I’ve been heavily anticipating Spencer Yan’s upcoming game, My Work Is Not Yet Done (Mac ver: itch.io) (Sutemi Productions/Raw Fury), since it was announced a few years ago. Ahead of Steam Next Fest we finally have a very small demo of the game that showcases its movement, controls, a good chunk of lore and worldbuilding, and its general aesthetics.
Loading up the game is like booting up an old computer, complete with ASCII loading windows and a dusty, fingerprint-smudged screen surface. A menu of different stories is available on the first screen, though of course My Work Is Not Yet Done is the only one that you can load into, at least in this demo. Whether or not the other story-titles are selectable remains to be seen. When we load in, we join our protagonist Avery as she looks out over a vast gorge. On the cliffside next to her: a cairn and some of her ex-colleague’s personal effects.
During my brief playthrough, I encountered two different weather states: sunny and raining. I assume there are more depending on the time of day, in-game season, etc., but what I gleaned was that the weather conditions can appreciably affect the legibility of the game, as e.g., when it rains your entire screen streaks up and condensation starts to collect at the borders. This is a really cool graphical effect, but it did make it hard to read the indicator when I was hovering over something I could get further context on or standing near an interactable object. To this end, I found legibility in general to be a minor issue. Every aspect of the game looks incredible, and is incredibly detailed, but my worry is that it borders on visual clutter sometimes, especially when Avery is walking through the woods or in an area where there’s a lot going on around her. This problem is rectified somewhat by pressing “alt” on the keyboard and turning on a kind of thermal imaging device that can distinguish her from her environment pretty definitively.
My Work Is Not Yet Done is an exceptionally text-dense game. This is true even in the demo where our actions are limited and the “vertical slice” is more like a sliver. Everything – from item descriptions to messages preventing us from going certain places or doing certain things – is full of Avery’s reminisces, observations, or feelings. As a result, we very quickly get a sense of the world of Carcosa and how wrong things are in it, but it can be a lot to digest right up-front. Luckily, the demo is replayable and there doesn’t appear to be a time limit if you want to take your time and luxuriate in the lore My Work Is Not Yet Done offers up. Another thing to get used to is the movement speed, which borders on ponderous. This might be a problem later on in the game, especially if there are any time-sensitive segments that require swift action, but it’s hard to anticipate how that will feel when all we’re really doing is walking from one area to another here.
Ultimately, this small taste of My Work Is Not Yet Done was exactly what I was looking for. I’ve got this baby installed for the long haul, and will be going back to read up on the lore the game contains frequently.
