In a Jam filled with post-apocalypse stories, One Last Week managed to not only surprise but enthrall me against my grievances with the genre.

Unlike many postapocalypitc, this project offers a story I found much more relatable and grounded. I believe this stems (heh) from how in many such tales, the end of the world is an explosive (sometimes literally so) event or sequence of events that elicit equally intense reactions. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, this approach often leads to characters I find flatter and less believable; closer to a spoof of how we imagine people react in such situations. One Last Week offers a more nuanced interpretation of said reactions, letting us languish in the situation with characters that desperately cling to any semblance of normalcy and stability (that point is even part of the text itself, though I would've rather it was kept as subtext).

In my eyes, that is only one of its strengths, though. Birch and Judah are well-defined characters with backstories we get to learn quite naturally through their words AND actions. To the point that, when the emotional climax comes, I could guess pretty well what they would say while understanding where they are coming from. The writing as a whole is pretty sturdy with only a couple of stumbles during some of the narration.

This has been a Game Jam packed with good presentation and even then One Last Week stands out. The limited colour palette communicates how the world has been sapped of natural life (an eerie colour like purple being an excellent choice to reinforce this) with the "ripped paper" effect around sprites helping characters pop from the muted background. I do think the game has a handful of very "still" moments, lingering on static screens with nothing or very little going on, thankfully, the writing is engaging  enough to fight most of that off.

So, yeah, great work. Strong emotional core and presentation for a welcome breath of fresh air for post-apocalyptic stories without betraying the point of stories like this. Even during its darkest moments, I recommend sticking through this one.