The Forest of Doom (Standalone)
Probably the best video-gamebook available on Steam.
A review for newbies and veterans alike
PROs ( / Features)
- The Story is simple yet effective. Classic fantasy, nothing too original in that regard, although the gust of nostalgia can be felt even by those who never played it as children (including me). You can’t help but feel deeply immersed in the engrossing world of Titan, where orcs, elves, fiends will roam in the most beautiful of sceneries. But what about Forest of Doom? Well, in this one, your job is to stop a war between two factions… Or die before that. Or get completely side-tracked by an optional dungeon. The thing I like the most however, is that the punishment of failing is restricted to starting over with your inventory intact, so you can tackle routes you didn’t explore before and, hopefully, gather all the stuff you need.
– Real player with 5.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choose Your Own Adventure Visual Novel Games.
69 / 100
Much to my parents' dismay, reading books never did interest me greatly growing up. That was until I came across the Fighting Fantasy Choose-Your-Own Adventure books. Although more a paperback ‘game’ than a ‘novel’, at least I was off the computer :). I would sit & decode them until I knew all the paths, killed every monster & fully explored the world.
Forest of Doom was one of the first in the series, yet, to be honest not one of the best. It is certainly one of the more well know titles, but the series did get better & more complex as it went on. The game system was very RPG-lite, granting you some primary stats in Stamina, Skill & Luck plus offering some items to find/use, with combat mechanics coming down to a series of dice rolls used to calculate your attacks. Your stats will also add weight to your rolls. Nothing has greatly changed in the move to a digital format. Like many early text based adventure games, your movement is limited to up to 3 directions/options (sometimes less) .. and you generally can’t turn back!
– Real player with 5.0 hrs in game
Sword Daughter
I guess this is one where I wished steam had a number or star rating rather than a good/bad option. I bought it some time ago, didn’t particularly like it so put it down for a while and picked it up again recently but found more of the same. Overall I’m coming down on the negative side of neutral with regards to it being a game book written in the 80’s. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen but it has some significant problems with the story.
Firstly some of the graphics are nice. They’re in a consistant style that suits the game book. I didn’t find the music that intrusive (although I turned it right down after a while and it got repetative) and the sound effects are ok.
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
The first line of this story really should have been: Once Upon a Time. Had it started this way I doubt there would have been so many comments/complaints about character development and short storylines. Truthfully what fairy tale really does have in-depth character development or that much of a plot?
Storyline: Tyrna, a young woman (a maiden) has been trained by her father all her life to be a warrior. On the way to the Warrior Games (a tournament to basically earn the right to be called a warrior) the caravan is attacked by orcs. She is knocked unconscious fighting orcs and because of this is the only remaining survivor of the massacre her father dies in. Gavin, a half-elf/half-human ranger (on patrol) comes upon the carnage and revives her before the orcs return or wild animals find her. Of course it is love at first sight, what fairy tale does not have love at first sight. The adventure and mild romance (mostly of the happily ever type) begins here.
– Real player with 5.0 hrs in game
Orwell’s Animal Farm
This game explains nothing about its gameplay (after multiple playthroughs I’m still unsure of what the Animalism stat does) and appears to be a buggy mess of RNG. Dead animals can still comment on events occurring (Napoleon and Boxer appear to be the biggest culprits) or show up at the gravesite despite being dead (such as the Cabal of Pigs ending where Snowball and Napoleon have died, but Napoleon is at the grave). You can run into problems where you have plenty of supplies and want to repair the buildings but you can’t until the option presents itself, or similarly where you had the opportunity to harvest with multiple animals to fill the supplies to their maximum but suddenly only one animal can be chosen and you have far less than usual. Sometimes it skips letting you plant for next year which makes supplies much worse and no longer lets you plant on subsequent years, even if you have the supplies to do so.
– Real player with 12.9 hrs in game
Introduction
George Orwell’s dystopian and satirist literary work undoubtedly influenced, and still influences, a lot of other creative people, who are inspired by his themes, and use them for their own work. However, having a full videogame adaptation of his work is something else, and now we finally got it with Orwell’s Animal Farm, which adapts the original allegorical novella. This text-based game tries to capture and expand the book’s themes and experience a bit by adding several story choices. There is not much more to this game, as you could say it is similar to a visual novel. Is it a good addition, though? Well, let us dive into the review to find it out!
– Real player with 6.6 hrs in game
The Metamorphosis
I dont usually play games ,but I quite liked this concept of book adaptation, drewings & sound desing is really well done. :)
– Real player with 22.4 hrs in game
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weird main menu behavior
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steam screenshots don’t work
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inconsistent text display:
___narrative text displayed on whole screen most of the time but also on lower thirds
___main character gregor appears in lower thirds dialog box even though he has no dialogue
- art and animation are ok during chapter 1
- art in chapters 2 & 3 was lackluster and didn’t match the text
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read the novel for free on project gutenberg
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listen to the audiobook for free on librivox
– Real player with 4.4 hrs in game
Dear Althea
About this game
This visual novel, full of decisions and repercussions, is a fun reinterpretation of the novel “Dear Faustina” (1897) by British author Rhoda Broughton. Each chapter is filled with beautiful, high quality artwork that illustrates all the situations and moments you will experience alongside the charismatic characters. The art that you will be able to see has been made with special care in the representation of the British Victorian era as well as taking into account the class difference that is present at all times. The entire video game has 51 chapters that you will only be able to see if you play all the routes and enjoy the nine endings of the video game.
Story
In Dear Althea, you play as Althea Vane; a young upper class British woman whose life is turned upside down after the death of her father which causes her family to fall apart along with her future. She will be forced to choose a new future, a place to call home and a group to belong to. To get there she will have to face all sorts of situations in Victorian London, but love and romance will fortunately abound and make her quest more enjoyable.
Choices matter
You will find that the choices you make will change the story from the very first chapter, even if they change there will be many of them that will affect the story in the long run. In Dear Althea, your choices can affect not only your fate, but also the fate of other people. They can also change your relationship with other characters and open up new routes of dialogue that will change the dynamics of relationships.
Diverse relationships
You don’t have to fall in love with anyone or enter into any kind of romantic or sexual relationship in the game, but depending on your choices you can enter into a relationship with up to four characters that fall within the LGBT spectrum, however you don’t have to choose just one relationship; you can enter into a variety of polyamorous relationships.
Consent
In this video game, consent is discussed and encouraged in all aspects of relationships between characters. In romantic relationships there is no obligation to have sex, and refusing to have sex has no negative repercussions.
Characters
There is a great diversity of charismatic characters in “Dear Althea” but there is a clear division between upper class and working class characters. As a protagonist you can decide from the first chapter and throughout the story which group you are more sympathetic to. Defending characters from one class or the other can have repercussions.
Puzzles
If puzzles are not your thing you can skip them without missing any important plot points; however, there has been a lot of effort in the creation of the puzzles to make them all diverse. They have been integrated in the best possible way into the storyline as well as being completely set in the era in which the story takes place.
Typography
The typography has been created to help people with dyslexia to identify letters more easily. It is based on the typeface that appears in the original 1897 book.
Endings
There are a total of nine completely different final chapters, many of which are the result of decisions that took place several chapters earlier.Due to the branching of the story, finishing a single route can cause you to miss even twenty whole chapters that belong to the other routes, so the title invites replayability. Also, as a final surprise, there are some small post-credits scenes that will change depending on the decisions made throughout the story.
Duration and text
Counting all possible decisions, the game has 112408 words and (although it is not finished yet) I estimate that approximately and depending on the decisions chosen, the game can last about 5 hours.
The Ballad Singer
As much as I would like to recommend this game, I just can’t. I could say that it has beautiful graphics, is fully voiced, has an intricate story with 4 characters, who sometimes cross with each other, has nice soundtrack and several QoL features, like ability to double the speed of narrator’s voice to speed up the game.
But all of this gets completely ruined by absolutely unfair death mechanic and BS choices. At the beginning of the game you’re warned that you will die here, a lot, that’s why developers created fate system. You have limited amount of fate points, every time your character dies you can either continue the game as other character or restart your last choice. Both of these options consume 1 fate point. Ok, so you decided to create a game that revolves around constant danger and death traps, fine. Surely, you will spend extra time making these deaths logical, so only if player actually made a mistake they would die, right? No. Most of choices in the game that lead to your death are absolutely random and, unless you already know which one is the right one, you will die not because you’ve made a mistake, but because you drew a short stick. Here are few examples, technically spoilers:
! I am an “elf” in the middle of the forest who needs to get to the cabin in the distance and sees two roads: a big, stone one or small, trodden one. She has to pick one. I chose small, trodden one. Game then tells me that I spend some time walking on that road and noticed that it leads in completely other direction from the cabin and that day is closing to the night. Now I’m faced with another choice - continue on this road, or go back and choose other road. I, thinking that this new piece of information is game hinting me that I chose wrong, choose to go back and pick the big road. And I died. Because apparently there’s some shitty death trap on the big road. How was I supposed to know that? There were no hints, there was actually a fake hint that made me choose the wrong road.. Another example -
! I am a mage and am currently fighting a giant water elemental. She (yes, she has gender) creates a water wave and I need to defend myself. There are three options: make a tornado, create stone wall or create a flame shield around me. Now, the last one is obviously a bad desision as I’m fighting a water elemental who, surely, can easily fight fire (also, earlier in the game, we already used another water elemental to fight fire elemental, so it’s logical even in game). This would be a logical death choice. Developers could choose other two choices as “right” ones - they will allow you to continue the fight, but give different texts or future options, because the fight would progress differently. That would be cool. But no. Only one of these choices is correct - tornado. Why? Why the fuck should I pick tornado, except by random? I picked the stone wall, because surely, the stone wall can stop water wave. No, you died, fool. And, despite me playing only for two hours, the game gave me tons of such choices already. They, aside from making the player angry, completely ruin the immersion. No, you’re not a mage trying master the elements, you’re an idiot, sitting before your PC and who was unlucky to pick the wrong choice, so now you have to reload and make the “correct” one and it’s correct because developer said so. A death should be a result of either one very dumb and obviously wrong decision, or a series of bad decisions with hints that you’re doing everything wrong. Not what we have here.
– Real player with 15.9 hrs in game
If you came here with one thumb on your lighter, ready to lose yourself in some heart-wrenching ballads, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you. I didn’t encounter my first ballad until at least 3 or 4 hours in, and it was pretty underwhelming when it finally arrived.
Yeah, their choice of titles doesn’t make a lot of sense, and neither do most of the other choices in this game.
Well, I can’t say I wasn’t warned. They always told me not to judge a book by its cover, and that’s exactly what I did. Can you blame me, though? On the surface it looks great. It’s got that Extremely Fantasy, D&D manual sort of vibe. Everywhere you look you find fierce monsters and sharpened blades, towering dragons, fireball-hurling wizards and pots of stew consumed in shady inns full of adventures just waiting to happen.
– Real player with 7.8 hrs in game
Kim
Backed on Kickstarter and now a review two things i rarely do. Unless i feel something is special which Kim most certainly is in my opinion.
First off i have never read the book but i have now purchased and it’s on my reading list.
Kim is like a geography, history and survival game all rolled into one.
The first thing that appealed to me was that the gameplay reminded me of one of my favorite ever games Burntime a post apocalyptic scavenging game ( hint for your next game pleeeease devolpers this game design is perfect for it).
– Real player with 43.6 hrs in game
Normally I don’t do reviews on the games I play, but when it comes to Kim I really felt that I should do one because of two things.
- First is obviosuly the merit to the game itself. It is really enjoyable, unique and probably one of the best indie games i have come across. Once you start a playthrough, you just immerse yourself in the character, the beautiful settings and the writing it offers. The music is lovely, so the deluxe edition is reccommended.
Gameplay wise, having to weigh in the pros and cons of actions as well as taking into account of the limited time and resources available to the character in the playthrough is the strongest element of the game. Basically, you have to make smart choices to score high but at the same time you also get to choose the high road or the low road in making decisions and that will put your own morality to the test, which I really like to see in all kinds of games.
– Real player with 19.1 hrs in game