Nobody who knows me even a little will be surprised that my greatest rebellion as a child involved neglecting my responsibilities (school, pfft) in favour of sticking my nose in a good book. Although I’m proud to report I am now a Semi-Responsible Adult™ who can, in fact, stop reading for long enough to turn up to work on time, this love affair with storytelling has never abated. Indeed, many of my favourite video games today are those which have strong narratives and interesting plots. When I heard about Bury Me My Love, I was understandably intrigued. It tells the story of a Syrian refugee on her journey from the Middle East to Europe via a series of text message exchanges. The game looked set to offer a good mix of politics, innovation, and relevance. $4.99 sounds like a steal, but how well does it actually play?

Like many visual novels and text-based games, the actual gameplay in Bury Me My Love is straightforward. The story is a conversation between yourself, Majd, and your wife, Nour. The narrative simply follows her path from Syria to Europe. Gameplay proceeds by selecting from various interaction options, including text messages, emoji, and stylised “selfies”. The choices you make in your conversation shape Nour’s path and can be the difference between her safe passage and a failed journey.

And that’s pretty much it. Bury Me My Love is essentially an instant-messaging simulator, but don’t let its mechanical simplicity put you off. The simple format of the game is surprisingly effective for its clear goal of communicating a meaningful story.

Gameplay involves choosing which texts, emoji, and selfies to send at various points in the story.

And this story – or, more accurately, these stories – are moving. Bury Me My Love is firmly rooted in current international politics, with references to real events, real places, and real struggles. However, the game succeeds in putting a personal touch on the refugee narrative, something that is often missing in the mainstream media. I mean, we all know that a refugee’s path is not an easy one. And yet, most of us will never understand how it feels to witness a child crushed to death on an overcrowded boat. While it’s presumptuous to suggest that playing a game might let you truly comprehend the struggles of a refugee, the game does well in its attempt to communicate these experiences in a way that is more intimate than what the mainstream media is capable of.

However, despite the game’s narrative weight, you’ll find lovely interactions throughout. In-jokes and light-hearted banter between Majd and Nour provide a degree of levity, preventing the story from becoming overwhelmingly grim. I wasn’t expecting it, but I did actually find myself chuckling at a number of their interactions. It’s not all fun and games, though. Like most couples, Nour and Majd have arguments, although these typically stem from a place of love and worry for the other. Of course, for a game whose title means “don’t even think about dying before I do”, this bittersweetness is to be expected.

You’ll face difficult decisions on your journey with Nour and Majd.

If the story were all that mattered, Bury Me My Love would be so easy to recommend. Unfortunately, however, nearly everything else about the game is lacking in polish.

First and foremost, there’s a significant game-breaking bug. This first occurred after I’d been playing for over an hour; no matter which of the branching options I took at this point, the game would crash. In order to actually proceed, I had to erase all of my progress and start again from the beginning. In my second run, I chose slightly different options in the hope that the game wouldn’t crash at that same point. While this did the trick for that particular choice, the game crashed at least another three times in that playthrough (although thankfully never at a point where it forced me to restart again). Still, I regretted having to play through the first part of the game twice, because there was no way to speed up the dialogue that I had already seen.

You can also rotate the interface and use your Switch like a large phone.

And this leads me to my second and perhaps most major criticism. Bury Me My Love offers an impressive 19 alternative endings, but the game makes it an absolute chore to play through multiple times. Not only can you not skip dialogue you’ve already seen, there also doesn’t appear to be any system to help avoid paths you’ve already taken (for a great example of how to do this right, check out the flow system in Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward). Furthermore, the game doesn’t indicate or even hint at which of your choices affect Nour’s path. Of course, this means that if you want to experience all 19 endings, you’ll have to rely on your memory (or pen and paper) to track the hundreds of decisions you make over 19+ runs in order to a) not repeat a path, and b) learn which decisions actually matter.

Uh, no thanks.

Nour’s journey is a dangerous one.

I’ve grown up in a world where images of war and destruction have constantly been available on the TV, and later, the internet. After years of exposure to this sort of media coverage, I couldn’t help but start to notice that these stories often seem to ignore the actual people involved in them. Bury Me My Love succeeds as a counterpoint to these somewhat detached narratives, reaching through and putting a face to these struggles. As a story, the game is honestly excellent, and I couldn’t recommend it more. However, its technical issues and poor “gameplay” make it merely average as a game.

Thanks for reading! If you like the idea behind Bury Me My Love, check out Lost Phone Stories. It’s a game that also uses the Switch like a “phone” to communicate a meaningful story. For something completely different, check out my personal favourite Nindie of 2018, The Spectrum Retreat. And as always, don’t forget to keep up with us on social media — you can follow me on Twitter here.