A violin, an empty room, and objects you move around to piece a love story back together.

The gut ranking is harsh: When the Past Was Around only gets ahead of 13% of games when people choose without thinking, and that is on three duels, so treat it as unconfirmed. The detailed profile is more nuanced than it looks. Sound environment holds the average, connection and art direction sit around 45%, and the wish to rediscover it for the first time lands almost mid-pack, which is a fine line for such a small game. Then everything breaks elsewhere. Desert island falls to the very bottom, controller feel is ahead of 3% of titles, and fun comes in literally last. There is the fracture: it leaves a mark through what it says and what it shows, but there is nothing to play in the sense a player looking for a good time would mean.

That is the life of the intimate point-and-click. The gestures are minimal, the puzzles serve the metaphor more than the challenge. Against puzzle games that stand on their mechanics, this one has only its grief and its music to offer.

So, who is it for? For you if you like short games about loss, hand-drawn sets, a soundtrack that carries everything. Much less so if you expect a game to hold you, to challenge you, or simply to be fun.