Game Review: Eternal Afternoon

One last afternoon to spend in your childhood neighborhood, when the world was big and mysterious and something new waited around every corner.

One last afternoon to spend in your childhood neighborhood, before the great wave washes it all away and ends everything.

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Eternal Afternoon is a time loop game, of a similar kind as Outer Wilds. The world is ending, and in just 20 minutes the neighborhood will be destroyed by a great wave spreading across the planet. You can already see it on the horizon. Within those 20 minutes you can play a video game, climb somewhere high, or talk to the other residents who are trying to make their own peace with the situation.

This is a game that starts off with a pretty powerful atmosphere. The environments, the sunlight, the graphics, all work to create that atmosphere. Unfortunately, it likely won't be long before you encounter one of the many points at which the curtain is drawn back and the game expresses awareness that it is in fact a game and that the wave is a metaphor for time and the inevitability of loss and death. Most of the mysteries you can discover are described as 'glitches' intentionally introduced by the developer to make the game more interesting. This self-aware artificiality undermines the ability of the game to really get you emotionally with its characters and covered topics. However, even with that handicap, there were just a few moments that I found genuinely meaningful or compelling.

The game has 4 main 'endings', alongside a series of other minor and major mysteries. Some are a bit tricky, but none are overly cryptic.

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I got to the point of considering it 'finished' after 3.5 hours, though adding the time I spent on the demo it's probably more like 4-4.5 hours.

You can find the game on [Steam].