There’s nothing like having a good cry to a sad movie or television show – something that’s either relatable or so deeply moving that it transcends the screen and resonates with the viewer. It’s tough for video games to replicate this due to the need of player agency, but when it can pull it off, interactive media can shake a gamer to their core. This happened to me within Before Your Eyes, which I still consider the best modern narrative experience available, and I hoped The End of You could capture the same feeling. However, does this short experience stick the landing?

The worst thing I can put on paper about The End of You is that my first playthrough lasted half an hour from start to finish. This might sound like a huge detractor to most, but what if I told you that in this short amount of time, I saw and heard enough to make me cry tears of sadness three separate times? Yes, The End of You‘s immersion is positively second-to-none, thanks to minimal load times and a masterfully crafted small apartment setting, matched with a dismal tone. Being able to convey emotion in such a short amount of time is nothing short of a miracle.

Storytelling within The End of You is done in a “show, don’t tell” manner, which also benefits the title greatly. By doing so, the player can infer what led to this point thanks to context clues and moment-to-moment flashbacks of pivotal points in your relationship with Emily. By offering several dialogue options that seriously make a difference, multiple playthroughs can be entertained, even if the game is so rapturous that I couldn’t recommend back-to-back runs. While the game is about discovering items and I tend to really struggle with puzzles, I never got lost or stuck thanks to the apartment’s claustrophobic size.

Thanks to its pixel stylings and strong use of the capable Godot engine, The End of You runs perfectly no matter the configuration. The End of You doesn’t have to be photorealistic to get its point across – that much is done with Emily’s sobbing, sounds of pain, and the gloomy soundtrack. Developer Memory of God took what they learned in displaying “life and loss” in The Stillness of the Wind and encapsulated it within a dying relationship that can’t pinpoint one single event for its cataclysmic demise. Instead, displaying the slow burn, churn away, anything good crafts a harrowing story.

A lot of video games inject sadness into their narratives. Some even make it the centerfold. However, for a game to successfully project these emotions onto the one consuming it is a tall task and a massive rarity. The End of You is one of these successes, and a title that should be experienced by anyone that values a strong story and venturing across the spectrum of feelings even if they aren’t positive ones. It’s a crying shame that The End of You isn’t picking up more traction, but for now, it’ll remain a hidden gem in the depths of Steam.

A PC review copy of The End of You was provided by Memory of God for the purposes of this review.

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The End of You

$7.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Gut-wrenching Sadness
• Visceral Immersion
• Deeply Memorable

Cons

• Some will consider too short