Review: Bury me, my Love

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Title: Bury me, my Love
Platform: PC, Mobile, Switch (reviewed)
Developer: The Pixel Hunt, Figs, ARTE France
Publisher: Playdius Entertainment
Price:
PC: $5/$4
Switch: $5/Â£4.50
Mobile: $3/Â£3
Release date: Out Now
TL;DR: A story of a strong and powerful female refugee that fights against all odds in a moving story.
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Bury me, my Love is an all too real emotional journey of a woman escaping from Syria to find refuge within Europe. The original game released on mobile devices a few different generations back in 2017 but recently released on Nintendo Switch and PC.

The game follows 27-year-old, Nour as she makes her way from war-torn Syria to somewhere in Europe depending on your choices as you play as her husband, Majd, while you exchange messages through an app similar to Whatsapp.

It’s up to the player to reassure Nour along her journey with messages of positive reinforcement or guide her with helpful advice that due to Nour being a tad stubborn something she mentions from time to time in the game. She may decide to go against your advice and make it on her own. Sometimes this works out positively for her but sometimes she’ll return with messages asking for your guidance.

I went into Bury me, my Love with a note of hesitation as I’m not the kind of person who usually engages in text-based games but as part of my Gaming New Years Resolutions, I’m trying to expand my horizons and experiment with genres I’d usually avoid and oh boy, I’m glad I did, it hooked within the first five minutes. The writing made me feel like I was Majd and I had known Nour my entire life, I wanted to help this woman on her journey, I got emotionally invested with these characters basically from the off.

Occasionally, Nour and Majd will exchange photographs with one another, Majd will send pictures of himself to react to certain texts whilst Nour will show different locales, people she’s journeying with or image of a stuffed bunny she found next to the corpse of a little refugee girl… The game isn’t afraid to hit you with moments such as these. It was created after all, under the guidance of an actual refugee woman who made a journey like this, and it shows in these quiet moments of horror.

All of these photographs are hand drawn images that fit perfectly with the game, it’s hard to describe but the rough comic book style fits the feeling of how rough it must be to be separated from your partner whilst on a journey where you have no idea what’s coming next.

In moments of important dialogue, a soft melody play over the stream of messages, the same can be said for moments of sadness or joy although the latter is very rare in this situation. Other than these moments there isn’t much of a soundtrack which is fitting because you don’t have a soundtrack when texting your partner or mates.

Bury me, my Love has nineteen different endings, each ending reaches a conclusion with a voicemail from Nour where she tells you where she has ended up. Without spoiling the ending, I managed to gain Nour asylum and once Majd saves enough money he will able to join her there. Whilst researching I found a majority of people landed Nour in prison so well done to those people…

The most some unfortunate hiccups during my playthrough on the technical front and that is the game crashed around three times during my two hour run which isn’t too severe as the game automatically saves your progress often but it broke my flow, I hope they manage to patch these crashes out so that future playthroughs are not hindered by them.

Overall, Bury me, my Love is an interesting experience and really opened my eyes to the real people suffering in the world and the things they must experience whilst running from their war-stricken cities and towns. The game is incredibly worth it as well for the small price tag! Not only do you get a well-written story but you get two great characters as well as multiple endings that add a massive amount of replayability.

The Good

An incredible story that invests the player with very real characters.
A soundtrack that plays at the right moment to add more emotion to the dialogue.
Multiple endings for added replay value.