izigame.me

This is going to go some places and get a little personal.
When I was a teenager, I met a group of people from all over the world because we had a shared interest in a sci-fi manga. We talked about it, wrote about it, made our own fantastical stories. They had to do with other realities and other versions. Loss and love and friendship. Life and uncertainty. Humanity persevering in the face of impossible odds...and sometimes failing, but starting again. People doing the wrong thing wanting to fix the world, rebuilding and recovering. Destroying everything, unintentionally, because you love someone, and you want them to be happy.
We wrote these stories for many years. Sometimes, someone would fall out of touch. Sometimes, that was me. We'd always reunite eventually. Sometimes it took years, but at the end, I kept reuniting with my friends from all over the world. We would write again, a little more wise, a little more grown, and we would catch up. We would make each other things for our birthdays and share our heartaches. We would play silly games and cry when things were rough. I was grateful to them in so many ways. I think they taught me about myself, and I hope I did a little in return. I admired the way they crafted stories, the way they'd create. How much I learned about places I had never been, about concepts I had never learned of. I treasured it.
Nowadays, it's harder. We're all grown up. We haven't written together in some time, and more than that we've all been busy with our own lives. And last year, the last message I received from one of them was horribly distressing. "If I die," she said. "We're being bombed, so if I die," she said. I asked for her to check in, when she could. She hasn't.
She was always so kind to me. We were around the same age, but she felt so much older. Whenever I was afraid or insecure, I felt I could go to her, and we would figure it out, together. She went through some rough times. When I drifted, I became afraid I'd never talk to her again. I was so relieved that was proven false.
And now, here I am again. I barely spoke in our chat, in fear of her possibly last message being swallowed up by time. No one else did, either. I think, perhaps, we were all some level of scared of that. I may be presuming too much. I'd been afraid to reach out to any of them, on the chance they may have heard something horrible. I'd been afraid to message her, on the chance that I never get a response. I was afraid, stuck in the past, feeling pain whenever I thought of those happy times we had together growing up. Afraid that, after all the starting and stopping, it was over, because one of them was gone.
I picked up this game on a whim. The sale was there, and I liked what I saw of the teaser trailer. I was stretching my funds, but I felt like I had to get it. And then, I started playing on a whim as well. I don't know when I realized this felt like something my friends and I would write together. I don't know when I started seeing parallels and connections, reflections of stories we told in our youth. I just know that, at my first time through Chapter 4, when I was ugly crying, I felt like I was writing with them again. For a brief moment, I wondered if someone I knew was a part of it.
They aren't. I know that. But I've played at every chance I could, because I wanted to see the end of the story. Because it felt like, for one last time - whether it's because one of them is gone, because we've all grown too busy, because we've all grown up - I would get to write with all of my friends. Because I know they would love this story, and it felt like a way to be close to them.
Before I finished the game, I messaged my friend who left what could be her last message in our chat. I haven't heard back. I don't know if I will. But I've wanted to, since I got that message. I was afraid. Far too afraid. But, Until Then helped me be not afraid. Because even if I never get a message back, at least I tried. At least I have hope that somehow, somewhere, she could know I'm thinking about her.
I think this game has started to heal a deep scar in me. Or, at the very least, it's let me take a look at it and understand I can't keep being like I am. Stuck, waiting, in hibernation.
Please forgive my meandering. If you have read this, a memoir and a eulogy for people you've never met wrapped in a review, thank you. And, if any of you are out there right now, reading this, I love you. Thank you for being a part of my life. Everything that happened mattered.
That's what playing Until Then meant to me. Polychroma Games, thank you. I don't know if I've managed to express how grateful I am, but please: Thank you, from the very bottom of my heart.