Sometimes you come past those games that are a real challenge to review. Mostly that means the game is terrible, and bad games are harder to review than good games, but that is not what makes this game hard to review. As somehow this game is pretty good.

Now when I played this game again in order to review it I was amazed by the language choices. This game has no dialog at all. But let's get to the point.

"When the past was around" is a kind of point-and-click adventure without any form of dialog. So no narrator making remarks about stuff (like in old Sierra games), and nor will the main protagonist speak to the player (like in Lucas Arts and many games written in that style). Contrary to these games the main protagonist will not walk around, and all rooms are kind of levels where you all puzzles for that level to solve, and once you find a feather you can move on to the next level. Other than that all elements of a point-and-click adventure are there. Looking at stuff, collecting items for your inventory, and using these items to get stuff done.

While solving the puzzles the girl, which is supposed to be you (according to the game's description her name is Edda) will always be on the fixed position, this doesn't really matter for the game's difficulty. You can scroll the entire screen, and no matter how far away something is you can always get things done.

What sets the game apart is of course the art style. Very unusual in games, and for good reasons, as it's not a kind of art style that is easy to work with in games (which will also explain why Edda doesn't work around. Sounds lazy, but you do not want to have to animate that. Makes you admire the animators who worked for Walt Disney (the man himself, not the swindler's studio shameless abusing his name today), eh?) The style was well-chosen for this kind of game, and it does contribute to the kind of mood the developers were trying to create.

When it comes to the music, the style of music was well chosen, however when you hear it for too long it will get annoying, so perhaps a feature to turn it off would do well. Now the puzzles are not really hard (at least not in this demo, and especially not when you are an experience point-and-click adventure player), but still if you are not yet sure where to look for clues, the puzzles can still take some time and I noticed this melody which was soothing at first became more and more of an annoyance even to the level that it came to frustrate me even to disabling me to puzzle things out, in the end I turned off my audio devices to enable myself to think again. Even the best of songs can become annoying when repeated too much, and over the the first puzzles we hear the same melody in all of them, except that it has a few more instruments. I think somehow more variation would be really welcome here. Don't get me wrong, I am NOT saying the composer sucks.. Hell no... the music is wonderful... It's just that when it's repeated too much, it gets annoying.

All-in-all we got ourselves a concept for a game that could be pretty good. Maybe not for the hardcore point-and-click-adventure fan, as the game is more set on the story and the mood around it (come to think of it, since there's no dialog of any kind, that's quite an achievement to do so well), than on true difficulty, but of course, I do not know how difficult the full game can be, as only played the free demo (as a rule I never pay for games I review. My budget simply cannot take it), so perhaps I can change my mind then. If you like to be enchanted a little by the game's style and artwork, then this could be the game for you.

This game's demo has been released for both Windows and Mac.

Game Jolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/wpwa/471906
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1164050/When_The_Past_Was_Around/ (this is also where the full game can be purchased)
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