You play as a brilliant scientist trying to save the universe. It sounds epic. But then the hunger meter drops.
Before Fate takes the standard survival grind, filters it through a stunning 1970s comic book aesthetic, and throws in classic point-and-click puzzles. It’s a huge achievement for the studio. It also comes with some serious growing pains. Prepare to have your patience tested.
Cotton Game built their name on quirky, stylized puzzle games like the Mr. Pumpkin series. They know obscure puzzles as well as amazing 2D art.
A big mouth needs a big spoon
Resource Management: Scavenging raw materials across different timelines to manage a highly aggressive hunger meter.
Station Repair: Gathering specific parts to fix workbenches, which in turn unlock recipes for flashlights, medicine, and rifles.
Tactile Puzzles: Point-and-click style environmental problem-solving that requires finding exact tools to bypass locked doors and barriers.
The Daily Grind of a Temporal Janitor
Before Fate is a game where you’re basically an underpaid handyman.
You start with nothing. Your main job is hoarding junk to fix broken workstations so you can eventually craft rifles and medicine. The survival mechanics, however, bite hard. Hunger is a constant threat that forces you to scavenge just so you can stay alive.
Then you hit the puzzles. You might need to find someone or something, only to find every door locked. No crowbar. No lockpick. Just a wall blocking your progress. When you finally figure out the logic, cracking open a new area feels great. But starving to death while guessing which tool opens a random shack? That part is maddening.
The food depletion is incredibly aggressive. You spend way more time managing your character’s stomach than hunting for cool sci-fi answers. The inventory system just adds to the headache. It feels clunky when you just want to grab a tool and solve a puzzle. The game is completely playable. It just doesn’t respect your time.
Pacing and Starvation
Before Fate is a messy, but beautiful contradiction. It demands patience for its rough survival mechanics, but it rewards you with an art style you can easily get lost in. If you can handle the jank, there’s real magic hidden here.
Narrative (7/10) The sci-fi hook of tracking down a missing team is solid. It just gets buried under hours of scavenging for calories.
Gameplay Mechanics (5/10) Crafting gear is rewarding. But the aggressive hunger drain and weird puzzle roadblocks kill your momentum.
Audio (7/10) The retro-futuristic music works perfectly. It masks some of the quieter, more tedious resource grinding.
Graphics (9/10) The hand-drawn 2D art is stunning. It completely saves the game from blending into a crowded survival market.
Overall Score (7/10) A gorgeous, high-friction survival game that trips over its own mechanics but still looks incredibly cool doing it.
ID Card
- Developer: Cotton Game
- Publisher: Cotton Game
- Engine: 2D Framework
- Platforms: PC (Windows), Nintendo Switch
- Release Date: April 14, 2026
- Genre: Survival Adventure RPG
Dev & Play Media 
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