Emily is Away Too

Pros

• A charming little time capsule of adolescence at the turn of the century
• Two main protagonists feel incredibly well formed

Cons

• Actual experience is largely narrow and guided
• Art style could be lost on players not of a certain age

Emily is Away Too offers a truly creative approach to the visual novel genre, and while it's an engaging and fulfilling experience, players who enjoyed the original Emily is Away may feel like it's largely more of the same. It's also a game designed from the ground up to evoke a certain level of nostalgia. Players who grew up in the nineties will likely find a lot of nostalgia for the cultural touchstones this game leans into and the callbacks to the early days of the consumer driven internet experience.

If the original Emily is Away hadn't done it first, the design and aesthetics of its sequel would seem like a revelation. Visual novels typically play out exactly as they sound, guiding the players through a sequence of events like a choose your own adventure novel, often accompanied by still screens of the characters and situations around you. Emily is Away Too is a little bolder. The whole game interface looks like the second cousin to popular messaging services of the 1990s and early 2000s like AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ. It's an affectation that will be lost on younger players, but it feels true to the setting of the time, and developer Kyle Seeley does a phenomenal job of making it feel like you're really inhabiting the body of a young person of the era. Especially clever is the fact that the graphics are designed to look like the low resolution two dimensional graphics of the time. It may be a minimalist art style, but it's one that's truly committed to what it wants to be.

The poignancy of the story comes from the understanding that the character is at one of the most important crossroads from adolescence to adulthood. The majority of the game takes place on the last day of high school. While players are forced to fill in a lot of the implications about the relationships with their friends, the relationships here are well written and universal enough to really evoke a sense of understanding with the player.

The player's character is largely a cipher here, and the sense of agency is far more restricted than it may initially seem. Most conversations break down to about three options, but this limitation also means that you can produce dramatically different results on each play through. The real stars of the story are your friends Emily and Evelyn. While their writing is sometimes overwrought, the script is masterfully written for the most part. Emily and Evelyn both seem like teenagers, their awkwardness and confusion concealed behind a layer of cool affectation. It's a story well worth diving into as long as you can expect the limitations. While players can customize the experience by changing the look of their chat client and exploring other aspects of the client like your friends list, you're largely more of a passenger than an active participant in the story.

Pros

• A charming little time capsule of adolescence at the turn of the century
• Two main protagonists feel incredibly well formed

Cons

• Actual experience is largely narrow and guided
• Art style could be lost on players not of a certain age