You Will (Not) Remain (PC) review "A clever inside reference."

You Will (not) Remain is a (free) game about surviving the end of the world brought along by an eldritch abomination. Except, that’s just the background noise rather than the driving thrust of the game. There’s no controlling a ragtag group of misfits trying to take back control of their dying world, nor are you a desperate survivor sifting through the ruins to try and eke out a post-Apocalypse existence. There’s no need; you’re perfectly safe in your apartment. You have ample supplies, running electricity and a warm bed. To survive, all you have to do is stay there. The problem is, the only thing you have to do is stay there.

Going out to your balcony will give you a decent view of what used to be the city. The buildings are still there, but there’s a huge purple monstrosity nestled in among them now. That’s a cause for concern. Infrequently, your radio will splutter into life and warn you about it. You’ll be safe so long as you stay indoors, it tells you. Don’t go outside. Don’t have any contact with anyone who’s been outside. Just never leave your homes and don’t let anything in, and you’ll be okay.



It probably won’t take you very long to match Remain’s fantastical plight with the more mundane reality we’re all currently facing with that whole Covid-19 thing. That’s why it’s not about fighting monsters, but surviving the sudden isolation you’re forced into when the rest of the world is suddenly closed off to you. What’s left to try and fill your days? How do you cope when you used to have an entire world to explore, and now you’re limited to the tiny patch of it you call home?

You Will (not) Remain attempts to fill this with an easily exhausted list of mundane tasks. There’s a flower to water, I guess. And coffee to drink. You can turn the TV on, but there’s nothing going on there. Other than that, you can look outside now and then and see the world you used to be able to interact with. Quietly mocking you by existing. It’s very, very easy to consume the list of things you’re able to achieve, so why not just crawl back into bed and give up on the day? Give up on the week? Give up on the world?



It’s an interesting case study in isolation, and having a runtime that clocks in at under an hour ensures the purposefully repetitive nature of the game doesn’t get the chance to grind against you. I suspect it was a pretty cathartic game to make, and it might be equally so to play through. We’ve all suffered during the myriad stages of lockdown and, while a lot of similarities are shared, we’ve all battled out our own unique monsters, which may or may not make the experience a little more meaningful to you. None of them have taken over a major city and destroyed the majority of the population, at least. So far, anyway.

Staff review by Gary Hartley (January 12, 2022) Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you.