| Boyhood's End | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Gameplay & Story | Release Date | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Boyhood’s End is a sci-fi horror adventure about the world’s worst and best citizens partnering up and traversing the cosmos to return freedom back to humanity. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Boyhood's End Review Overview
What is Boyhood's End?
Boyhood's End is a juvenile science fiction horror adventure game, in which the world is ruled by a mechanical overlord "R. Karellen". Every aspect of every person's life is decided by their "human score." Even the most minor of offenses threaten to deduct score from the people, which would severely impact what they could receive from the system such as food and medical care. If one’s "human score" becomes low enough, they may even lose the right to live.
Boyhood's End features:
⚫︎ Hand-drawn pixel artwork
⚫︎ Interactive PC-themed menu
⚫︎ Immersive puzzles
⚫︎ QTE-based fights
⚫︎ Multiple bad endings
 Steam |
$9.99 |
Boyhood's End Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Gloriously Compelling Storytelling Their Silence Speaks Loudly Hair-Raising Ambiance |
There’re Automatically-Skipped Text Visual Bugs Worthy Of Early Access |
Boyhood's End Overall Score - 94/100
Ah, I think I’ve found my game of the year—and the second chapter hasn’t even been released yet. Boyhood’s End is a merciless game, using all-too-familiar themes as a launching point for its far more foreign concepts and horrors. As a result, it cruises along at high speeds right from the start without feeling forced. Its ambiance is shaped by a masterful combination of visuals, audio, and narrative that seamlessly work together to provide the most effective sci-fi horror experience. It’s an incredibly complex game, and I’ll definitely be watching its development closely as more chapters are released.
Boyhood's End Story - 10/10
While Boyhood’s End tackles sensitive and serious topics like bullying and physical violence, that’s not what makes its story so gripping. Simply put, the world itself is so fascinatingly wretched and dystopian that you can’t help but be drawn into it. In exchange for your attention, you’re rewarded with an incredible story packed into a two-hour read that uses familiar, if gritty, themes as a foundation for its sci-fi horror. Coupled with the game’s imagery and audio, and the entire experience is magic.
Boyhood's End Gameplay - 9/10
A game with puzzle-solving elements, mystery-solving, QTEs, bad endings, and even dialogue choices? It almost feels like we’re back in the good old days of RPGMaker games that really pushed things to the limit. What’s even more surprising is how seamlessly these mechanics fit together, so no particular feature feels underutilized. The overall experience feels almost perfect, really. My only major gripe is that the dialogues and cutscenes have a bad habit of progressing without your input, even though it’s presented in a visual novel format. That’s quite a big deal considering how important the story is.
Boyhood's End Visuals - 10/10
Featuring hand-drawn pixel artwork for everything from its backgrounds to its cosmic horror-tier imagery, Boyhood’s End delivers visuals that are as beautiful as they are practical and frightening. This is especially effective in setting the mood for the game, as the general lack of detail in the art style complements its Lovecraftian themes. There are a few visual hiccups and bugs here and there, sure, but they’re mostly insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
Boyhood's End Audio - 9/10
Not all visual novels need to have voice acting in order to sound good. In particular, stories that focus on a very small number of characters can make do without them, especially those that exhibit such strong personalities that the reader can form a mental voice for them in their head. And besides, the lack of voice acting actually works in its favor, allowing for its gripping background music and sound effects to worm its way into your head.
Boyhood's End Value for Money - 10/10
This game costs just a bit under $10, with a total of about 2 hours of gameplay and reading. Normally, that would already disqualify it from a high score, let alone a perfect one. But as of now, the game only contains the first of its five planned chapters, and it has already taken me on a rollercoaster of an experience. Since the game is expected to increase in price as the developers release more chapters, buying it now means you’ll be able to get them at a price so cheap, it feels almost criminal considering the quality. So do it now
Boyhood's End Review: The Start Of A Masterpiece
I’ll be honest: when I booted up this game, I fully expected a standard RPGMaker-like experience with a few novelties here and there. What I didn’t expect was to be taken on a wild, horrific, and emotional ride through an intergalactic dystopia, in the shoes of a character who has had more development in just two hours than a typical dating sim protagonist does in an entire visual novel—and we haven’t even left the game’s first area yet.
Is this game really in Early Access? Well, yeah, it says so on their Steam page.
Anyway, let’s start from the beginning. Boyhood’s End is set in a coupled system of universes where humanity’s needs are entirely managed by an all-powerful AI that allocates resources and benefits through a "human score" it assigns to individuals. Those with high scores are the most upstanding and "trustworthy" members of society, enjoying incredible benefits and high-paying positions, while those with low scores suffer constant oppression and must rely on essentially giveaways to survive.
The limitations that those with low "human scores" face are very real. Giovanni, the main character with a record-breakingly low score, isn’t even permitted to enter certain locations or apply for certain medical benefits.
As a student, he is ostracized to the point where he doesn’t have permission to access his own class’s chat group. His classmates have also created a "loser-free" channel, which he understandably doesn’t have access to. He even has the lowest priority when getting his food served. Eventually, he even has his right to live revoked.
It’s some real PSYCHO-PASS dystopia stuff.
While the game’s themes of bullying and oppression are prominently displayed, at its heart, Boyhood’s End is a sci-fi horror title. In a way, the game simply uses the more relatable concepts of bullying and hopelessness as a springboard to introduce its more unfamiliar ideas, like sentient AI monsters and brainwashed zealots. After all, the first chapter is quite short, but there’s a lot it needs to accomplish before transitioning to the next story arc.
To that end, Boyhood’s End is designed so that its narrative, visuals, and audio work together to deliver as much information as possible, in the most unobtrusive way.
That’s quite an impressive feat considering how simple its narrative is. It’s devoid of the big words that paperback novels often rely on to tell a story. In fact, the story is mostly driven by dialogue and text messages (which are really just written dialogue), so using complex vocabulary wouldn’t do much for immersion. But that’s perfectly fine. Since it’s not a real visual novel and has "actual" gameplay, it can rely on animations to fill in the gaps.
And speaking of animation, its audiovisuals are just as important as the writing when it comes to delivering the story. The game uses a blend of darkness, eerie imagery, unsettling music, and inhuman noises to make the hairs on your arms stand up and send chills down your spine. They even include small details that add to the unsettling atmosphere, like the reflection of the MC’s face full of despair on the computer screen whenever you scroll through posts bullying him.
At that point, you can outright overlook the fact that the game has no voice acting and still get the same, if not better, level of immersion compared to games that do. That’s just how effective the audiovisuals (particularly the music) are.
Unfortunately, the game is quite short. You can probably finish the first chapter in about two hours. But don’t worry—Boyhood’s End currently only has one chapter out. Future chapters will continue to develop the story, and the second chapter is scheduled to release by December 2024.
It’s honestly been so long since I’ve played something that left such an impression on me. Maybe it’s because I’ve started to get emotionally invested in the game? Either way, I’m definitely keeping a close eye on it as more chapters come out.
Pros of Boyhood's End
| Things Boyhood's End Got Right |
|---|
|
Gloriously Compelling Storytelling Their Silence Speaks Loudly Hair-Raising Ambiance |
Gloriously Compelling Storytelling
Depending on who you ask, writing a sci-fi story, particularly a horror one, can be quite a daunting task. After all, you need to craft a compelling narrative about a topic that nobody has any personal, real-life experience with—unless you're from the future. In that case, hi!
Some stories approach this challenge with patience, slowly familiarizing their readers with the world they’ve created. Unfortunately, Boyhood’s End doesn’t have that luxury. Its first chapter is only about a two-hour read, after all. That’s barely enough time to introduce its readers to any kind of extended storytelling. Instead, it kicks off with more familiar, albeit tragic, topics that many people can relate to, such as bullying, hopelessness, and family.
These themes predictably take readers on a rollercoaster of emotions as the story immediately comes in swinging, turning the game’s first chapter into a striking experience that could easily pass any marketing trial.
Their Silence Speaks Loudly
Now, typically, I would consider the lack of voice acting in a visual novel to be a con, but in Boyhood’s End, it actually works heavily in its favor. Since attention is a precious resource that all games must manage finely, the silence allows the incredible background music to work its magic with fewer distractions.
Besides, it’s not as if voice acting is required for every game. In Boyhood’s End, the fact that there are so few characters and that the two protagonists have such powerful and distinct personalities means that it’s very easy to form a mental profile to deliver their lines.
Hair-Raising Ambiance
A game’s atmosphere is shaped by its visuals and audio, with the story providing the context that ties it all together. In sci-fi horror, this can be even trickier because we’re dealing with things beyond what we can easily imagine. But that’s also where the magic happens—sometimes, what we don’t see or fully understand can be even scarier. With the right imagery and subtle hints, a game can nudge the player’s imagination into filling in the blanks with their worst fears.
In Boyhood’s End, this is done through its wonderfully horrific pixel-art horrors that take on discernible shapes, but lack just enough detail due to purposefully vague features and the innate qualities of the art style itself. The fear is then amplified by the nightmarish setting of the game, all of the cult-like imagery involved with the game’s visual worldbuilding, and the hair-raising tracks playing in the background.
The overall result is incredibly effective, leading me to believe that the writers had prior experience with the horror genre. Oh, yeah, they do. They did, after all, also create the wonderfully frightening RPGMaker game "Chloé’s Requiem."
Cons of Boyhood's End
| Things That Boyhood's End Can Improve |
|---|
|
There’re Automatically-Skipped Text Visual Bugs Worthy Of Early Access |
There’re Automatically-Skipped Text
Imagine a visual novel with no text log feature—horrific, right? What if you accidentally click past an important part of the dialogue? You'd have no way to read it again without loading a save file, and God help you if you forgot to save at a point close enough to reduce the hassle of going back.
Now, imagine a game where that happens not because of your carelessness, but due to the game design itself. That’s even worse. That’s the game itself working against you.
Visual Bugs Worthy Of Early Access
While I haven’t encountered many bugs or errors, they do exist. As expected of an Early Access game, perhaps? Fortunately, none of them were game-breaking, but they did pull me out of my immersion. And to be honest, I think that’s just as bad as having your game crash. Horror games like these are carried hard by the immersive experience created by prolonged tension. Losing that even for a moment means starting over from scratch, which is something Boyhood’s End certainly can’t afford too often due to its short story.
Is Boyhood's End Worth It?
Yes. Just skip a meal if you can't.
While a $10 price tag for two or so hours of gameplay is something I would normally scoff at for something that skirts the boundaries of being a visual novel, it’s highly likely that Boyhood’s End’s first chapter is merely a prologue. In other words, the following chapters might be much longer than the first one, and altogether would result in a work far longer than ten hours upon completion.
Of course, that’s not even mentioning its impressive story, which opens in an extremely strong fashion and already makes me want to pull my hair out in anxiety for the next chapter.
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
| Steam |
$9.99 |
Boyhood's End FAQ
How many chapters will Boyhood’s End have?
According to the developer, Boyhood’s End will have five chapters in total. However, there are six chapters shown on the main menu, so who knows? It may just be a bonus 6th chapter, though.
When will the next chapter of Boyhood’s End release?
Boyhood’s End’s chapter 2 doesn’t have a set release date yet. However, the developers have mentioned that they plan to release it by mid-December, 2024.
Game8 Reviews
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Boyhood's End Product Information
 |
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| Title | BOYHOOD’S END |
|---|---|
| Release Date | September 6, 2024 |
| Developer | buriki clock |
| Publisher | WSS playground, Alliance Arts |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Adventure, Horror, Visual Novel, RPG |
| Number of Players | Single Player |
| ESRB Rating | TBA |
| Official Website | Boyhood's End Website |
