[Game Review] What Never Was

It feels disingenuous to review What Never Was just as it feels disingenuous to call it a game.  What it is more than anything is a playable demo, a proof of concept, or a teaser.  In What Never Was you play as a young woman who is burdened with packing away her late grandfather's things from his attic, but what you find is essentially a puzzle.  Journal entries can be found around the small attic, and it becomes quickly apparent there is a mystery to be solved, something started by your grandfather that you have unknowingly inherited.

The game plays much like most escape-the-room type games do, albeit without the central drama encouraging you the need for escape.  Escaping is not the central goal here, but mechanically it works very similar.  You look around the small room for interactable objects and try to see what changes you can make to them, slowly progressing towards some sort of solved state that then redirects you to another object in the room.  All the while, through journal entries and the proposed solutions to the puzzle-objects in the attic, a story is being alluded to you, one of your grandfathers obsession of mystical objects and runes that carry some significance you can't quite grasp.

And grasp you shan't, because this game is a teaser for a game that hasn't so much as announced its development, which makes you wonder if there is a follow up at all.  The game is apparently made by one or two individuals (one, by my rudimentary research), and for a first release the game shows some promise.  There is a Myst quality to the grandfather's brief tape recording that got me thinking of Atrus, and I was hoping to learn of other worlds, but the game is too short to make anything of its allusions.  There's the usual amateurish rough edges here and there - stiff voice acting, repeated lines to the point of annoyance, rough looking 3D models - but given the context these are things you shouldn't really judge it on.  They are necessary stepping stones, and as the game was released for free you can hardly judge them for not spending the money to refine what they have.  The price equally indicates my feeling that this is more a proof-of-concept than a game, and reinforcing this is the fact the game can be completed, all achievements collected, in about 30 min.

I went in expecting a walking simulator, and was surprised to be given a puzzle game, but the puzzles aren't worth much.  I have a general rule of thumb that I try to review everything I play so long as I beat them, but here I feel a bit of mixed feelings.  The game is apparently not finished, and not meant to be taken under critical consideration, but it also represents a promise to a final product (in theory), and that promise is not particularly well made.  I'd be interested in seeing what the end result is simply because I've played the teaser already and have some kind of minimum level of investment, but the game shows little in the way of promise that it will be anything better.  The puzzles were obvious, the plot muddied with mysticism that didn't indicate much depth, and the one thing it may stand on is its atmosphere, which isn't great but is worth mentioning as a positive.  That said, I have good will towards the developers for releasing this for free.  It makes it harmless, which is furthered by its short length.  While I found nothing particularly noteworthy in the game itself, it doesn't mean the premise couldn't be worked into something interesting in the future.  Four elements are discussed within the game's mythos, and if those represented, say, four major segments of a full release, each with major puzzles spread out over a world, I would definitely be down for that.  As such, despite no evidence to convince me, there are enough elements here that I've convinced myself into anticipation.  As much as I would like to give the game a rating for posterity, so I could look back and know what I felt at the time (the primary reason for this blog), I would feel guilty if I did when the game is simply not asking for it.  So I'll leave this score-less, and say I don't think it's worth playing, but it is worth looking forward to whatever these developers work on next.