Alone With You

Alone with You is very interesting, well-made and tells a good, mature story. It might be a little bit text-heavy, but it you're ok with that, give it a try.

Don’t get fooled by the cheesy description “Sci-Fi Romance”. This is an intelligent adventure novel. Unfortunately the puzzles can’t live up to the storytelling.

People, you need this game. I cannot tell you enough, it is a game that is worthy of your time. It is one of those games you feel envelope you, suck you in and hold you close. It will stick with you long after the roll of the credits; Alone With You truly is a special game.

A game that warrants repeated playthroughs to see both endings and experience other relationship choices. Alone With You bears some heavy thematic overlap with recent games like SOMA, Everyone’s Gone to Rapture, and other story-centric releases that focus on the nature of what makes you human, the importance of relationships and contact, and mortality. It’s different enough to feel new despite its retro roots, delivering impactful scenes that shine thanks to a stellar script that brings its few, but emotionally charged, characters to life.

Alone With You might not innovate in the gameplay department, but more than makes up for it with a narrative that’ll leave you torn, contemplative, and heartbroken.

Alone With You truly is special. The unassuming nature of its visuals didn’t prepare me for how impactful the narrative was going to be. It may not be the most involved of games, but it latches onto your heart and doesn’t let go. The game sticks with you well after the credits.

Alone With You sometimes suffers inside of its medium, an understandable impedance of a small project that simply can't be good at everything. Its eagerness to sidestep conventional challenges with singular objectives, however, will last longer than some of its prosaic mechanics. Valuable science fiction maintains a crucial element of humanity, a facet of storytelling Alone With You embraces with, of all possibilities, relatable human beings.

Befriending (and perhaps even falling in love) with artificial humans is not an entirely novel premise for a story, but Benjamin Rivers approaches the idea thoughtfully and with tact, avoiding obvious pitfalls. What he has to say on the subject is worth a few dollars and few hours of any sci-fi aficionado’s time.

What is does get abundantly right is its unique tone, powerful narrative, masterful writing, and a visual style that fooled me into underestimating it makes it worthy of praise.

However, as a final product, Alone With You is still very-much worth investing in due to the fantastic story it tells and the game’s palpable world. It’s just a shame however, that these features of the game weren’t simply left alone.

There’s a lot to love in Alone With You: the wonderful art style, the synth soundtrack, the well written story, and the way it touches on interesting subjects being just a few. However, unnecessary padding and busy work really drag the overall enjoyment down.

Alone With You is an endearing adventure, albeit a flawed one. Despite its dark subject matter, it somehow remains to have a lighthearted tone with its pastel, washed-out aesthetic. I admired the different locations and existential tone, but longed for a more captivating storyline. Like the holographic cast it chronicles, this experience lacks a distinct personality, leaving it as a charming but forgettable adventure.

Alone With You boasts a charming retro audiovisual aesthetic and some really strong character work, all underpinned by an intriguing central mystery. Unfortunately, getting to these moments involves repetitive, uninventive gameplay that can be a slog to get through.

If Alone With You had been as emotionally effective throughout, I would be singing its praises right now. I’m usually more than willing to forgive boring, repetitive gameplay if a game leaves me a frenzied, sobbing mess on the floor. But in the case of Alone With You, I spent too much time bored with the gameplay, and annoyed that the characters were telling me how they assumed I felt. I'm curious about the other secrets I could discover, and other endings — but not curious enough to go back.

The tale of love and loss in Alone With You is certainly memorable, but the tedious and simple gameplay begins to grate before you reach the end.

Alone With You provides an interesting ride for players, but doesn’t manage to fulfill its potential. The romantic side of the game feels underdeveloped, and I ran into bugs often enough to hamper my enjoyment. That said, it has an interesting enough story that is worth checking out and its shortcomings can’t undo a solid story that is told well.