This game is currently in the Humble Choice for June 2023, and this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before July 4th, 2023, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

A game where choices matter.

Eternal Threads is a strange game where players time-travel back to a night when six people died in a fire. The goal is simple, save everyone, and the only way to do this is to view events and sometimes make choices. Those choices will change which events happen, and potentially the fates of characters. While this is a straight story-based game, you’ll be able to explore the house as you learn more about each of the characters.

At the same time, the game feels like it wants to be a horror game, except it’s not. Like not even trying to be, it just has this feeling of horror for some reason. The acting in the game works, but it feels a touch cheap and could have been better, the same is true for some of the animations, and a few times the naming of the scenes feels callous.

Pick this up if you like story games, especially that voyeuristic style that Her Story and Immortality has, or games like Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch. It doesn’t reach those same levels, but it still is an interesting experience, and I hope this team will be able to produce a second game in the genre because this is pretty unique, and with a larger budget, this would stand out as something very unique.

If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/e2DNWzOaOao

After having played almost all the game, I can confirm my review, it's a solid game, and an interesting story with a few flaws. Still I have enjoyed my time.

🔹 WHAT I EXPECTED: a "kind of" detective game where your actions affect the story.
🔹 WHAT I GOT: a walk simulator in a house, where you watch scenes from the past and deviate the story from a pool of 2 options.

POSITIVES:
🙂 some situations' versions
😄 -
😍 -
NEGATIVES:
🙁 walk around the house
😠 story setting
😡 not interacting with events

🔶 FINAL SCORE: restaurant menu / 10

🔹 MY SHORT OPINION: https://youtube.com/shorts/-elUS11B_80?feature=share
🔹 MY FULL OPINION: https://youtu.be/c56qu1n3sc8

Coming off of the success of non-linear puzzle/detective games like Return of the Obra Dinn and Outer WIlds, developer Cosmonaut tries their hand at a modern-day web of deductions with their game Eternal Threads. Set inside a British house shared by six people, you are a time traveler named Forty-Three tasked with saving these six from a house fire that will take all of their lives. To do this, you must manipulate a variety of major and minor choices in their lives over the previous week, creating subtle rifts in spacetime and influencing them all to save themselves by the time the fire arrives. It's an excellent premise that is immediately interesting and slightly unnerving. The entire 8 hours spent in Eternal Threads keeps you in its contained domestic setting, slowly unlocking doors and secrets as you learn more about the house and the people inside of it. Right at the top of the game, you are given a device that can visit many events that lead to the current timeline, which you can tackle in any order. I chose to see events mostly in chronological order, but there's nothing stopping you from jumping ahead to see the fates of the residents change based on your actions. Once you choose an event you want to watch, you must find its location in the house and then watch the scene play out. In some events, there is a binary decision which can alter the timeline, like choosing to drink or not, telling someone a secret, or choosing how to spend a morning. One of the most fascinating elements of the game is trying to deduce how certain choices will lead to a better or worse outcome and how far do the choices allow for new opportunities. Besides the choices, there isn't much interaction with the characters or the world. Your character is viewing everything through holograms, so you aren't directly influencing the characters, just the choices they make. Ostensibly, the game is just watching over a hundred scenes and picking which decisions carry you forward. This lack of tactile interaction would be fine if not for Eternal Thread's awful UI. The menu you use to select events is laid out so you can easily see the events on the timeline in order, with potential events found on alternate paths blocked out. You can easily change decisions without having to re-view the scene, but there is no menu or tracker of what decisions you've made, so skimming through the massive timeline is cumbersome. It's all too easy to forget which decisions you've left active also, especially if you return to the game for another session. Thankfully, the writing overall is pretty good with some standout moments between characters. Vocal performances are hit and miss, but generally the scenes aren't boring if there are multiple people in them. All of this concludes in an ending that is wildly unsatisfactory, even when achieving the best possible outcome. The game has some truly incredible revelations hanging on its outer edges, but never tries to find a payoff or a valid reason for it all to be there, and instead opts for a cliffhanger that feels out of place and unearned for the stakes previously presented. I was really enjoying the last few hours of Eternal Threads and the actual path to the end completely deflated all desire to 100% complete every scene and collectible. I wish I had more positives to give this game, For 7 of the 8 hours played, I was having a fantastic time, but unfortunately, this genre rides upon how it puts the pieces together, but currently those pieces are from two completely different jigsaw puzzles. I cannot fully recommend Eternal Threads, but lightly suggest trying it out if you like general drama or if you don't mind following through to the end.

An EXTREMELY pleasant surprise and a game I really wasn't expecting too much out of but manages to wring every penny out of its probably meagre budget and elevates itself significantly from its very limited setting to make for something memorable and interesting.

The game isn't that much of a looker and you're confined to a single house for its entirety but it manages to make every part of the house fairly interesting with a bunch of notes and actual environmental storytelling. There's also ways the gameplay itself shapes the house that I'll get into later. The voice acting leaves a fair bit to be desired sometimes but is mostly serviceable. This isn't a theatre play or some grand tale. It's just a bunch of people living in a house for which the voice acting is adequate. There's not much music to speak of and the game is mostly quiet but the ambient sound design works wonders in keeping you fairly tense.

On the gameplay side of things, you're working in first person and working your way through snippets of the events that transpired in the one house before something pivotal happens. You're required to investigate a timeline and see the sequence of events that led to what happened and also explore what happens when you force changes in some of the decisions. The game is pretty much strictly this so if you've played something like Tacoma then this would be right at home. I found a good deal of polish in how you navigate through the timeline, especially the cool way in which it shows you all the events that are changed by the decision you just made which was a massive help. This even changes the placement and presence of items in the house, for example, you could have posters up on the wall in the present depending on if you asked the landlord to clear the stuff from the old tenant away which is neat-o. There are a fair few issues here though, especially the lack of a conversation log, requiring you to continually walk up and down the house, no playback options for the events and some minor lack of polish with triggering them. I found it quite annoying how much walking I'd had to do and wish there was an easier way to get around the house and view the events.

The story itself is not a particularly complicated one. It's mostly the lives of a few distressed folk who're trying to get by and you sort of have a hand in how they're going to react to the situations they end up in within the house to try and make their "ending" better. Most of the conversations flow naturally and feel like people talking rather than any stage direction though the voice acting does let it down in spots. It's a simple story told in a complex way but the delivery makes it much more engaging to discover all of it. It's also just fun to watch the characters sometimes since most of them are very likeable and have a fair few things going on.

I didn't expect to like this one as much as I did, especially when the initial hour is a bit of a slog and the timeline looked extremely daunting. But the game lets you in slowly and I found myself entertained all the rest of the way. If you're a fan of games like What Remains of Edith Finch and Tacoma, this is a solid recommend from me.

Mi tocca fare il confronto con Tacoma, secondo me la scrittura e la gestione del mistero sono drammaticamente molto meno interessanti. Inoltre, messi un paio di eventi che apparentemente servirebbero solo per mettere un po' di tensione. Secondo me non funzionano tanto bene a causa della eccessiva discontinuità e a causa del fatto che non si sfrutta mai in nessun modo l'ambiente, il racconto o la casa in modo tale da spingere sul senso di inquietudine e sui sospetti che vorrebbero evocare (aka che c'è qualcun altro nella casa con noi). Di fatto, c'è in effetti qualcun altro: questo incontro si verifica nel finale ideale - se così vogliam chiamarlo, la cui esistenza viene anche suggerita dal fatto che gli altri finali non sono in effetti perfetti per tutti i sopravvissuti