it’s possible. In ‘The Past Within’ you have to solve a mysterious puzzle together

Nice, living in a gamer family in which mother, father and son (17) spend hours every day with a controller in their hand. But on Friday evening or Sunday morning you sometimes think: three people, each working behind their own screen in their own fantasy world… that could be more social.

There is redemption. In the game The Past Within it must be more social. The puzzling puzzle in the game can only be solved by intensive cooperation between two players. And in a very old-fashioned way. Don’t be scared: the players of The Past Within need to talk to each other.

It takes little effort for the aspiringhikikomorison that this game has to be played and that he has to come out of his digital cave. He knows the makers of The Past Within and he’s not the only one. The Amsterdam based game developers of Rusty Lake have built a worldwide following with sophisticated puzzle games like Rusty Lake Hotel (2015) and Rusty Lake Paradise (2018).

In those games, playable on all imaginable platforms including the phone, the player is expected to click his way through a goth horrorlike world. In living rooms, ominous paintings hang on the walls, behind which are often hidden keys, which can be used to open coffins, or secret hatches in the coffin of a grandpa in state. The Rusty Lakeworld is basically an endless escape room, an escape from rooms with creaky floors and crows cawing on the windowsill in front of an unfortunately closed window.

The Past Within is played from two points of view. One player plays the game – mind you: on his own screen – in the past, sometime in the late 1800s, judging by the solemn attire of the character Rose. The other player is in the future and has an inscrutable, three-dimensional cube with sliders, drawers, letter keys, valves and even a fan.

We have to play the game in one room, within earshot. The future player (the son) plays behind a PC screen, the father (the past) on the telephone. And it is of course the intention that we do not look at each other’s monitors. It soon becomes clear that a little clicking on the puzzles in your own screen will not get you there. Both the past and the future need codes to move forward. And those codes have to come from the other.

The idea behind the game is wonderful: the character from the future has a device (that cube) that allows you to contact the past. The ultimate goal is even a rebirth of flesh and blood in a new age. But both players need information from the other, and you can only get it by questioning the opponent extensively. Does one person sometimes see a mysterious figure with deer antlers, which can be used as a pawn in a chess game? And can the other give a route through a maze, with which a number code can be picked up that can open another box in the cube? ‘Now take two steps to the right, three to the left’, et cetera.

We talk our blisters on the tongue and both get an old-fashioned board game feeling. Sometimes we get stuck, for example when the past, ie the father, does not understand that a valve must be placed on a vial of blood. The future then sits waiting on its own to crack a code, so that a solution is lost and we get hopelessly confused. “Hey, we were supposed to keep communicating,” the past says pissed off. The future: ‘Yes, sorry, it took me too long.’

But we get out: after 2 hours and 53 minutes we have resurrected a flesh-and-blood human being, and we do a high five. The Past Within is a mysterious, smart, social and sometimes beautifully illustrated puzzle, we both judge. A game gem that every family should try, if only to get closer to each other.