春と修羅｜Haru to Shura
I felt that I should review this game because I can find very little online about it, and thought it deserved a little more recognition. I will fully admit that I heard about and was interested in this game because of Studio Pixel’s involvement. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had the same graphical charm and polish we saw in Cave Story and Kero Blaster, but has an identity of its own. Gameplay takes a backseat here to story, and it works very well with the medium. It felt similar to a visual novel with the heavy amounts of dialogue, but it knows when to give the player a break and move around. The game is about three hours long and I enjoyed it the whole way through. I do not wish to get into spoiler territory but I suggest playing this game blind as it gives one a lot to ponder.
– Real player with 7.4 hrs in game
As a fan of Studio Pixel’s other works, this was a game that I was excited for in the months leading up to its sequel. Getting to play it, a lot of things stayed true to the quality of Studio Pixel’s other games. The pixel art and OST are both phenomenal, and the game is able to convey complex thoughts with minimalistic output. That said, this game also has some flaws that definitely were noticeable and that can impact your enjoyment of the game.
Note that as of the time of writing this review I have only gotten one ending, which appears to have been the true / good ending to the game.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
The Book of Regrets
Not a bad hidden gem. I definitely enjoyed myself figuring out each ending. The story of the game is pretty good, and I loved the various endings. The price tag isn’t too bad, considering the kind of game you’re getting. There were some slight bugs I noticed in the game, but they didn’t appear that often and usually only if I was spamming the space button too quickly in certain areas. The fight scene in the end was a bit annoying, although it does add a bit something else to the gameplay. The puzzles in-game are way too easy, so if you’re looking for hard puzzles, you won’t find them in this game. However, the bulk of the game was figuring out what choices you should/shouldn’t make, so the puzzles weren’t much focus anyway (I think there are only 2 puzzles in-game).
– Real player with 24.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choose Your Own Adventure Visual Novel Games.
Enjoyable & well-made - a true hidden gem of a game!
If you like Choose Your Own Adventure books/games, you must try this one. There is a choice to be made on every screen, and those choices can lead to vastly different outcomes and yield vastly different storylines. To get the full experience (and to understand the real story), multiple playthroughs are needed. However, each playthrough is never tedious, because you discover new things and start to figure stuff out. It took me around 4-5 hours to get most of the endings, including the “true” ending of the game (which was pretty ingenious btw).
– Real player with 13.7 hrs in game
The Hunter’s Journals - Tattered Sails
The interactive mechanics are not like other interactive fiction I’ve played. It is much more like a table top game. Combat is actually handled in rounds with randomly generated dice rolls. You can speed this up to just show the final result but it’s still a table top way of handling things and I didn’t like it.
In table top games you can build your character to weight the dice rolls through backgrounds, stats, gear, race, etc. This game’s character creation was so minimal that I felt that the outcome of combat was very random. This was a huge interruption to the story because poor results weren’t injuries or delays. Poor results (at least early on for me) meant death.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choose Your Own Adventure Interactive Fiction Games.
🧠 OUT OF THE BOX
It really is a shame that this game doesn’t seem to be getting much attention. I think it is quite a hidden gem.
I really like the art style. All the character sprites just ooze personality. The only thing that bothers me a bit is that the idle animations in some cutscenes look a bit exaggerated, with some characters constantly headbanging for no reason. Less animation would have been more here. But I am willing to overlook that minor flaw because I just enjoy the style so much. Also, don’t let the cutesy look fool you. There are some really brutal scenes in this game.
– Real player with 12.1 hrs in game
It’s a good game where you play a bouncer hired by your maffia boss after being released from prison and no one else will give you a job, while all the while trying to stay on the straight and narrow and keep your bills paid. You have to check people coming into the night club for simple stuff to start with (dress code, ID, correct tickets, not under age, not drunk etc) but as things go along, you start getting extra requests and criteria to meet.
There’s a basic storyline. It doesn’t have many ways it can significantly branch from the linear storyline (so far the majority I tried don’t make a lot of difference or cause you to hit dead ends (sometimes literally.) So unless you enjoy the ticket checking side of things, replayability is limited. Checking tickets is fun and challenging for the first round, but does have threshold where it starts to lose its shine. (I kind of wish it was mixed up a bit with more variation.)
– Real player with 12.0 hrs in game
DnD Adventure: Wizard’s Choice
You play a wizard in this interactive novel set in a medieval fantasy world. Stay alive, manage your spell power, find treasure, and smite evil. Wizard’s Choice is a series of RPG interactive novels that will engross you in a story while allowing you to make the decisions that will determine your fate.
The game includes the complete story of Wizard’s Choice in 6 chapters. No additional purchase.
***** Features *****
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Zero learning curve. Read the story and make decisions.
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Manage your health, mana, gold, and morale.
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Outcomes are determined by decisions you make.
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Score and rank at the end.
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Comfort options: font, font size, screen luminosity.
A game by Delight Games & Cold Coffee Studio
Written by Sam Landstrom.
Tales From The Under-Realm: Hazel
great story with likable characters. 2 thumbs up !
– Real player with 17.0 hrs in game
Not a bad Yuri VN,
Fairly choice driven but not at the Level of Volley Ball Heaven or Room Mates, Those 2 are great VN’s (Though the later of those has Non Yuri options. Though Loren and Cursed Lands are the world of this VN and great to with Yuri and/or Non Yuri. But it is not in their league.
Enjoy it for what it is.
– Real player with 16.1 hrs in game
Twisted: A Dark Fairytale
A fascinating, unusual visual novel (VN). Dark - even gruesome, in parts - but compelling. The shape of the story emerges relatively quickly, but leaves questions that make the reader want to unlock more information and more endings. There is always fear and running at the forefront of everything, but the protagonist (Sage) is more resilient and determined than it might seem at first. Eventually, one can feel her** compassion overriding her well-founded anxiety.
**The game allows the player to select pronouns for the protagonist: “he/him” “she/her” and “they/them”. I chose “she/her”.
– Real player with 17.4 hrs in game
This game has an excellent story line and beautiful art. I would recommend this game to my friends, as the characters were so unique and there plot is different then most others I read.
Only thing I wish was that all the achievements worked for the game and some of the bugs were fixed with the cg library
– Real player with 10.1 hrs in game
Diptych
The heroes of the “Diptych” meet only for a moment. But on the battlefield of the First World War, even a moment can decide a person’s fate. Or in the case of a “Diptych”, an anthropomorphic animal, we will learn a scary story in a deceptively cute and, of course, unique style.
Features of the game:
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Above a hundred game scenes
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Alexey Troshin’s unique visual style was created on paper with watercolor paints and carefully transferred to the game
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Live animated images
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A touching story
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Two storylines
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Several variants of the plot development
The player will have to survive the battle on the battlefield, meet his love. And also find out the reverse side of the war behind the front line.
In the game, you will immerse yourself in a unique graphic style combined with life dialogues and atmospheric music.
You will be able to see a lot of illustrations revealing the game plot, in each scene you will learn more about the fate of the main character and experience incredible adventures in a place with him.
The game consists of more than 100 game scenes. in most scenes, you read the story and scroll through the story further.
In several scenes, you will have to find objects and solve puzzles.
Network
NETWORK
When you surf the internet, you never know what you might stumble upon…
This game reveals a problem related to the Internet. Now the global network has turned into a dump, in which there is a lot of everything, and you never know what file you can stumble upon. So-called “deadly” files are no exception. Now, with almost complete freedom of action in the network, this has become especially important.
The plot of the game will take us to various locations, such as: the apartment of the main character, a construction site, friends ' apartments, a stairwell.. Where we will face various tasks: find certain items, solve plot twists, or just get out and survive..
We also spend a certain part of the game on the computer of the main character, communicating with our friends on the network, looking for answers to questions. The storyline depends on your decisions, what do you write to this or that person? What tactics do you prefer - to respond calmly or more directly and rudely? Find the information yourself in the game browser or go through a mini-game? The player’s choice affects both the course of events and the further plot.
Plot:
We play for an ordinary guy 17-18 years old. The main character has just moved with his family to a new apartment, which is still under renovation and not even all the furniture has been delivered, plus constant power outages. The hero comes home from school, immediately sits down at the computer, goes online, sees a new message, clicks on it and STARTS….. It all depends on you…..
Tired of the same type of horror?
The game includes a variety of gameplay, in different locations.. The game will not let you get bored, and will allow you to spend a couple of evenings in suspense, with a full immersion in the atmosphere of fear, “deadly” files, correspondence with friends, Internet legends and hopelessness…
Features of the game:
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- Unique concept;
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- Diverse gameplay;
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- Interesting plot;
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- Various locations;
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- An atmosphere of fear and tension.
The Peresmeshnik
The story of the game is pretty interesting! There’s no jump scares but it really does make you question who is bad or good the story reminds me a lot of the thing with a hint of c’thulu (possibly just cause it’s a big bad at sea and the charts?) Overall I enjoyed the play through and it kept my interest as I replayed it multiple times for the achievements and they weren’t insanely hard to get or anything!
my full play through with all achievements here: https://youtu.be/2155w1tHkjw
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
Let your imagination run wild with this story game! Its a quick play through with a well thought out story ark. Its taught me to trust again!
Playing The Peresmeshnik for the first time brought back memories of my survival days in Rust and Ark where I developed PTSD and an excessive amount of paranoia. I might have lost my mind the first playthrough, but I made things right eventually.
A word to the wise: Don’t let that tentacle bastard get you, like it got me!
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game