Emily is Away Review by

Emily is Away really surprised me. I enjoy periodically checking out quirkly little indie games, even games that are actually just short stories in video game form. Emily is Away really took me back to my high school and early college years. I graduated high school as Emily finished her junior year in college (2005), so I'm about the right age to remember AIM, away messages, the damn notification sound, all the chat windows, Windows XP, and the general internet culture of the time. Emily herself is fairly similar to my first romantic partner, and obviously my own relationship didn't end well either. I still don't know if there's a way to get a better ending than

...but I gotta say, it's about on point for relationships carried out primarily through messenger and between classes at school.

Hunting for Easter eggs was fun. I saw the titles of the achievements and was able to guess the screen names needed to unlock most of them, and the handful I didn't know were quickly mopped up with a guide.

Visuals are pretty much on point for the desired effect, and the typing was neat. I particularly liked the backspacing. Some cultural references were off (Twitch in 2002?), but the John Cena Easter egg cracked me up.

All in all, I'm glad it was a free game, but I would've kicked Kyle Seely a couple bucks or so for it. I'm on the fence about the rest of the series, but this was worth the 45 minutes it took me to complete.