When The Past Was Around Reviews

A 2 hour journey from "why is this woman dating an owl" to "ok now I'm crying", with some fun little puzzles along the way.

This is a beautiful story that cuts through the internet brainrot. Chapter 4 was devastating, and the end chapter was healing.

I first bought this game on the switch. Then, I loved it so much I bought it on steam as an excuse to play it again. This game will break your heart and make it whole again. You will cry sad and happy tears. 100% recommend, I love games with grief and owls.

this game made me sob at the end ... it was such a surreal and beautiful way to tell the story of love and grief; chasing the person you love in every life and holding on to anything that could keep them here. i loved the artwork, this is truly a special game <3

What a brilliant game. I have never cried so much while embracing art. Having lost a partner not long ago it hit hard. The fact that she also played violin made me feel it even more. I can't give enough praise to the musicians and the people who did the art. This all came together like a beautiful movie. Very rewarding

Excellent nonverbal storytelling. The art and sound convey the story really well. You really feel for what Owl, and especially Eda, are going through. I appreciate how the game shows and doesn't tell, it really trusts the audience to understand what is happening by themselves. Some of the puzzles were surprisingly difficult, so the option to get hints was much appreciated. Probably will take you around 2 hours to complete, my time is just inflated because I let it idle for card drops. $8 is a little much because of how short it is, but discounted is well worth it.

Short and emotional art house puzzle game with fantastic visuals, music, puzzles, and story. A very charming and polished cozy game about love and loss that reminds me of Rusty Lake games sans the horror and morbidity.

Very beautiful art style and music. The whole vibe is super cozy, even tho it has some sadder themes in it. It’s not a super long game, so I’d definitely recommend playing it in one go to get the full experience of the story.

Prefacing my review with two main statements: I didn't enjoy this game as much as I wanted to, but I also don't think it was really made for me so I can't fault the game itself for that. To expand on that a little more, quite simply I'm not very good at adventure/puzzle games like this one (the user-defined "hidden object" tag gave me inaccurate expectations of what the game actually was) and I find them frustrating to the point of ragequitting lmao. There were certain puzzles that I didn't find intuititive and had to look up a guide for, which annoyed me, and took away from the experience that I like to have of experiencing games blind on a first playthrough. I also found the segments of clicking on the bubbles to be slow and unnecessary, but I also think that was colored by the fact that I was already frustrated by being slowed up by my inability to solve the puzzles. I also found the hint button unintutive - it took me a long time to realize that you had to hold it down, instead of just clicking it, to get the hints, but even then my issue tended not to be that I didn't know what was interactable but rather that I didn't know what pieces to put together. Despite my issues and frustrations with it, I don't think that's the fault of the game so much as it is simply the fact that it's not the type of game I'd generally enjoy and that I went in with skewed expectations due to a user-defined tag. I did think that the art was really really beautiful and the game is presented very masterfully. So, with all that said, I'm leaving a good review with the caveat that you should probably be a point-and-click enjoyer to get the most out of this game.

Wordless yet touching story Music plays first violin (or the Owl) About loss, grief, acceptance and thrive