Eternal Threads is a video game developed by Cosmonaut Studios and published by Secret Mode. It was released on Steam on May 19th, 2022, with versions for the Xbox One, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch planned for later in the year.
In the far future, experiments in time travel caused chronal radiation to alter the timestream. Many seemingly insignificant events have been altered, which have led to the world becoming an irradiated wasteland. The only hope the world has is the thing that destroyed it in the first place: Time Travel.
Enter Agent Forty Three. They are an agent tasked with traveling back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. They're sent to a house in the North of England in May of 2015. According to their records, an alteration caused the six tenants to die in an erroneous house fire. Unable to stop the fire directly, Forty Three's mission is to alter the decisions made by the tenants to ensure all of their survival. The tenants include:
- Tom, owner and landlord of the house.
- Ben, a doctor currently taking F2 Foundation training, and Jenny's boyfriend.
- Jenny, a Uni student studying mathematics, Ben's girlfriend, and Raquel's best friend.
- Raquel, a Uni student studying art, and Jenny's best friend.
- Neil, a Uni student, and Linda's younger brother.
- Linda, an office worker temporarily living in the house, and Neil's older sister.
As Forty Three, the player alters the decisions made by each tenant to ensure their survival, and potentially improve their lives. The player monitors the events of the week leading up to the fire, altering decisions that may seem minor but can drastically alter the fates of the tenants.
The official website for the game can be found here.
This game provides examples of:
- Brits Love Tea: The game is set in England and expectedly several times characters call for a tea break.
- Cool Uncle: Neil is this to Kieran. The two play video games online regularly, and played pool when Kieran came by the house to visit.
- Drugs Are Good: Downplayed. Tom secretly grows marijuana plants in the basement, but specifically as a pain reliever for the residents of his mother's senior home. He did extensive research into how to grow the plants, and specifies to Raquel (if he shows her the room) that they can't get high off the strains he grows.
- Exiled to the Couch: Raquel and Ben can have a fallout over the pregnancy which leads to Ben having to sleep in the living room.
- Experimented in College: Jenny and Raquel apparently had a history together. Jenny continues to tease Raquel in the present timeline.
- Fanservice: Jenny and Raquel are often seen in their underwear or dresses that reveal their curves. Ben, who has a great physique, is seen shirtless a couple of times.
- Hands-On Approach: Neil showing Emily the ins and outs of playing pool.
- Inspite Of A Nail: There will always be a fire at the house on May 15th, 2015. Forty Three's mission (and by extension the player's) is to ensure the residents of the house survive the fire.
- Kissing Under the Influence: If Linda gets drunk at the party, she and Ben may end up in bed together.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Jenny's visions. Are they the result of her childhood mental illness, or is she seeing flashes of the future? Was the death of her mother a Traumatic Superpower Awakening? Was she able to see Forty Three when her meds stopped working? Was the picture of the house on fire merely a poorly rendered photo, or a capture of the eventual fire?
- Notice This: Objects that can be interacted with are visibly flagged even from a distance.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Neil's friend Ian constantly Speaks in Shout-Outs which Neil doesn't get most of the time.
- Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Miranda, Tom's Ex. It's regularly mentioned how she would get rough with him without his consent, and became jealous every time he talked to another girl. Ben, Jenny, and Raquel all warn him to stay away from her, although whether he does is dependent on the player.
- Secret Room: You find a hidden room behind a wardrobe in the junk room. It turns out Tom is using it to grow medical marijuana for his mother.
- Sequel Hook: If the player achieves the Golden Ending, then an alternate scene plays after the Conclusion Event. Forty Three's extraction is interrupted by a new time anomaly in Linda's room. When the player goes into the room, they're attacked by Brian Scott. He prepares his own extraction sequence, taking Forty Three with him, and offers to show them "what's really going on."
- Shout-Out: The Secret Room behind the wardrobe makes Raquel think of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
- Surprise Pregnancy: Jenny (possibly) discovers she's pregnant before the party, but still avoids drinking that night to be safe. When (or if) she decides to tell Ben can be changed by Forty Three.
- Tragic Keepsake: Raquel keeps the doll of her childhood best friend, Megan, after she died in a hit-and-run accident. Depending on the player, she can reveal to Jenny that she was the reason the two were in the street in the first place. Megan, who had recently received a new doll, was going to abandon her old one, but Raquel didn't want it to feel "abandoned." Their argument led to them running in the street, and the car going too fast above the speed limit hit Megan. Raquel refused to let go of it for three days, and even refers to the doll as Megan in the present day. The choice to either hold onto "Megan" or donate her to charity is dependent on the player.
- When You Coming Home Mom: Linda's son Kieran. Linda left behind her job, husband, and son in a fit of unhappiness, and rented out the spare room in Tom's house while she figured out what she wanted in her life. Kieran wants her to come back, even asking her this at least once.
