The Dream is Coming…
“The Dream is Coming…” is a vibrant walking simulator that has you explore an empty Schoolyard and its various building as you find notes, diary entries and clues to follow.
The notes contain little bits of lore surrounding your character and his group of friends. Your character will also have memories revealed when he enters rooms or comes close to certain objects. A text to speech voice will read a sentence or 2 about some mundane thing he remembers about Chemistry class or the first time he met a friend. I honestly didn’t mind the text to speech voice, it’s actually not a bad sounding text to speech program. The main issue is the translation, it’s not translated the greatest. It’s hard to understand the relationship between certain characters when all you have to go on is little bits of choppy lore translated poorly. You are able to get a grasp of the overall story but the little details get lost and with a game like this, that is kind of important. A game like this is nothing but story and visuals (which isn’t a bad thing) but you’re really only left with the visuals as a completed piece. The bits of story you can gather tell a simple tale of a group friends and their after school club. The various memories of simple times and the struggles some face, it fits the atmosphere well.
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Anime Hidden Object Games.
I was intrigued by the description as I wanted to know how in depth this indie game would go into the lives, thoughts and struggles of students. But I was left most disappointed.
Pros:
→ The music is beautiful.
→ Half of the graphics were unexpectedly brilliant for an indie game; the sky, the breezy grass, the pavement and some items indoors, especially the signs and writing.
→ The afternoon setting sun set the tone perfectly.
→ Songbird ambience in the schoolyard was very relaxing.
Cons:
→ ‘Interesting stories’ in the description is misleading.
! For example; at one point we pass a bicycle in the schoolyard and the ‘story’ is legit: “My father’s bike. After he drank, he stopped using it.” And that’s all we get. It’s more like random facts being spewed out that has no meaning to the story at all (?).
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
Project Vostok
“Project Vostok” is a non-linear horror visual novel about a group of airplane crash survivors finding a mysterious Soviet-era bunker in Russian mountains.
A plane flying from Moscow to Barnaul crashes in the Altai Mountains because of a crew error. Almost two dozen strangers are left there to survive. An indefinite list of their problems includes injuries, lack of food, risk of being frozen to death, and contradictions inside the group.
Things take a massive shift when the survivors find an abandoned Soviet bunker built in a cave. Warm rooms and an abundance of supplies lead them to move to this mysterious location. However, it soon turns out that all the problems they have encountered earlier were nothing compared with what is awaiting them now.
Expected release date of the first episode: February 2022.
Read More: Best Anime Story Rich Games.
Snowdome
Note: I received a Steam key to help with alpha testing although I had no involvement with the development.
Snowdome is a kinetic visual novel developed by Lunatic Works and published by Lunatic Works and Kikai Digital. You take on the role of Tan Yan, a young adult who works as a convenience store clerk in the city. He lives his life day-to-day, feeling unappreciated and that life will never change. He moved away from the country, as he didn’t want to become a farmer like his parents before him. One day, when Tan Yan decides to take a walk on the beach (because his TV is broken, so he can’t watch his favorite show), he encounters a teenage girl. She makes him an intriguing offer. Help me save the world. This piques Tan Yan’s interest and thus, his adventure begins. As this is a kinetic novel, I’ll stop my story synopsis here to avoid spoilers. ^^
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Anime Linear Games.
This was my first kinetic novel, no choices to make, just read and think about some of the subjects that are thrown up in the story. The reader can make their own mind about how deep or how seriously they want to take this. I found it easy to get involved with the characters, to understand the frustrations of trying to earn a living in a city where everyone lives the same boring life-style and where young people and their parents do not understand one another. The protagonist, a reluctant hero, goes for a walk and meets a young girl one summer’s night when his tv breaks down, and thats when it all starts as he has to grow up and make life decisions that have consequences not just for himself, but other people. I can’t say more without giving away the plot.
– Real player with 8.1 hrs in game
Your little story: Valentine’s Day
Love is such a silly feeling. Can you really live for it? Why would you die for it? Empty words… But what if someone’s life can really depend on your love?
This story isn’t just about the world, that suddenly turned into a dream. It will also make you decide fates of others as well as your own. So be careful, because every step you’ll take, every choice you’ll make may become the one to turn this dreamland into a real nightmare.
- 4 possible romantic interests (or maybe you’ll still prefer to be friends? The choice is yours!);
Yako
Yako is a 2D story-driven hand-drawn platformer. Using your wind-powered abilities, explore a mystical underground world, solve the mystery plaguing the area surrounding Mount Inari, and earn a place among the deities of the Japanese pantheon.
Dear Mom: My Letter to You
_Dear Mom: My Letter to You_ is a slice-of-life/dating sim visual novel that combines an emotional story with a calendar system in which players can gain stats to initiate and develop relationships with other characters. Your choices and stats heavily influence the outcome of the game. The story emphasizes the impact of family grief, building meaningful friendships, growing as a person, and reflecting on past mistakes.
Genre: Slice-Of-Life / Dating Sim / Romance (Yuri/GxG) / Visual Novel
Rating: 16+
Release Date: TBA
Platforms: Windows / Mac / Linux (Steam & Itch.io)
Content Warning: Dear Mom: My Letter to You may contain content not appropriate for all ages, or may not be safe to view at work. This game is intended for a more mature audience (16+), as it contains sensitive topics like bullying, suicide, and blackmail.
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Female Protagonist & 4+ romanceable characters, each with their own unique personalities and side chapters
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Story-rich narrative that explores the meaning of friendship, family loss, and self-reflection
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Point-and-Click adventure where you can explore various areas of interest, each with day/night variations
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Partial Voice Acting
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Stat system that heavily influences the story’s outcome and form bonds with other characters
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Diary-style Interface to capture the feeling of recording your life’s stories
This is an emotional journey of loss, acceptance, and the bonds made along the way. The story stars high school student Ayame Kawasaki who blames herself for her mother’s suicide. Having closed off her connections with her friends for a whole year, Ayame is finally restarting her life, repeating her second year at Yamada Hoshi High School. Since her absence, students have been spreading rumors about her, claiming that she’s a selfish person hungry for attention. Ayame struggles to fit in as they start shunning her and calling her out when she does something wrong. When she thought there was no chance of making friends, a kind classmate steps in to turn her life around–
It’s up to Ayame to build and maintain her relationships, new and old, while coming to terms with the reality of her mother’s death.
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Developer/Character Artist/UI Artist: Mangoku418
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Lead Writer: Renkka
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CG Artist: RyThae
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BG Artists: kjkjmulo, KeiraWorks, Ari Angga
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Isometric Map Designer: Arctic Fox
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Smartphone Template: ds-sans
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Music Composer: Red Robotix, Ankit22
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Sounds from Zapsplat
Truth: Disorder
The whole purpose of this game is to send an hour of your life down in the dumps. You won’t become smarter or more knowledgeabe neither will you enjoy playing it, you’ll just get one hour(+/-) older. You could as well spend ths hour being a vegetable.
Do not let the pretty face on the cover lure you in and think twice if you really have nothing better to do.
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Вся суть этой игры - заставить вас бесцельно просрать около часа вашей жизни. Вы не станете, эрудированнее или мудрее и не получите никакого удовольствия, вы просто постареете на один час +/-). С таким же успехом, вы можете превратиться в овоща на столько же времени.
– Real player with 5.2 hrs in game
Truth: Disorder is a short (~30 min) visual novel with just one choice at the end of the game.
Backgrounds, sprites are fine, nothing exciting for me personally but pretty enough. I disliked music completely, had to set it as quiet as possible. But maybe it’s just me, I rarely like soundtrack in games.
And I guess that’s all what I can say about it in a more or less positive way. Now let me explain why I don’t recommend it.
I’ve never seen text in such condition O_O It looks like the devs/translator/proofreader(?) had some serious problem with space on their keyboard. Practically each sentence has either typed together words or an extra space where it shouldn’t be. It looks weird and soon becomes very annoying. I seriously can’t understand such devil-may-care attitude. I’ve seen games with much worse mistakes and too many typos. But here, is it really so difficult to fix it?! Though of course space problem is not the only issue with the language, just the most eye-catching.
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game
Aquadine
Overview
Aquadine is a story about friendship, family, finding hope in the hard times, and most of all, the secrets we keep and the manifold chaos they sometimes bring on us if we don’t reveal them to the right people, or if we don’t have said people in our lives. The store page description tells you that at least the main character of the story is hiding a big secret, but beware! He’s far from being the only person in this town with secrets! This VN is mostly billed as a comedy, but it really brings a roller coaster of emotions. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will probably gasp at multiple points. Aquadine is also a kinetic novel of sorts, which honestly is usually a turn-off for me because it usually means that you, the player, have no control over the direction and outcome of the story, and you are placing yourself solely in the hands of the writers and hanging on for the ride. This is probably also the reason why the game has no achievements, and why it has been so unjustly overlooked. But let me say a few things about why I think that was a good move for this game, and why I think that makes it better than the average VN. First, you won’t have to spend a long time with this game re-doing old parts of the story trying new decisions to try to get different endings. You just read through all the routes and you’re done. Second, you just read that right. Even though it’s a kinetic novel, there are still multiple routes! Once you finish the opening common route of the story, you will reach a character select screen that presents you with 4 routes, each of which focuses on the given character and imagines how things might go if Robin were to enter into a closer relationship with that character. Only one of these routes is canon (you’ll see), but they all serve to give you a lot of background info on those characters, and are where most of the world-building happens. And when you finish all 4, a new option will appear on the main menu, which is the final route to the true ending. Third, the ability to focus on telling the story the way they wanted to in each route, while not having to allow for different combinations of decisions, allowed this developer to create a story that was more consistently high quality than any of the indie VNs I have played before. So you won’t have to worry about parts of the story being given less attention or not being paced well. During my time with Aquadine, I went from seeing it’s potential but being skeptical, to seeing it come closer to my expectations, to having every expectation far surpassed in every way, to even being left speechless by the quality of parts of the story. I know you won’t be disappointed either.
! Actually, there is one thing I was disappointed by, and it’s the fact that I have some unanswered questions after the true ending. Maybe they’re leaving the door open for a sequel? I can only hope so.
– Real player with 36.8 hrs in game
After finishing Aquadine I can say with the utmost sincerity: It’s not getting the award for Sound Design.
A long gameplay later I managed to finish the game, I had fun for about half the time while the rest felt either disappointing or not that much engaging. Unfortunately more things in this game drag it down than elevate. Sound side of this is pretty poor, voiced lines get irritating pretty fast (I wish Grandpa would just shut up) while background sound at times is just too loud (Elisabeth bike ride hurt my ears). Music was average but I played without any sound with my own music in the background, thanks to the game’s overall sound design that did not encourage listening to it. In the graphics department the game looks quite beautiful but I do wish it offered more “places to visit” because at times it really undermines the story (with Cameron route for example). I would take the voice budget and put it into more graphics and add more characters (Cameron route could use a few more visible characters). At different times we will see full-screen static images, those are well done.
– Real player with 35.7 hrs in game
Mistia - The Kingdom of Krasten
In Mistia you will play the role of young Cole, who needs to take a long journey to the capital to understand why the King abandoned his lands and to shed light on the mysteries that the war has brought to the Kingdom.
He will be forced to to leave his village and family behind and face a journey not only through the Kingdom of Krasten, but also one of introspection, within himself.
On his way to the capital, Cole will gradually join other characters, each of whom will have their own story to tell and will be of vital importance for the accomplishment of Cole’s quest.
Sakura MMO Extra
Sakura MMO Extra is a nice addition to the series, bringing in a somewhat new challenge for Viola and her party. In this part we take on the quest that our beloved Guild master gave us, Working as maids in the new Maid Café!
with a lot of trials, new maid dresses, and a touch of humor, We start working at the maid café, distributing papers in the city, and experience the first challenges. The café is though more visited than though at the very first, which shows them quite easily how weary a true maid job can be.
– Real player with 21.3 hrs in game
An extra story in the MMO series universe where crew gathered to serve tea and cakes. Real life maid cafe can be rather cringey, is this one as well?
As easy to imagine the focus of this ‘story extension’ is a maid cafe, …and that’s about it. There is almost nothing else to see here, no action, no twists, no surprises. It feels all too monotone. Slice of life can be served in interesting ways but this one does a poor job with it. Scenes often drag unnecessarily, having little to no substance. I felt bored more than once, unfortunately. Cute maid outfits and cutesy acting can be a bit over the top at times. Also, not enough yuri in a yuri title in my opinion is a crime. Even at this budget cost I expected more. Three different epilogues extend the gameplay a little but they’re all short so not by much. Lengthy summaries of the past events were unnecessary here. One of worse stories among Sakura titles.
– Real player with 9.5 hrs in game