Video Game / Before Your Eyes

"Every time you blink, you're going to jump forward in time. Could be a second. Could be 5 years. That's just how this thing works."

Before Your Eyes is an Adventure Game developed by Goodbye World Games and published by Skybound Entertainment. It was released to Windows on April 8th, 2021, and closely followed by a MacOS release in September 28th of the same year. The game got a mobile version for iOS and Android on July 26th of 2022.

The game follows the story of a recently deceased human named Benjamin "Benny" Brynn, a now mute spirit who gets fished out of a dark sea by a canine named "The Ferryman." The Ferryman tells Benny that he's taking him to the Gatekeeper for judgement, and that he senses something special about Benny. If the Gatekeeper deems Benny worthy, he'll gain access to the Gatekeeper's paradise and the Ferryman will be handsomely rewarded. If he isn't worthy, the Ferryman will walk away with nothing, and Benny will be turned into one of the "Liar Birds" that can be seen on the ship, as the Ferryman calls them.

In order to get his story straight, the Ferryman asks Benny to recount his life story. Because Benny is a mute spirit and his only way of outward communication is blinking, he uses that to communicate as he travels through his own memories. The memories can be advanced and interacted with by blinking during certain points or looking at certain things, and the player's webcam will be able to tell when the player blinks.^note There is an optional setting where the player can use their mouse to click instead of blinking.

Since the difference between eternal paradise and eternal loneliness is whether the Gatekeeper believes Benny's life makes him worthy enough to earn a spot in her city, Benny can only hope the yarn he spins is colorful enough to impress her...

Not to be confused with Close Your Eyes, a game with a similar name and gameplay mechanic.

Before Your Eyes includes examples of...

• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Right before meeting her, the Ferryman warns you that the Gatekeeper takes a form that is most comfortable to the soul that is being judged. The Gatekeeper appears by taking the form of a cat-like being with a Third Eye, somewhat resembling Benny's childhood cat Ernie, mirroring its position when the Ferryman's story begins to alternate with the memory of Benny's mom's story.
• Bad Liar: Justified. The only reason Benny's false story about his life was outed was due to the liar birds, who exposed Benny's lies to the Ferryman.
• Berserk Button: When Benjamin's story is revealed to be false, the Ferryman becomes angry and starts insulting him, insinuating that Benjamin must have led a pretty terrible life that he's trying to cover up with a false story. Justified in that the only reason he wants the whole truth is because he knows what happens to those who lie to the Gatekeeper.
• Bittersweet Ending: The truth is that Benjamin died as an adolescent due to a terminal illness; the story of him becoming a renowned painter was merely a fantasy. However, both the Ferryman and Elle state that, even though he lived a short and ordinary life, he gave hope and happiness to his family and friends, including inspiring his mother to start composing again and being Chloe's best friend/first love. The Ferryman's sincerity pleases the Gatekeeper and she allows Ben to enter her city, leading Richard and Elle to note that Ben is smiling at his funeral.
• But Thou Must!: Benny is rejected by the music school regardless of your choice between sneaking out with Chloe and staying home.
• Child Prodigy: Benny is this during his retelling of his story, having a natural talent for both the piano and drawing.
• From Stray to Pet: Early in Benny's childhood his dad finds a stray kitten missing an eye in an alley and decides to bring it home, naming it Ernie. While she finds him adorable, Benny's mom is allergic, and says they can't keep it and will have to find him a new home. Blink to the next scene, and Ernie is now wearing a collar and living comfortably with the Brynns.
• Furry Confusion: While in the scenes reliving Benjamin's life animals show up as normal, in the "afterlife" the Ferryman is an anthropomorphic clothed canine, surrounded by normal non-antropomorphic seagulls riding his boat. The seagulls are actually the form that the souls who have lied to the Gatekeeper have been transformed into. The Gatekeeper also takes a form resembling a cat when she appears.
• Go Out with a Smile: Once Benny is accepted into the Gatekeeper's city, you are told to close your eyes one last time. When you do so, you can hear Benny's parents in the aftermath of his death, wondering why he appears to be smiling.
• Most Writers Are Writers: After Ben contracts his terminal illness, Elle gifts him her old typewriter, and the initial story he tells the Ferryman is based on a story he wrote about his fantasies.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: The core concept of the game and the inspiration for the name. The Ferryman asks you to blink in order to revisit scenes from your life in chronological order, starting from your earliest memory and going forward in time anytime you blink.
• Mythical Motifs: The story draws heavily from Egyptian mythology, with the Ferryman, an anthropomorphic canine, taking you to have your life judged, while surrounded by seagulls who call out lies, being parallel to Anubis weighing the hearts of the deceased against truth in the form of a feather. To drive this connection home, during Benjamin's world history class Egyptian Mythology is discussed, while Benjamin draws Anubis in his notebook, making him look somewhat like The Ferryman.
  • Earlier in the story Benjamin's father tells him of the time he and his mother visited Egypt, and makes a joke that their cat Ernie would be surprised that in Ancient Egypt cats were revered as gods. At the end of the story, the Gatekeeper takes the form of a cat in order to make Benjamin feel comfortable in her presence.
• Nothing Is Scarier: In the beginning, as the Ferryman is explaining what happens if the Gatekeeper doesn't deem Benny worthy, he just trails off right before getting to the part about what would happen to Benny.
  Ferryman: "If she ain't, well, I eat seagull for dinner again, and, uh, you...well..."
• Repressed Memories: During Benjamin's telling of his life story, you'll pass through a few scenes that don't really show much, and where the only thing you can do is blink to the next scene. No matter how much you don't blink, you cannot fully see these scenes the first time around, the scene will always be cut short. Either Benny doesn't want to relive that moment, or he doesn't want to show the Ferryman. Or both.
  • Once the Ferryman figures out that your story is false, he makes you go back to the beginning and search for these scenes so that he can learn what you're hiding. All three of these scenes show you the first moments in Benjamin's life where he's confronted with the concept of mortality:
    • Benjamin's mother receiving a phone call that her father has passed away.
    • Benjamin seeing the kittens of his cat Ernie being eaten by coyotes in the backyard.
    • Benjamin overhearing his parents discussing how distraught they are that his illness is terminal and will keep him bedridden.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: The entire game is built around telling you the story of Benjamin Brynn, with the added immersion of using your webcam to blink in order to progress.
  • As Benny's illness gets worse, moving your cursor around the screen to take your medicine becomes progressively more difficult, to the point where eventually you cannot even select the items even if you reach them.
• The Power of Language: According to the Ferryman, the story he tells the Gatekeeper will determine whether or not the soul being judged will be allowed into her city. He is seen reading from a dictionary to look for more fanciful and verbose words in order to make his stories better and increase the chances of a soul getting in.
• Throwing Out the Script: Right before the Ferryman's boat reaches the gate, he tosses his dictionary overboard and claims that extravagant words and stories "may be overrated."
• Unreliable Narrator: Played completely straight, as Benny's entire life he told the Ferryman at first turned out to be a fabrication.
• We Only Have One Chance: Each soul that crosses the Gatekeeper's path can only present their case to her one time. Those who fail to impress her aren't allowed near her city again.
  • It's also explained moments later by the Ferryman that the seagulls used to be spirits just like Benny, and got turned into birds by the Gatekeeper as punishment for lying to her.
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: Ernie goes missing and Benny's parents put up missing posters and look around the neighborhood for him. When you blink into the next scene, Ernie will be laying down in your kitchen table with a very pregnant belly, and Benny's parents will be arguing about how this all happened.