Scrolling through Steam one day, I end up looking for free games to play to peak my interest. By accident, I end on clicking on something that ends up being a blessing in disguise. It's new, it's fresh, and more importantly, it was free.
Our Life: Beginning and Always is a free visual novel on Steam where you play as yourself (or your self insert OC) to spend your summer with a guy called Cove, who had just recently moved in. Starting off as strangers, you end up spending quite a bit of the summer together, whether either of you wanted to or not.
Quoting from their Steam page:
"It’s a wholesome experience that faces large steppingstones of life, while having a focus on familiar everyday moments. With notable amounts of customization for even tiny details, you can enjoy pleasures as simple as having a preferred type of drink and a neighbor who cares enough to remember what it is."
Unique to other visual novels, where they have a set amount of days, or a linear perspective, Our Life (I'll abbreviate it) ends up following the characters as they grow up in their setting, and allowing you to choose how you feel towards each other too. It takes the childhood friend trope very seriously, as if you do feel something towards them, then you can see through actions how your smaller choices affect who you are.
To help with this, I'm also gonna walk through some screenshots from my own personal playthrough (Well, from my file on the 1.1 update, but there's not much difference).
Warning to you now, there's gonna be a few scenes spoiled, but not enough to spoil the entire story arcs. If you want nothing to do with seeing the scenes, I'll just specify now please go play it as it's good.
When you first design a character, the screen looks like this. Very bright, very bubbly and a lot of options to choose from too. This is when you first start out, so your character is 8 years old. Because of the lore, I stuck with the original first name and changed to the last (since that was originally just Last). One thing that stands out is you can choose your pronouns and look how you want. I stuck with they for my first playthrough, because that was honestly a nice surprise. While I do identify as she/her, it's great to see how the dialogue changes depending on your preferences too.
Not only can you pick what you see on them, but you can add descriptions of birthmarks, scars and even what they prefer to wear. There are a few games out there with more detailed character designers, but they don't bring much into the story aspect. With this on the other hand, depending on certain details, you'll get mini bits of extra dialogue to go along with it, which is a nice touch.
Make your character as normal or as wacky as you like, and don't worry too much, every time you go through the growth stages (there's three chapters), you can change not only your looks, but your name and even your pronouns too. They give you choices throughout to define who you are and how you feel, making the game more immersive than you'd expect.
With the new 1.1 update and free DLC, they've added more names that can be voiced by the characters (there's only 2 or 3 that voice them, one of them being Cove). They have a lot of names on their from the common, to the quirky. The only thing I find very funny is that I tried looking for my name and I couldn't find it (not even a Roxy/Roxie), so I ended up becoming Riley for a playthrough. Apart from that, very inclusive naming.
What I utterly enjoyed about playing through this was the fact that if I was wanting to self insert into this, it'd be so easy to do so. It didn't matter if the situation was different, GB Patch Games knew what they were doing and absolutely killed it with the realism factor. The characters all seem human, not just the usual stereotype of "perfection".
From the shots I've put up, there's a few key aspects I wanna look at gameplay wise. The first being deciding how you personally feel towards Cove. This particular visual novel, while it doesn't have bad ends or multiple endings, it does have variety depending on how you both feel towards each other. You can play out not feeling anything, before having major feelings, or perhaps vice versa. The choice is up to you.
During that period in your life (this applies to all 3 stages), you get to interact with events that builds up more lore and personality to your character and Cove's. There's 15, 5 per step, but can be upped to 10 per step if you buy the DLC (very reasonably priced and I will be getting it very soon).
The variety it gives and the developments for characters too is quite refreshing to see, especially with the unique traits that come out and small details that are remembered by it too. It's really nice in a sense that you can pick and choose if you wanted to do the extra events too with no consequences. You can just skip them all together, which is very cool for quick playthroughs to get trophies (I've only done this once, and it was because I didn't want to go through emotional attachment that time.... it failed, but I tried).
I keep hollering about it, but it's just nice to see how progressive the game is, and how light it feels too. You have two mothers, you can change who you are when you wish to, you even get the right pronouns! If you're non-binary, they refer to you as pal or sibling, which is the sweetest thing to see. You get to explore who your person is and even get to voice them, from sexuality to how you view yourself. The best feeling is that it doesn't feel like it's a forced insert either, like other medias.
Another feature is while you can grow as yourself, you can also edit Cove slightly too. Not much, just cosmetic and how he'd act around others, but his underlying personality stays the same. It's nice to see him progress too as you're both growing up, making it feel just whole. In step 3, if you're dating Cove, you can decide on how much contact you want with him. If you feel comfortable kissing, then go for it. If you're more of a hugger, or wanting more of a bromance sort of thing, then you can go for that. If you really hate that sort of thing, or don't feel confident either, then don't worry! There is no force in the matter and it won't affect the ending either. You'll still be end happily, which is honestly helps with the replay-ability.
Final point now, music! Oh my goodness is it relaxing! I've left certain scenes on before just to play the music in the background while I work and it's honestly so enjoyable. They fit the scenes so well, allowing you to feel more immersed in the actual story. I'd honestly be unable to pick a favourite track as it's all good and if they had a section on the main menu screen for that, then I'd be a happy camper.
Overall, this binge worthy game is something I'd highly recommend, and I've thoroughly enjoyed my evenings playing it through over and over to experience all the perspectives. It feels natural to just play through and time goes by so fast, making me feel so immersed and less alienated than others that have a character already built up, or options that seem like the right answers already.
I'll have to binge their other games, as there's too many gems to try
-R (11/12/2020)
Link to the Steam page if you were curious - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1129190/Our_Life_Beginnings__Always/