Been quite a few years since I touched Emily is Away. I knew there had been sequels, so this Steam Summer Sale I decided to finally pick them up and quickly replay this one to refresh my memory.

Emily is Away is a short and sweet game about chatting to a girl named Emily online over the course of several years. The gameplay and presentation are very simple, but effective, and though much of the game boils down to picking dialogue options, it sells the feeling of using Windows XP Messenger in the early 2000s quite well. Huge fan of the usage of sound effects, they add a lot to the overall aesthetic.

At it's core, Emily is Away is a game about the complexities of relationships and how they change over time. You can go into this experience with the best of intentions and still things might turn sour with Emily. It emphasizes how we as people pick up on the smallest things, how the tiniest actions toward another person can ripple into profound consequences for your relationship as a whole. It's simple, but it works, and I remember it making quite an impact on me upon my first playthrough back during my teens.

Emily is Away is just a solid little indie game. It's free, its competent at expressing its themes and message, and its tied together with a really charming Windows XP aesthetic. Not much else to say really.