What Comes After (2020)

If What Comes After can help those dealing with mental health struggles, then that’s a wonderful thing. But it doesn’t cover these topics delicately; its messages aren’t hidden anywhere, they’re in-your-face, front and centre. However, it’s all the other issues What Comes After tries to deal with – deforestation, animal abuse and more – that ruin the experience. As important as all of those issues are, What Comes After doesn’t give enough time for them to have any real purpose or meaning. Had it been more focused, it could have had much more impact.

It's always a bit of a challenge for me to review games that really aren't games, whether interactive novels or in this case semi-interactive and fixed narrative experiences of a sort...

What Comes After doesn’t go much further than “Remember happy memories” and “It’ll get better with time.” I just don’t feel that’s enough to really examine this topic. However, the presentation is charming enough, and the entire experience can be completed in less than an hour, to which it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Perhaps more time would have allowed them to explore the themes they introduced further.

It is a very short experience, clocking in at just around an hour long, so even if you find the gameplay to be a tad tedious, the game at the very least does not overstay its welcome. If you're more interested in narrative as opposed to gameplay, you will likely find some enjoyment here, but those who are more interested in gameplay should probably steer clear. What Comes After has a lot to say, and even if a shoddy translation takes the impact down a bit, it's still worth a look if its premise has caught your eye.

From the creators of Coffee Talk comes What Comes After, swapping coffee for ghosts, this heart-warming tale captured me from the get-go. But, is it a game you should dive into? Let me tell you.