Forever Ago is hardly the first game about loss and regret, but the rare perspective of its older, grey-haired protagonist, Alfred, offers a quieter, more lived-in take on the subject. It asks you to sit with a man who has more years behind him than ahead of him, and who is struggling to come to terms with how much his world has changed. The story carries a lot of emotional weight and is compelling enough, but the gameplay never made me feel like an active part of it.

The premise is simple. Audrey, Alfred’s late wife, leaves him a journal with specific tasks to complete in places they’ve been together, sending him on a nostalgic scavenger-hunt road trip. The road isn’t without its bumps, though. Alfred is increasingly frustrated with a world that no longer looks like the one he remembers, which mirrors how hard it is for him to accept that his own life has changed too. The places he once knew are different, and the people he loved have moved on to new chapters in their lives. Alfred lashes out at these changes because accepting them means accepting that the life he once had, including his wife, is gone.

The small, middle-of-nowhere environments set the tone and play further into Alfred’s frustrations. They are accompanied by a mellow soundtrack that suits each setting well, even if I won’t remember it after the credits roll. Petals are scattered throughout each area, and collecting a few of them triggers optional memories that do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to selling Alfred and Audrey’s relationship. In fact, I wish they were not optional at all. From a gameplay perspective, it’s odd how the petals are located so close together that separating them for the player to collect is arbitrary.

A large portion of the game is spent watching cutscenes, and I wish dialogue choices were presented in more than a handful of them. The writing, while cheesy at times, ultimately does a good job of selling Alfred and Audrey’s relationship, and the voice acting is superb. There is a strong contrast between the mourning Alfred in the present and the happier, imperfect memories of their past, and that works really well in making Audrey feel like a character instead of just a plot device. Audrey’s drawings and notes in the journal also bring to light a joyfulness that is no longer present in Alfred.

The gameplay is what really holds Forever Ago back from being more than an extremely basic but cozy adventure game. Over the course of my four-hour playthrough, I interacted with objects, talked to people, and listened to Alfred narrate his thoughts. The default walking speed is painfully sluggish, perhaps to reflect the age of the protagonist, but it did not feel enjoyable to me and is much slower than the speed in other adventure games. Holding down L1 lets you walk faster, but there should have been an option to toggle your walking speed instead of forcing you to hold down the button for the entire playthrough.

Interactable objects are marked by floating white dots, and I frequently had to be in the exact right spot and camera angle to interact with them. The few other gameplay systems introduced are not much better. One sequence has you rowing a boat, but the controls felt so clumsy that they pulled me out of an already sluggish experience, ruining the emotion I suspect was supposed to be feeling in an important story moment. Worse yet, the scene kept progressing without my input once I stopped rowing.

The instant camera is the game’s most recurring gimmick. You use it during scripted events, but you can also freely snap photos as you explore. There is a limited amount of interactivity offered with it. Many NPCs did not react at all when I took their photos, which is odd. If an old man walks into a diner and takes a photo of a young waitress, you’d think she would have something to say. At times, you also need to select four recent photos to place in the journal, and I cannot imagine why Alfred would ever choose anything other than the photos he was asked to take for Audrey’s checklist.

Forever Ago also suffers from technical issues. On base PS5, the framerate struggles in some areas, especially when rotating the camera. Audio is spatial, so voices in cutscenes can sound much farther away than they should and are difficult to hear. I also wish progress was saved more frequently, because every time I had to reboot, I was set back significantly from where I left off.

Forever Ago Review: Final Verdict

When I think of the best adventure games, I think of experiences like What Remains of Edith Finch, which push player interactivity in unique ways despite simple gameplay. Those interactions are what allow the best games in the genre to convey something the story alone cannot. The lack of diversity in the way the player interacts with the world ultimately makes Forever Ago feel like a narrative adventure from, well, forever ago. I left the experience believing that it did not need to be a game at all and could have been an animated short. Given its short playtime, I think it is still worth checking out if you are already interested in this kind of slow, reflective story, but it does not do enough with its player agency to justify itself as a video game.

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