Until Then (Switch)

Until Then is best described as an emotive slice-of-life pixel-art adventure-romance, but given the many novel touches contained within, it really deserves a genre all its own. 

Playing as an introverted student named Mark Borja, you find yourself living a lonely life beset by disappointment. Your father is working away and has few chances to visit, your application to a piano school is rejected and there's a very present atmosphere of depression from the off, thanks in no small part to the opening text and the melancholy piano accompaniment. But where this could be an off-putting introduction, the game immediately impresses with a smart bit of interaction. Pressing the "Start" button makes a buzzing noise, but nothing happens. Repeated pressing reveals that you're playing as the alarm clock, and you have to keep buzzing until Mark wakes up and turns you off. 

This thoughtful interaction permeates the game, it's a wonderful series of off-kilter interactions that surprise and delight as you make your way through the game, with Mark's emotional journey providing a strong through-line from which they all hang comfortably. And despite the supernatural nature of the game, which includes a catastrophe called "The Ruling" that causes global disasters and people who vanish, or remember things from the future. It's all very timey-wimey and ruddy mysterious, which just makes it all the better to dive into.

Relationships are wonderfully realised throughout the game, everything feels genuine, even the heartbreak

Mark's not alone either, the cast of the game make up the bulk of its charm - Ridel, Cathy and Louise are all people you can imagine hanging out with, and every teenage romance needs an outlier to throw harmony out of whack, which in this game is enabled by transfer student Nicole.

You'll spend hours interacting with the cast, on the phone, hanging out at various locales and shooting the breeze as only teenagers do - nothing really matters but everything is important, that pull-push time of your life when you're just discovering which way is up and trying to make life changing decisions when you're least capable of making them, pumped full of hormones and dragged through new experiences as you are. 

You can influence events and lend your voice to Mark by picking responses to events around you, the phone chat mechanic allowing you to not only connect to any of your friends, but also click on profiles, like posts and read articles, just as you might do in your own life. It's all been set up to create a level of reality that effortlessly draws you in but also slyly feed you narrative without beating you over the head with it. It's not often a video game is actually subtle.

It deals with many of today's themes too in ways that feel natural - sexuality, depression, abandonment and rejection are all deftly worked into Mark's world, your mission as a player being to guide him through as best you can and try to find the best outcome. You have to really nudge him there too, there's little overt control of what Mark says and does, you just have to choose his replies and priorities and hope both he and the story take the path you'd like them to. Much like life, really.

The game boasts around 20 hours of playtime, so when you think you've beaten it in 10, stick with it as there's more to come. The game is clever in its use of narrative timelines and without wanting to spoil the story, you'll want to play again. There are multiple endings, including a "true" ending, so keep going - the game makes it worth your while.

Until Then's retro pixel art-style is effortlessly cool, it's a world I loved spending time in (pixel art is my weakness) but coupled with the characters, music, storyline and feelings of attachment it'll almost certainly engender, the whole world is an addictive teen drama far better than anything you'll find on telly.

Much has been made of the Filipino cultural integration within the game and its accuracy, but I have no connection to it so can't really comment on this aspect. I will say that, much like when I became fascinated by Japan, the difference in culture is noticeable, though many similarities remain - humans are humans after all. 

So what we have here is more than a visual novel but less than an action game, it's witty, charming, inventive and - at times - heartbreaking. Much like your favourite novels, it's good enough to become a cultural touchstone, in much the same way as I quote books to friends when making a point or citing something inspiring or thoughtful, Until Then has many such moments that can ignite a spark of insight or example of an approach you might wish to share with others. It's a wonderful and unique game, and all credit to the developers for bringing it to Switch where it might find a larger (and likely unprepared) audience that has never seen its like before.