Wait! Life is beautiful!

Review

Wait! Life is beautiful! takes on the subject of suicide. A daring subject matter to express, explain, and handle, and I must say I admire this game for trying to cover this surreal subject.

You play as Will, a hard-working young man with a mundane life. Every day is the same in grueling 9 to 5 job with constant repetitive phone calls from clients. The day ends with a call from the boss about how much money you’ve made for the company.

Days just fade in and out with this life. Until you hear about the Suicide Bridge; a bridge where people who have given up on their lives come to end it.

Suddenly, you find a different purpose in life; you want to help these people, you want to convince them to Wait! Life is Beautiful!

Gameplay; Wait! Life is Beautiful! Is an interactive psychological thriller. The game plays out like a story, where you don’t intervene until the last moment. During conversations with 1 or more NPCs, you will be prompted with multiple questions, sentences, and answers.

Multiple scenarios play out during the game, each with their own role in the progression.

Office scenario: this plays out through multiple phone calls; each phone call asks weird and awkward financial questions. Choosing answers wisely will prompt your boss to say, “Well done”.

Restaurant scenario: you meet two friends after work every day.  Let the conversation between the three of you play out and wait for the chance to ask questions.  The first two prompts will lead more deeply into the lives of your friends.  Choosing the appropriate question will prompt dialogue between the three of you about your lives, in which you will discover ore detail about your friends’ lives.  Asking the wrong question will end the meet up for the day.

Suicide Bridge scenario; you wait until someone passes by and either tries to interact with you or tries to end their life. Here is where the main part of the story/gameplay occurs. As soon as someone tries to end their life, the same scenario will play out every time; Will walks up to the person while keeping some distance and the conversation starts with Wait! Life is Beautiful!

The person in question will either try to warn you off or will give a small hint about what has happened. From here you will be prompted with multiple questions and answers to calm him/her down. Same as before; each question/answer will prompt a different dialogue and in the final choices, the person will decide either to back off or jump.

Under bridge camp: here you have nothing to do. You will receive multiple messages from friends, family, people you have saved, or you people who are upset about your actions. Here’s where your game gets saved after each day at the bridge, which I found to be very annoying and repetitive.

Saving progression: by far the worst aspect of the game is its game-saving system. There are no checkpoints in the Suicide Bridge Scenario until the day is over and the game moves to your Under Bridge Camp, which I found very annoying. If you quit the game during the bridge scenario, it doesn’t matter how much time you spend, it won’t count until the under bridge camp scenario and you will lose your progress. There should be both proper autosave with multiple checkpoints and manual save options.

Dialogues: although dialogues are an important part of this game, it feels like the script comes up short in many ways. The dialogues between three friends in the restaurant scenario feel repetitive and boring, where it should fun, even though we are talking about something dull or serious. Trying to convince someone not to commit suicide, for the most part, is okay, but you’re talking to someone who’s broken and in a bad state of mind. I feel like the dialogue options should have more emotion, sympathy, and maturity built into it.

Visuals: Visually pleasing 2D pixelated world. Combined with the well-made sound effects, these visuals look good and playout very well.

I can see the type of message about mental health and suicide the game is trying to open.  While I am very impressed by the concept, in the end, it doesn’t resonate with an actual mental health patient like me or any other person that I know. But the game tries to convey a common message that I believe people should explore.

Review written by BiteMexD for Zeepond.com!