particularly those with similar life experiences. Reviews caution against playing if these themes could be distressing.
- The game’s universal themes and accessible gameplay make it suitable for casual gamers, women, and those new to narrative-driven experiences. Its emotional depth and art style attract a diverse player base.
- The game’s soundtrack and artbook are highlighted as valuable standalone purchases, complementing its emotional and visual appeal. This adds extra value for fans of its aesthetic.
Miscellaneous:
- Developed by Mojiken Studio, an Indonesian indie studio known for hand-drawn art and emotionally driven narratives. Their collaboration with Toge Productions is also frequently noted.
- The game is often compared to titles like 'Gris' and 'Unpacking' for its emotional storytelling and artistic style. It also shares similarities with the studio's prior works, such as 'She and the Light Bearer'.
- Achievements are straightforward to unlock in a single playthrough, and the game's file size is noted as small, reminiscent of older or retro-style games.
- The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the game's development, leading the developers to shift its tone to be more uplifting and hopeful, reflecting a desire to provide comfort during challenging times.
- The main character, an owl man, is frequently described as visually appealing and memorable, contributing to the game's unique aesthetic and charm.
