When the Past Was Around

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

When the Past Was Around, released on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2020, is a Graphic Adventure following a young woman as she reminisces about a past relationship, with players searching through each room looking for clues to find a hidden feather and unlock the next part of the story.

Probably the best part of this game is its charming, minimalist presentation. There’s no dialogue, and everything is a bit abstract, reinterpreting events in an almost dreamlike fashion. The visuals use a lovely hand-drawn 2D art style that’s crudely-animated, but pleasant nonetheless, and this is backed by a mellow acoustic soundtrack that fits the game well.

Unfortunately, I have some issues with the gameplay here. The puzzle consistency here feels like it’s all over the place, with some puzzles being mind-numbingly easy, and others requiring a cryptic reading of the information available to come to a conclusion. I felt myself bouncing back and forth between needing to put in no effort at all beyond clicking on everything in sight, and having to look up a walkthrough because I had no clue what I’m expected to do.

In addition to that, there’s no control scheme here that feels quite ideal. Using the gamepad works fine for the most par, but sometimes the cursor can feel a bit sluggish moving around the screen, and at times the screen can be picky where you need to click. Then there was one puzzle I simply could not figure out until I saw that it required using the right analog stick, something that nothing in the game made use of up to that point.

Conversely, players can opt to use the touchscreen, which at least on the surface seems much more ideal. However, this can make those tricky to click on areas even more tricky to click on due to the small size of the screen. Speaking of small screen size, some of the text you’ll need to read in this game is super-tiny, which is bad enough on a decent-size screen in docked mode, but agonizing in portable mode.

Finally, I should mention that this game is fairly short, and can be completed within just a few hours (unless you get stuck for a while and refuse to consult a walkthrough). The game’s low price of $8.50 offsets this a little, but this still seems a bit pricey for what’s on offer.

Overall, When the Past Was Around is a Graphic Adventure that has its fair share of good points, but it has seemingly an equal number of bad points too. The presentation is lovely, and the minimalist story is likely to appeal to some players, but the uneven puzzle design bounces between boredom and frustration, and the interface issues also contribute to frustration. In the end, this may be worth a look for fans of the genre looking for something relatively light, but most will find plenty of other better options on Nintendo Switch.

tl;dr – When the Past Was Around is a Graphic Adventure that has players exploring a girl’s past relationship in a dreamlike abstract story. The art and presentation here is quite nice, but the game has numerous puzzle design issues and interface issues that make this far more frustrating than it should be. This game has its good qualities, but there are much better games in this genre on the Nintendo Switch.

Grade: C

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