Without a Dawn

Quality presentation can only take a visual novel so far when both its script and choices feel so false.

Without a Dawn is a powerful and moving, albeit short, experience. A distilled shot of emotion and anxiety wrapped into a surreal package. It made me feel deeply uncomfortable in all the ways art like this is meant to.

How to begin summarising an experience like Without a Dawn? For all its brutality, there’s a gentleness, even something delicate about how it presents its themes. Mental illness can be the harshest of things, but telling these stories can’t be as rough, as people wouldn’t be able to listen. Jesse Makkonen sticks the landing beautifully, though, with a game that’s as thoughtful as it is creepy. I found myself recognising so much of my own mental health struggles, without ever feeling attacked. No, I felt seen and understood, and that’s all you can ask of art. To make you feel seen and heard in a way that’s mesmerising and haunting.

Without a Dawn feels down-to-earth, even small-scale compared to Jesse Makkonen's previous games, but at the same time it's a truly heavy experience. The visual novel takes you straight into darkness, both literally and figuratively.

Without a Dawn is an ideal experience for playing games at night with headphones, and overall it is a very strong one-liner - a melancholic “bedtime story” for adult souls.

Without a Dawn might be brief and lack substantive interactivity, but it succeeds as a deeply atmospheric, handcrafted experience.