"Only If" Review

Do you know what I've noticed? No matter how weird, quirky, or absolutely convention-bending a indie or postmodern movie or book is, it will always do the bare minimum just by virtue of its being a movie or book. No matter how wacky, a movie will always have something (even if that something is nothing) projected on a screen. No matter how much it upsets the English department at my University, a book will always have words on a page regardless of its postmodern intent. The same cannot be said of video games. Sure, any video game, no matter how indie and bizarre, will end up having a display and mechanics to work with, but unlike books or movies, there must be some level of functionality. There is an entire technical aspect (functioning controls, commands, etc.) in video games that makes them much harder to create than a book or movie. In other words, sometimes video games can't do the bare minimum, and when they can't do that, it doesn't matter in how many other ways the game succeeds. That is why a game such as "Only If" is such a huge disappointment. As this is a game for the computer, all the pictures are screenshots taken by yours truly.
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Surreal is...perhaps an understatement.

"Only If" is a first person surreal puzzle game unlike any I've ever seen. The idea (at least...initially) is that you play as a millennial (as the game makes a point of pointing out) man named Anthony who, after a night of partying, wakes up in a strange house and is challenged by a man on the other end of a radio. That is about where the logic ends. I've heard this game referred to as a "drug simulator," and I feel inclined to agree. Let me be clear: I feel bad about every negative thing I'm going to say, because on some levels I really, really appreciated Only If's breaks from tradition. But, ultimately, the dialogue and situations and ideas just feel like bad impersonations of Neil Gaiman. I love Neil Gaiman's work because he pulls off utterly acid-trippy situations well. He makes a point of really fusing our world with these almost caricature worlds in a way that makes us believe that the two have always been intertwined. I never got that kind of impression from Only If. I felt like it was trying way too hard to be nonsensical. That is where Only If and Neil Gaiman are different: Neil Gaiman's nonsensical style feels organic, like it is an actual part of the world. But the nonsense in Only If just feels like its creator wanted the premise to be nonsensical.
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Puzzle solving in "Only If" is, for the most part, fantastic and innovative.

But let me take a step back for a second. I mentioned that on some levels I appreciated the breaks that Only If made from tradition, and I wanted to take a moment to dig a little deeper into that. In most of Only If, you have an objective, but the way to complete that objective is not at all clear. In most of these situations, though I was more often than not annoyed beyond reason by the end, I looked back and thought, "that was actually really clever." And that is the killer: a lot of the puzzle-solving in this game is incredibly clever. The puzzles made me think beyond the boundaries of the video game. Sometimes it would take me ten to twelve tries to get it right, but once I figured it out, I smiled to myself and nodded a little bit. That is why it really feels bad to talk about the negatives of this game: because a lot of it is fantastic in a way that I haven't seen before. There isn't a lot I can say about the specifics of the out-of-the-box thinking puzzle solving without spoiling any of the solutions, but I will say that for a lot of the time, the puzzles are creatively and effectively delivered.
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The artistic design is also virtuosically implemented. 

Another way in which Only If doesn't fail is in its visual design. Being a small indie project, it is far from the kind of art we get on the Frostbite engines, but that doesn't even remotely matter. There is a degree of mundanity to the art style that forms an interesting and jarring contrast to the premise and situations that we find in this game. Even sections like the Park, sections that are beautiful, have an inherent mundanity to them that really emphasizes that absurdity of the game. Earlier I mentioned the Gaimanian practice of fusing the logical world with a nonsensical one, and in Only If, the logical world is really well delivered through the art style. If the nonsensical world of the game had felt less forced, then a lot of this game's sins might have been prevented.
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Focus is sort of lost after a while.

But now, I must once again return to negatives. When last I addressed the negatives, I discussed the forced nature of the nonsensical aspects of this game. The saving grace in that regard, for most of the game, was the fact that I had an objective. The hard part was figuring out how to complete that objective. So, even though the situation felt forced, I could work within it. But starting after the park sequence, I didn't have that sense of objective anymore. It felt like Only If left its own formula behind at that point. All of a sudden, I was dropped on top of a pillar with a revolver, and I had to leap across pillar tops and shoot pots...for some reason. There was no little voice, no little bit of text, no nonsensical riddle to even give me a clue of what was going on. I knew that I was probably supposed to be making my way across the chasm on the tops of pillars, but I couldn't do it. And it wasn't because I wasn't smart enough, it was because of two reasons: 1) I wasn't adept enough with the running and jumping controls (that is what happens when you don't help a player get used to your mechanics), and 2) this is when Only If ceased to function. I will talk more about the second reason in a little while. But it was in this section that I decided to quit and not play Only If again. In a video game, no matter how weird it is, no matter how much it breaks convention, you can't throw your own formula away. Perhaps it isn't fair, but there is an inherent trust between the creator and the player. The creator hands the player a product, and the player works within the confines of the product. If the creator then takes the product and changes the way it works entirely, then they have broken trust. This is not something that happens in books or movies. The audience is not actually an active participant, the movie or book doesn't require them to do anything in order to progress, and as a result, the creator of the book/movie can pull whatever they want and, while it might be jarring, it won't completely ruin the fundamentals of the medium. But with a video game, the audience is required to participate in order to make it work, and when you change the parameters of the participation, you are leaving behind everything the medium stands for. Starting after the park sequence, Only If stopped being about using your brain, and it started being about being good enough with your keyboard. It changed from a mental challenge to a dexterity challenge, and that felt like a betrayal. As a result, I never finished Only If. But there is another reason why I didn't finish.
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Sadly, this is a screenshot from "Only If"'s last segment of playability. 

Starting after the park sequence, Only If stopped functioning. Keys would no longer issue the correct commands, Anthony wouldn't jump when I pressed my space bar, he wouldn't run when I held down the shift key, and all of this took place in a part that desperately relied on the player's ability to run and jump. I understand that it is hard to make a game, I really, really do. It makes my brain hurt just thinking about how much work this game probably required. But it is just an unfortunate fact about video games: they have to be playable. They have to function. When you assign an action to a key, when you create a mechanic that relies on multiple keys or buttons working in tandem, you have to make sure that everything works in every single circumstance. I've heard about game bug testers who, as a part of the testing, would stand on every single little square of texture and perform every single action in various orders and at various speeds to make sure that the entire game wouldn't fall apart if somebody jumped too fast on texture square #1572724. Look, it isn't fair, especially given the amount of work that it takes, but having a game where the most basic mechanics stop reliably functioning halfway through (at least, I think halfway through) is absolutely unacceptable. In many instances, I view story and premise in a game as being far more important than the gameplay, but both gameplay and story suffer if the game is unplayable. If your audience can't make your product work, then it doesn't matter if you're telling the greatest story of all time or if you've created the most innovative, fun gameplay in gaming history. If your audience can't make your product work, then your product is a failure. And after the park sequence, Only If is a failure.
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Only If truly is a valiant effort, but effort alone isn't always enough. 

Like I've made a point of saying, I legitimately feel bad about saying every negative thing that I've said. "Only If" is an honest effort at delivering a product that is different and, in many ways, compelling. And that honesty is something that really shined through in the entire time that I played. I could see the effort and the passion that went into this project, and part of why I do this blog is to occasionally help a really good indie game get off the ground. But the unfortunate truth of that is that if a game isn't ready to get off the ground, then I will say so. I could see the twinkle in the creator's eyes as I played this, and it is a fascinating premise with several strong points, but passion and moments of compelling delivery are not always enough. This is a game that achieves some of the larger goals it appears to set out to accomplish, but in doing so, it abandons the most basic goals a video game can have, and without firm foundations such as playability and consistency, how can these larger things possibly hope to stand? I have seen that the creator of this game is constantly going in and fixing things, and I applaud them for that. It takes a big person to acknowledge weaknesses in their project and fix them. Because of this fact, I believe that Only If is not hopeless. If the creator goes in, makes it playable at all points, and stays true to the focus and mission that we were given at the start all the way through, then I am confident that Only If can be the kind of Indie game that truly breaks down walls and conventions. I am confident that one day, Only If will be a product that any Indie game enthusiast worth his salt will be able to discuss. But unfortunately, for now, I give Only If...
4/10

It is simply too flawed on fundamental levels to be called a 5. The many things I loved about it simply weren't enough to save this game from the weaknesses in its building blocks.
A valiant effort, Creability Games, a truly valiant effort.