What Never Was is a free to play short story-driven game developed by Swedish developer Acke Hallgren. It tells the story of a young girl called Sarah who is tasked with clearing out her late grandfather’s attic and discovers that there are secrets hidden.
What Never Was is a short game experience in the veins of games such as Myst, Gone Home and Marie’s Room. Depending on your ability to piece together the clues and figure out the puzzles and the detail in the search of the attic, this experience should take about an hour to complete. However, to call this a complete game would be somewhat inaccurate as it cuts off on a cliffhanger when we finally should get what secret the puzzle leads to. It would be more suitable to consider this as a prologue level to what could be a potentially longer game that would carry more depth.
With that said, we can only look at What Never Was from what it offers. In terms of a free experience on Steam (or any other platform), this one presents more than the basics. It has decent voicework, Sarah is voiced by Michaela Gilchrist and her grandfather Howard’s voiced by Adrian Ulvsgard. There is a fair amount of interaction with its environment which cues reactions from Sarah or memories while some also pairs with an action. Sarah starts primarily the discovery of her grandfather’s journal and the search for the missing pages but these pages lead to further puzzles. The puzzles here is heavily inspired by games like Myst. This still gives us decent clues to put together the different puzzles scattered throughout the little attic area. Due to its restricted length, it remains fairly self-contained but hints of a deeper mythology can be seen in its notes. This also links back to the journal and the puzzles. It also adds in a fantasy element here with putting together Sarah’s necklace which changes into something more that sparks a different way of looking at the game.
What Never Was may be a free game but while the game itself feels something of a teaser gaming experience, it holds beautiful visuals, some great ideas and decent voicework. It also manages to give some layers to gameplay from exploration to various puzzles while adding in a family relationship and some mythology. For a short game experience, its an enjoyable experience that delivers even if it might lack depth due its length.
What Never Was is currently available on Steam. It was released on January 11, 2019.