So, Apocalypse Never is a game created by Colonel and which was translated to English by HiragiHoux, and is about a 27-year old ne’er-do-well who ended up shut in the house after the elder of his two sisters changed the locks overnight and left without telling him. This is about as much as what the gamepage description tells us, since there's not much more to say about a short game like this, which is also why the title for the review is an environmental description quote. Still, let us consider some fundamental questions regardless.

Gameplay

Why do games that have at least some coherent story in them need gameplay in the first place? The traditional answer is because otherwise one should just read a book/watch a movie instead, but let’s be honest, this is not a choice small free games like this ever need to worry about. Instead, a better answer to me is that gameplay becomes much like cinematography in films – a way to potentially stand apart from others, amplify the ideas conveyed and make the experience feel unique for the viewer/player on a mechanical layer, even if it’s very similar thematically.

As it is, however, “walk around and interact with things” is a sentence that sums this game up just as accurately as it did the earlier-reviewed Jasei No In and Halloweeb, which is compounded by the substantial thematic similarities with the latter. Technically, here we have the more pronounced puzzle elements, as there’s a range of ordered interactions that must be undertaken to progressively unlock different rooms in the house until you finally get the master key to escape. These generally make sense, and can be quite entertaining as well (getting a key fragment out of your fish tank with a ladle was probably the best one.) There’s also one unloseable pseudo-combat that is entertaining due to being both wholly absurd, yet fitting well with the concept of the game.





The fact it’s one of its kind and thus a welcome break from the monotony is also crucial: Fishermen and the Worm was a notable example of how random inclusions of well-drawn, yet pointlessly stakes-free combat ultimately made the game worse (Though not as much as the large, mostly featureless maps with hard-to-find/outright broken triggers it also possessed.) Of note are some “trap” interactions that look largely innocuous, yet lead directly to a bad ending later. Without spoilers; if an interaction gives you a choice not to go through with it, you should take it. “Normal 2” and True endings are meanwhile received by solving one or both number puzzles protecting certain locked drawers, respectively.

Aesthetics (art, design and sound)

The music is fine for what it is during the game. Sounds play somewhat larger role than usual: Much of Normal 1 ending consists of wind sounds over the black screen to build up suspense towards the outcome. The mapping mainly uses Celianna’s futuristic tiles and it’s fine, much as it portrays the rooms of lazy people that are in various states of disarray. The background image during the one outside segment looks pretty weird, though.

Storyline

The game is somewhat notable for the conflicting clues about where it’s set: the creator is Japanese and there’s a 10 yen coin cropping up at one point, but the main characters’ names are clearly Russian (Seryozha & Khariton, with the latter being more Ukrainian), while one of the number puzzles refers to the US flag as “the flag”, leading to further confusion. Otherwise, though, there’s not much else to say. The writing is fun enough while you’re playing it in the moment, but doesn’t account to much later, and the decent jokes present are best left unspoiled. I suppose it’s worth saying that the multiple endings are all reasonably long and developed relative to the rest of the game: “Normal 1” ending in particular could’ve just been a quick, throwaway joke, but it feels just as valid as others, and is probably the most entertaining. It might also be the best one for the characters in the long term: “True End” looks significantly less desirable in the context of the Bad Ending.

Conclusion



In all, Apocalypse Never is what it is. Not a bad choice at all to play in the spare half-hour, but also not one to truly write home about. The message in the post-True-Ending “Developer’s Room” says this game was born out of developer’s desire to finally finish something out of the many projects they’ve tried, so I suppose it’s quite successful in that regard, and the creator certainly has the potential to make more notable games in the future.