News

Gamescom 2017: Hands-on with the inspiring text adventure Bury Me, My Love

SMS gaming

Gamescom 2017: Hands-on with the inspiring text adventure Bury Me, My Love
|
| Bury Me, My Love

Bury Me, My Love isn't the sort of game that you play on a show floor. It's the sort of game that unfurls itself slowly and intricately, winding itself around you with notifications and a thick story that's rooted in truth.

Essentially you're playing a game of WhatsApp. Nour is travelling from Syria to Europe, and you're her husband. You're talking her through her experience, choosing what to say as she deals with the harsh realities of the migrant trail.

And quite frankly, it's brilliant. Even with the game sped up so the messages come through one after the other, the story is so wonderfully well told that it's impossible not to fall in love with it.

Because this is a game about love. It's a game about sacrifice and heartache. But it has light moments too. I laughed three or four times throughout the half hour I was poking my way through the demo.

And that's what life is like. That's what relationships and conversations with the people you adore are like. There's darkness, and trying situations, but there are smiles and warmth as well. And Bury Me, My Love captures them perfectly.

When you get a choice of what to say next, you need to think carefully. There are multiple different endings, and keeping Nour happy and content is key to getting a good one.

There are messages you need to reply to quickly. Leave them too long and she'll get grumpy, thinking you're falling out of love with her. Then there are throwaway comments, moments of brevity, and a desire to push on and see more.

Bury Me, My Love feels important. Not in a pretentious way, but because it makes a big story (a migrant who made the same journey as Nour actually consulted on the game) human.

And that's the key. This is a game about life, and I'm excited to find out where it goes.

Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.