Last Day of June review: Leaving an impression

Last Day of June evokes all the feels it promises, but its true magic is in the look and sound of its environments and character expression.

Developer: Ovosonico
Publisher: 505 Games
Platforms: PC (Version reviewed), PS4
Release Date: August 31, 2017

When I was first introduced to Last Day of June at E3 2017, my awe was reserved for its gorgeous, painting-like setting and lovely, if disconcerting score. The fact that it was a tragic love story between two Coraline-like partners, Carl and June, did not phase me much. My brief walk near a sunset-drenched lake with Carl seemed to be trying far too hard to tug at my heartstrings. But after seeing Last Day of June through, I’m happy (and heartbroken) to find that its promise of tears was far more than a gimmick.

Last Day of June’s power lies in its story, as it is primarily an exploration title with some puzzling elements. It is difficult to explain the gameplay hook without spoiling the plot, especially given the game’s brevity. It centers around an almost saccharine couple, Carl and June, who suffer a tragic accident in the game’s opening minutes. Through Carl, the player must try to put together the pieces of why the accident happened the way it did, and how it might have been prevented, by playing out the day repeatedly through four other characters who were involved. Changing an action performed by one character can change the outcomes for all the others.

[Last Day of June’s] portrayal of grief’s many angles hits hard even in the game’s happier moments…

My primary complaint about Last Day of June is that there isn’t quite enough of that gameplay to it. The concept, brilliant as it is once you understand it in the context of the game, stops just short of being fully realized. Even nosing my way into almost every achievement and collectible, I still finished the game in less than four hours. I felt that not nearly enough of that time was spent actually playing the game. Last Day of June’s story keeps the setting and characters small and tight to pull off its effective finish, but the result is that its primary puzzles are ludicrously easy to solve, and there aren’t enough of them. Even one more round of “outcomes” for each character would have given the gameplay enough meat to sink into. Instead, the first three “chapters” feel cut painfully short by the jump into the game’s linear finale.

Instead, you’ll spend a lot of time watching the same cutscene over and over. Because finding new outcomes to progress the story requires repeating the day with different characters, you’ll watch the inciting tragedy happen again and again and again with no option to skip. Granted, this problem is alleviated (and even used to a narrative effect) in the game’s closing hour, and the game does provide skips through some segments of play once you’ve solved them. Still, when you already know the solution, it’s exasperating to sit back and watch three of the same cutscene just to get to the correct outcome.

As off-putting as that may sound, Last Day of June’s story compels enough to make its unrealized gameplay hook recede into the background, especially in the final chapter. Its portrayal of grief’s many angles hits hard even in the game’s happier moments, pulling no punches about the unsettling, haunting, and harrowing corners of that particular brand of loss. The remainder of the casts supports this in more than just their narrative role. Hidden memories scattered throughout the town reveal that each character deals with different loss in a different way, making their brief appearances in the lives of Carl and June that much more poignant.

Ovosonico places great emphasis on artistic effect with Last Day of June, and it shows. The aesthetic is one of Tim Burton meets Monet meets Pixar’s Up. Color and light play strange games with your eyes in each scene, blurring in the distance and at the edges like a photo you can’t quite make out, or (fittingly) a memory you can’t quite place. The characters appear far crisper, but with rounded edges and hollow eye sockets. Without facial expression or understandable dialogue (for the most part), the player relies on the subtle, intricate body and hand gestures to read the characters. With all this, it only makes sense that the titular June is an artist.

Steven Wilson’s soundtrack compliments this visual aesthetic. It’s difficult to place what I heard during Last Day of June into a particular genre; it often seemed to change and morph into a different category entirely. There were soft, ambient moments broken up by eerie moments of prog rock closer to what I’d normally expect from Wilson. While it supported the narrative without stealing the show, at key story beats it was clear why Ovosonico heavily designed the game around Wilson’s work with its biting, ethereal sound, specifically.

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For $20, some will balk at Last Day of June’s short playtime—you might squeeze over four hours out of it if you are bad at puzzles and interested in achievements. And if you’re not invested in the story or art, you’d be right to shake your head, as there’s simply not a lot of “play” here and a heavy focus on being a work of art. But where that focus lands, Last Day of June paints a memorable picture that fully delivers the tears its opening promises.

A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.