Bury Me, My Love follows the journey of a Syrian immigrant, Nour, as she makes her way from Syria to Europe. However, it is conveyed through text messages between her and her husband, Majd, with players offering advice and encouragement to their distant loved one. These messages occur in pseudo real-time, too, leaving the player to wonder, for some time, if that was the last thing they said to their wife.
With Nour’s younger sister dead, she decides it’s time to leave the country. Majd, however, still has parents there and cannot leave, and so she will have to undertake the journey to Europe, and hopefully safety, alone. Players will receive her text messages on their phone as she makes her travels, getting updates on where she is and what she’s doing periodically. Often, players can choose how to respond to what she’s saying, giving her an idea on how to move on or even just offer some words of support and care. Every little thing they tell her can shape the story in surprising ways, though, and not all of them are good.
Bury Me, My Love is at its most powerful in the silences that come after events, though. Telling Nour to take a boat or not, to wait around for help or not, or to make any decision, is often followed by that yawning emptiness while players wait for a text to tell them if things turned out all right. The journey is filled with potential troubles, delays, and lethal outcomes, all of which can turn that silence into an endless gulf. There is no closure should some terrible fate befall Nour – no way of knowing what happened. This game utilizes that fear to devastating effect, letting players experience that terrible silence as we hope, and pray, that our loved one is all right.
Bury Me, My Love is available for $ 2.99 on Google Play and the App Store. For more information on the game and developer The Pixel Hunt, you can head to the game’s site or follow them on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
