Emily is Away Too

Emily is Away Too is the spiritual successor to the critically acclaimed original Emily is Away, and significantly expands the formula. You message both Emily and Evelyn — two friends with their own personalities, histories and storylines — as you determine the outcome of your senior year of high school. Multiple endings are triggered by your dialogue decisions, and the choices accumulate across the entire game rather than just affecting individual moments.

The interface is a meticulous recreation of 2006-era instant messaging. Buddy icons, customizable profiles, away messages, the specific texture of a chat window from a forgotten era of online communication — every detail is calibrated to evoke that particular cultural moment. The game extends the story past the chat window with embedded YouTube links, Facebook profiles, and file transfers between you and your friends, creating a fuller picture of late-2000s online life than the original game attempted.

Independent IM conversations with Emily and Evelyn run in parallel, and the relationship dynamics between them — and between you and each of them — depend on what you say to whom. Branching paths produce wildly different runs, and the option to change your text color to lime green so everyone knows you're the coolest kid in school is treated with the seriousness it deserves.

The game's Emily Online feature lets you chat with your Steam friends like it's 2006, layering social functionality onto the nostalgic interface. For anyone who lived through the AIM/MSN/Yahoo Messenger era and remembers the specific emotional weight of late-night IM conversations with people who mattered to them, Emily is Away Too is the kind of game that hits closer to home than expected.