“Taylor is waiting for you.”

Typically, in a video game, you have all the choice. This is what gives it the hook. You weave your way through a fire-fight in a shooter, or you find yourself making life and death choices for a character. You do it at your own pace, rewinding to your previous save if the ending didn’t work out like you wanted.

Lifeline, developed by 3 Minute Games and scripted by The Wolf Among Us writer, Dave Justus, gives you all the choices you could want, yet retains all the control.

[Taylor is busy]

Taylor, like us real humans, eats, drinks, sleeps, takes breaks, gets bored, feigns disinterest and questions your input. You see, although Lifeline is a video game in the truest sense; Taylor will take his time. He is human, too. Trapped on an alien moon after his spaceship, the Varia, crashed. Taylor survived in an escape pod. And can see the plume of smoke from the crash site from where he is. He can also see a peak in the opposite direction- he might be able to signal for help from there? Your first choice: check for survivors, or save yourself?

The game presents you numerous options throughout its course, using some inventive workarounds on iOS notifications (swipe to reply) to keep you responding to his continuous need for directive. If it didn’t have the excellent writing, I would’ve quickly lost interest- or at least ignored the notifications.

Instead, Taylor is witty, fast and talkative. I wanted to hang around in the app whilst Taylor went off to do a task I’d set him. I wanted to make sure he was okay. Lifeline manages to build brilliant tension through your connection to the character, and the pace which Taylor sets. You send Taylor down a trecherous slope with a damaged leg to check out a suspicious overhang in a crater, and he’ll tell you he’s busy. What will he next say to you? He’s fallen and broken his leg? Probably stuck there forever and left for dead? I actually found myself staring at the screen waiting for the three dots to bounce up to show me he was writing a reply.

It truly is a testament to the power of a game’s writing as to how successful a title can be. All the pretty graphics in the world can’t save a game if it doesn’t have substance behind its story (a-la Destiny before The Taken King expansion.) Second to this, Taylor actually asks for your help on the other side. He needs you to research things whilst he’s busy. You really feel like you can save this guy’s life, and one small mistake could kill someone.

There’s just one problem. The very mechanic that makes this game so wonderful, your ability to make choices, can be rewound by scrolling back up the transmission. After its first play through, the game loses its sense of angst because you want to find out the other possible endings. I genuinley wanted to help Taylor, and then all of a sudden when presented with the option to rewind, I couldn’t be bothered.

3 Minute Games have subsequently released multiple entires into the Lifeline series. After trying the first game as a free app of the week, I’m definitely getting my wallet out to pay for the next one.