GAME REVIEW | Lifeline (Game of the Year 2015)

Here’s a confession:

I’m not a mobile gamer.

I don’t have anything against the genre. I don’t sit here and think I’m a real gamer and people who play mobile games are below me or anything like that. I just don’t have time in my day to sit and play a game on my phone. If I have a spare minute or two, I’m catching up on social media somewhere or one of the hundreds of Hangouts chats I found myself in. It’s just rare that I have any ambition to get into a mobile game.

But over the Christmas break a few months ago, I found myself itching for something to do. I usually put my hands in the air with social media around the holidays so I had some time to kill. I looked around the store and noticed a sale going on. And in that sale was this little game called Lifeline. I read the description and I was instantly hooked.

Lifeline is a playable, branching story of survival against all odds. You will help Taylor make life or death decisions, and face the consequences together.

Seeing the screenshots made everything click and I couldn’t download it fast enough. With the sci-fi element in this story I was shaping according to my answers, I was like a kid on a vast undiscovered planet I just couldn’t wait to get lost in. I started looking up more info and as it turns out, David Justus, of The Wolf Among Us fame, was the writer. If that doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will!

Now, I could sit here and get into details with what happens, how events unfold, and the choices I made in the story, but that would be like robbing you of an experience. This is a mobile game that is basically a choose your own adventure. No cute graphics, no clever gameplay, no addicting social aspect. It’s just you, texting some astronaut like you’re both in high school. And I’m telling you right now, that’s what makes it amazing.

It really paints the picture for you. From the opening introduction to the closing of the transmission, you feel as if you were a part of something. Like you had a hand in saving this stranger’s life.

No, it’s not perfect. There were a few times where I was taken out of the fantasy and had to ask myself how this guy is going through this certain thing right now, and he’s taking the time to communicate everything to me in detail. But that only happened about twice and it was towards the end where there was so much chaos happening that I figured there was just no other way to handle it development wise.

Because the story from the beginning will grip you, giving you such detail that your imagination has no choice but to create this world where Taylor exists and needs your help to survive.

Even with that little quirk, it doesn’t take anything away from it. I said that I was taken out of the fantasy and that’s exactly how it felt. Because the story from the beginning will grip you, giving you such detail that your imagination has no choice but to create this world where Taylor exists and needs your help to survive. And then you’ll hit this point – like the climax of a really good book where you were following this character’s path from the beginning – where everything you thought you knew gets flipped upside down. And nothing in your world, where you live and breathe, feels as important as what’s happening to Taylor right now. He’s a lonely astronaut stranded on an alien moon and you’re the only one he can talk to.

From the opening introduction to the closing of the transmission, you feel as if you were a part of something.

As you could tell, I enjoyed it. Haha. I had that gripe I mentioned earlier, but other than that there’s nothing really negative to say. The options you have when speaking with Taylor are very clear. You either go right or go left. Sometimes you’ll get Taylor questioning you, and in turn he makes you question yourself. But if he asks you again he’ll more than likely follow your command and find a silver lining to your choice… Even if it could get him killed… Which I may have done once. And when that happens I think there are save points, but this happened to me close to the beginning so I just started over. So when playing keep in mind your choices really do matter!

And nothing in your world, where you live and breathe, feels as important as what’s happening to Taylor right now.

You notice how I’m talking to you like you’re going to play it. That’s because, well, you’re going to play it. This was a Game of the Year for me, which says a lot. This experience, the space ride of emotions and feels this story sent me on cost a whopping 99 cents. It’s so simple, and so easy to get through, you wouldn’t believe it’s as gripping and addicting as it is. And it’s not like you go through it once and you get the whole thing. From when I killed Taylor, I went back to the beginning and did a few of my choices differently. It sent me on a completely different path to the point where I lost him. I learned more back story on who he was and what happened in just answering 2 or 3 questions differently. So there’s replay value if you’re that into it!