Yeah, we've done this before.
Spoilers below.
I think we, as a collective, need some time apart from time loops and multiverses. It's not them, it's us. We've been over-reliant on them the past few years. It doesn't need to be a permanent breakup, but we definitely need a break from one another. Much in the way that Everything, Everywhere, All At Once ought to be the temporary conclusion of Hollywood's fascination with multiverses, let's let Start Again be the temporary conclusion of indie gaming's fascination with time loops. We can revisit it in a few years if we really want to, but maybe it's best for both of us if we just leave things as they are for now.
Start Again is in a middling sort of mire. Next to a lot of its contemporaries, it stands head and shoulders above them; next to the best that the "emotional indie time loop game" subgenre has to offer, it's clearly lesser. The game is going to draw inevitable and unfavorable comparisons to Undertale, given the fact that both of those titles occupy a similar space. It shouldn't be much of a secret that, between the two, Undertale wins out. But, you know, both are still infinitely better than fucking Braid.
There's not a ton here to love. Gameplay is the most bog-standard RPG Maker fare, complete with a literal Roshambo "elemental" damage mechanic. Music is forgettable, character designs are all over the place, graphics are servicable. There are enemies that are clearly made to look like those cursed emojis that were going around a few years back, which should be as damning of a statement as you can make it sound in your head.
If you're looking for a hook, it'll be in the writing. Normally, these depression allegories tend to skew pretty personal to the author; beyond the broadest strokes of "I feel sad and like a burden", a lot of these stories are going to wind up only resonating if you can put yourself in the shoes of the person who wrote them, rather than the characters actually going through the narrative (provided there's a difference between the two anyway, and it isn't a piece of vent art). Start Again doesn't really suffer this common hurdle. The narrator and player character, Siffrin, has earned their misanthropic stripes. A Groundhog Day loop is still alien enough to us that we can grip onto the more universal feelings of helplessness and holding yourself together for someone else's sake without feeling lost in the greater plot.
Starting the game at the "end" works here, because the tiny world that these characters occupy feels storied. It gives off the feeling that you've started the game on someone else's save slot, which is genuinely kind of hard to pull off, and I should impress upon you that this is a solid writing feat. It would have been a bit cuter to have that play into the UI — having a file already made and ready to go on first boot, where you're made to select "continue" instead of "new game" — but what's here works well enough. You play, you lose, you try something different in the hopes of breaking the loop, repeat. Ludonarrative harmony, baby.
The entire True Ending sequence is saccharine enough to make your teeth curl. There's something about it that feels kind of...like it had to be there, I guess? Maybe I'm even more jaded and cynical than our protagonist, but having everyone grab your hands and tell you that they love you while they dump Therapy 101 motivational phrases on you barely connected with me. There's a moment right at the end where everyone is celebrating, and crying, and cheering about how they finally did it, and I had the distinct thought of "if this game has any balls, it'd loop me back to the start right now".
And it did.
Whatever score I was going to give this immediately shot up a full star the second the game decided to pull the rug out and go all the way back to the beginning after doing everything right. Twelve Minutes has a similar trick, but Twelve Minutes also sucks complete ass and has the gall to pull three more twists out of its hat after you've been through the first. Start Again ends just in time for you to realize that nothing is going to end. One final twist of the knife. Good shit.
Start Again really isn't all that impressive, and I wouldn't recommend anyone who's read this far to bother playing it if they haven't already. It's a short, mediocre title that manages to pull ahead on the final lap with a clever, brutal surprise. And that's where it should have stopped! Further investigation reveals that there's a much longer reimagining of the game called In Stars and Time set to release by the end of 2023, and it sounds like a terrible idea. There was barely enough meat left on the timeloop bone to get this out the door; shooting for a several-hours-long pseudo-sequel seems like tempting fate in the worst way.
If there's any cycle that needs to be broken, it's our insistence on remaking Strange Life of Ivan Osokin.
Spoilers below.
I think we, as a collective, need some time apart from time loops and multiverses. It's not them, it's us. We've been over-reliant on them the past few years. It doesn't need to be a permanent breakup, but we definitely need a break from one another. Much in the way that Everything, Everywhere, All At Once ought to be the temporary conclusion of Hollywood's fascination with multiverses, let's let Start Again be the temporary conclusion of indie gaming's fascination with time loops. We can revisit it in a few years if we really want to, but maybe it's best for both of us if we just leave things as they are for now.
Start Again is in a middling sort of mire. Next to a lot of its contemporaries, it stands head and shoulders above them; next to the best that the "emotional indie time loop game" subgenre has to offer, it's clearly lesser. The game is going to draw inevitable and unfavorable comparisons to Undertale, given the fact that both of those titles occupy a similar space. It shouldn't be much of a secret that, between the two, Undertale wins out. But, you know, both are still infinitely better than fucking Braid.
There's not a ton here to love. Gameplay is the most bog-standard RPG Maker fare, complete with a literal Roshambo "elemental" damage mechanic. Music is forgettable, character designs are all over the place, graphics are servicable. There are enemies that are clearly made to look like those cursed emojis that were going around a few years back, which should be as damning of a statement as you can make it sound in your head.
If you're looking for a hook, it'll be in the writing. Normally, these depression allegories tend to skew pretty personal to the author; beyond the broadest strokes of "I feel sad and like a burden", a lot of these stories are going to wind up only resonating if you can put yourself in the shoes of the person who wrote them, rather than the characters actually going through the narrative (provided there's a difference between the two anyway, and it isn't a piece of vent art). Start Again doesn't really suffer this common hurdle. The narrator and player character, Siffrin, has earned their misanthropic stripes. A Groundhog Day loop is still alien enough to us that we can grip onto the more universal feelings of helplessness and holding yourself together for someone else's sake without feeling lost in the greater plot.
Starting the game at the "end" works here, because the tiny world that these characters occupy feels storied. It gives off the feeling that you've started the game on someone else's save slot, which is genuinely kind of hard to pull off, and I should impress upon you that this is a solid writing feat. It would have been a bit cuter to have that play into the UI — having a file already made and ready to go on first boot, where you're made to select "continue" instead of "new game" — but what's here works well enough. You play, you lose, you try something different in the hopes of breaking the loop, repeat. Ludonarrative harmony, baby.
The entire True Ending sequence is saccharine enough to make your teeth curl. There's something about it that feels kind of...like it had to be there, I guess? Maybe I'm even more jaded and cynical than our protagonist, but having everyone grab your hands and tell you that they love you while they dump Therapy 101 motivational phrases on you barely connected with me. There's a moment right at the end where everyone is celebrating, and crying, and cheering about how they finally did it, and I had the distinct thought of "if this game has any balls, it'd loop me back to the start right now".
And it did.
Whatever score I was going to give this immediately shot up a full star the second the game decided to pull the rug out and go all the way back to the beginning after doing everything right. Twelve Minutes has a similar trick, but Twelve Minutes also sucks complete ass and has the gall to pull three more twists out of its hat after you've been through the first. Start Again ends just in time for you to realize that nothing is going to end. One final twist of the knife. Good shit.
Start Again really isn't all that impressive, and I wouldn't recommend anyone who's read this far to bother playing it if they haven't already. It's a short, mediocre title that manages to pull ahead on the final lap with a clever, brutal surprise. And that's where it should have stopped! Further investigation reveals that there's a much longer reimagining of the game called In Stars and Time set to release by the end of 2023, and it sounds like a terrible idea. There was barely enough meat left on the timeloop bone to get this out the door; shooting for a several-hours-long pseudo-sequel seems like tempting fate in the worst way.
If there's any cycle that needs to be broken, it's our insistence on remaking Strange Life of Ivan Osokin.