REVIEW : When The Past Was Around (PC)
A story can be told in many ways and Mojiken Studio, with originality and courage, has chosen to follow a different path from the others. Music can convey indescribable emotions and, in this case, it will be the sweet and nostalgic melody of a violin to guide us.
When The Past Was Around is a graphic point and click adventure full of feelings. The hero is a young girl named Eda, uncertain about her future and lost in a myriad of thoughts; she always played the violin but suddenly it wasn’t enough for her anymore. Each note seemed empty and useless. Each string vibrated mechanically and no longer resonated with his soul.
The sweet relationship with the owl makes her discover new music, so sweet that she can touch the sky with a finger. The more he played, the more she felt close to him, like two magnets destined to attract each other. At the same time, fate drove them away, leaving some scattered feathers, extremely nostalgic notes and a visceral vacuum comparable to mourning. Eda, who felt she had found hope, was again lost in her tunnel of uncertainty. The game is, therefore, a story of acceptance, overcoming and flashbacks that are as amazing as they are painful.
The team probably wanted to project us into a purely interpretative context; we will never know, for example, why the man was represented in the form of an owl. Could this be a tactic to idealize Eda’s partner? Is there a symbolic and dreamlike meaning? We will never know.
As you can experiment with the demo, the man seems to disappear into thin air, leaving the poor woman destabilized and blinded by grief. The game will guide you into the past and will allow you to understand some dynamics that we, however, found unclear.
The plot is divided into five chapters that tell the story of the couple separated, with gameplay lasting about two hours. The setting sees typically familiar and everyday places with which to interact, following the classic style of a point and click.
The puzzles are very pleasant and simple, except for one puzzle that took us longer than expected. Do not expect headaches that make you squeeze your brains, but small intuitive riddles but stimulating in their genuineness. At the bottom of the screen, you can take advantage of an inventory which, by exploring the room, will collect the objects useful for the process of the plot. The use of the tools will be very simple and will not require more than two steps, as we could easily find in a classic point and click.
This is a two-hour experience, we prefer not to reveal further details, but we want to introduce you to the real strong point of this title. The designs are made entirely by hand and won us over by the trailer, thanks to a palette of soft and relaxing colours. The game is an interactive graphic novel in all respects, enriched by a musical framework that is made up of different tones based on the emotions generated.
This title demonstrates how sometimes it is useless to aim for scenes full of dialogue: making the right chords vibrate, albeit with simplicity, allows you to create a harmony with the player. The sweetest moments will be tinged with shades as wonderful as the summer breeze, while the most painful situations will be surrounded by darker shades that will still be able to guide and involve us all the time.
The music sector is wonderful, but we must expose you a detail that we have noticed. When the girl or the owl plays the violin, you can click in time on some notes that will come out of the instrument. We did not find sound compatibility with the background song: the notes produced through our clicks were slightly out of tune and, in the end, did not have much musical coherence.
We would have preferred an interaction similar to a rhythm game: in this way, clicking on the floating notes would have given more completeness and fun to the interaction. However, we appreciated the talent of composer Masdito Itou Bachtar, because he gave a splendid light to the gaming experience and made the most of the music, the undisputed protagonist.
Our test carried out on Steam generally went well but we faced a rather tedious bug: in some situations it happened that the image enlarged on Eda in an anomalous way, preventing us from any kind of interaction. We were able to proceed by clicking several times in random places on the map, otherwise, we would have to restart the game and probably repeat the chapter from the beginning. We show you a screenshot to make you better understand the problem.
As you could have guessed, the game is devoid of any dialogue, but the interface enjoys the localization in Italian. When The Past Was Around, on the whole, is truly enjoyable, thanks to praiseworthy musical and artistic details. Mojiken Studio, however, has transmitted some uncertainties about the plot: the base is excellent and has an emotional component that does not leave you indifferent but the story, however sweet and exciting, is confusing. We would have preferred an interpretation work on the final, with a clear story that did not make us conclude with further doubts.
We particularly appreciated the resolution of some defects, found especially in the free prologue available on Steam.
In conclusion, some points such as longevity, unclear history and technical details have slightly penalized a game that could be defined as a small artistic and videogame masterpiece.
However, When The Past Was Around is a pleasant, sweet and strongly poetic adventure. Music speaks and replaces dialogues, delighting us with sweet notes with a melancholy imprint. It is a story about a separation that, albeit with different nuances, can dig into our memories and our wounds, even though they seem healed.
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