Review | YesterMorrow

YesterMorrow is another game in the genre of hard-as-nails-Dark-Souls-level-difficult platformers; like Spelunky, Celeste and Super Meat Boy. It also features some of the other indie game mainstay features like, a Metroidvania style of backtracking traversal and an adorable 16-bit design. Though I generally find this genre of game terribly frustrating, this title kept me playing, thanks to its engaging story and cutesy pixelated world.

Welcome to a world that is a lot less friendly than it looks!

You play as protagonist “Yui” trying to stop ‘Shadows’ from taking over her village and family, plunging the world into eternal darkness. YesterMorrow picks up with Yui’s mother and brother having been taken by the darkness and you must save them. You spend most of the game time travelling between Yui’s childhood and teenage years, going through puzzles, harnessing the power of ‘Everlight’ to charge up machines, doing some platforming and blowing enemies up with bombs. Initially from screenshots. I thought that this game would be like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. How mistaken I was though, while the games share a similar premise of protection of family and community. It is not comparable in any other way, especially because you only play as one character. The game at its core is all about time travel. Without this element, while looking absolutely gorgeous with its vibrant colours and nostalgic artstyle, there would not be much particularly interesting about YesterMorrow. However, it maintained my interest with a fantastic time-travelling narrative. For those who are more about gameplay though, you may be left wanting more.

STOMP. SLASH.

YesterMorrow hands out the usual platforming upgrades of a double jump and the ability to run faster. It even takes from Super Mario with flame balls that you can throw to light bombs, but the game also has its own ideas, such as allowing you to freeze time. The real intrigue in this comes from the puzzles, where you switch from a building you are in being a dilapidated wreck back to its original grandeur of yesteryear, allowing you to progress. You really see the care and thought the artists and designers put into designing this world. The game also makes it clear you can pet plenty of animals, and that might just be a selling point right off the bat. However, the bosses are the real strong point when it comes to gameplay. Time travel and general puzzles may wear thin but reaching a boss is always fantastic. With attack patterns that are quite hard to master; you must make sure you collect health upgrades beforehand. It helps that these encounters have fantastic music that really helps set the mood you need to be in for what will be an epic platforming battle. You will feel a sense of accomplishment upon defeating them, and the game even lets you replay the battles at any time. 

Ok, so I can talk to village people, but can I talk to THE Village People, huh?

YesterMorrow is highly interactive and feels alive, allowing you to speak with everyone that you see. This is not only nice for world-building but highly advisable as there is no set objective marker for you to follow. You must discover the places and characters which will help you progress on your own. In this regard, the game forces you to invest your time and concentration.

While there are plenty of enemies in YesterMorrow, along with checkpoints and health upgrades throughout levels. Sadly, it is best to simply avoid them, especially when they are taken over by the darkness as you will find yourself dying rather rapidly. However, for the most part, the difficulty spike is a nice, levelled curve.

The largest problem for YesterMorrow was the fact that there is almost too much of it. You have this large interactable, almost open-world game, where you can also time travel in certain areas and it is just too much. You often feel lost because you have not spoken to the right person yet or you walked the wrong way somehow, even though the path you follow in YesterMorrow should all be linear. The overwhelming map too makes the game world feel much larger than it is. 

Sadly cool time travel mechanics only go so far.

YesterMorrow had a lot of potential to really flesh out its time travel aspect but it is either using it too much in some areas, making it feel like a gimmick, or not using it enough in protracted areas with no NPCs or puzzles to interact with. For example, when you enter the past of the desert areas things are completely desolate. There aren’t even really any landmarks to go into the future to see how they change, it's just empty.

For story lovers, YesterMorrow should definitely be on your radar, as you will find yourself connecting with Yui and her plight. But for those who genuinely just want to play a platformer with something to continually engage them, the gameplay here will likely fall short.