Bury Me, My Love

[DisturbedSwan]

This is definitely one of the more unusual games I've played. 

 

It's a visual novel but set out in the style of a text conversation with some modern day smartphone features like pictures, GPS coordinates, maps etc. too. It plays out in real time (you can adjust this if you want to speed up the story) with you acting as Majd and typing his responses, chatting to his wife/girlfriend Nour.

 

It tells the story of a refugee escaping the Syrian Civil War and attempting to travel into Europe so on the face of it you'd think the story would be pretty grim and dark, but it is often surprising how normal and down-to-earth the conversations between the two are, often making jokes, taking the piss out of one another and things like that but obviously dark subjects come up when Nour is in a dangerous area or is put in a dangerous situation and all you can do is wait until she comes back 'online' to ask if she's ok.

 

The notifications on your phone pop up like regular text messages throughout the day and I have found myself compelled and caring for Nour and her journey, wondering if she's ok in between messages, I know it sounds a bit silly but after it feeling a bit of a throwaway game/conversation the first day or so it has grown on me and I find myself looking forward to the messages from Nour more and more just wondering what the hell is gonna happen next.

 

Definitely not for everyone but for £3 I'd recommend it, definitely think it's worth a go.

 

[DisturbedSwan]

I finished this the other night.

 

As an experience it was quite cool, waking up every day looking forward to what the hell crazy shenanigans was going to happen in Nour's journey was an interesting emotive tool and it did make me care for her.

 

What majorly caused the games undoing though was choices not really meaning a lot. For example I had a choice to choose Nour hitchhike with a foreign driver or a local truck, I chose the foreign driver and for some reason she nicked the ladies documents out of her glovebox without any input for me whatsoever. 

 

It's moments like this where you think, what's the point really. I did persevere with it throughout the numerous bad endings I got and actually managed to get her to Croatia on my last attempt so that was good enough for me to call it a day, I could look up a guide and see how to get her to Italy or Germany I guess but that defeats the object of the game somewhat.

 

Still recommend it for the money but the magic does go away a bit after you've got a few bad endings that weren't your fault.