Dark Scavenger
I’ve been meaning to write something nice about this game for a looong time.
Let that sentence be your TLDR, or read for a while longer if it pleases you.
Old choose your own adventure books were a sort of very early “random” generated adventure games where you would “play” a character in a story that progressed differently depending of your choices. The choices were not open ended, leading either to instant death, progressing in some way, or devious later instant death when you missed something important on an earlier page. The progression was linear, and while it branched somewhat, the roads taken would crystallize into one or two endings, depending on the length and complexity of the adventure. As with any genre of book, game or book/game hybrid there were categories of both comedy, high adventure, gloomy dunkelkeit and of course some smut 3
– Real player with 13.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choose Your Own Adventure Indie Games.
It is as it is described a “bizarre point-and-click RPG adventure”.
Gameplay:
The game consists of five chapters. It automatically saves after each chapter, so be prepared to have enough time to finish one chapter. Each chapter consist of rooms, a scene present to you where there are several objects to examine. Examining an object may only give a brief description or can lead you to a mini-adventure or encounter. Most of this is done through text where the player has an avarega of three options to choose from. After ineracting with an object you may receive a reward (loot for crafting or for use in a specific scenario). Each time you enter a new room you can decide what to turn your loot into: a weapon, an item or an ally. Your crafting friends give a, sometimes very vague (for me often amusing), description of the result. All weapons, items and allies have a certain amount of use, which only replenishes when starting a new chapter. You can use these equipments and their combinations to fight your enemies in turn based combat and during scenarios when interacting with objects (such as when you fall into a dark place you may use a light emitting weapon or item to help you out). You can return to rooms previously visited within the same chapter. At the end of each chapter there is a boss, or more.
– Real player with 12.8 hrs in game
Return of Red Riding Hood Enhanced Edition
Really silly game, totally didn’t expect to enjoy it.
• Graphically
You can tell even from the screenshots, that this game is not going to win any prizes for graphics, but the cheesiness adds to the charm.
• Audio
Again, nothing special, but mostly effective in setting the tone of each scene.
• Gameplay & Controls
Simple visual novel style with a little bit of P&C puzzling, but the biggest part of this game is the amount of paths and endings there are, giving that real purpose behind what the devs were trying to do with this game.
– Real player with 6.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choose Your Own Adventure Indie Games.
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Return of Red Riding Hood is a visual novel that tells a branching version of the classic story. The game begins as an adventure game, but shifts into a visual novel soon after.
The initial adventure portion of the game is bizarre and feels extremely out of place once you progress farther into the game. It plays like a point and click adventure game, but the entire adventure is making a pie. You can replay it five times to make each kind of pie, but each playthrough is extremely similar, so there isn’t much point in playing it again.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
Seers Isle
To sum this wall of text up: this is not a “every choice matters” game, it’s a “none of your choices truly matter, here have some cheap drama instead.”
This had looked so promising and then it all fell apart because we’re drowning in fake choices and that mass effect-y “whatever color you choose, your ending still explodes in a steaming pile of manure” thing.
First off, there are 7 characters in total, but one of them does not matter at all, one is there to help justify one of the ending variations of your sad unfulfilling outcome, and one is the reason you can’t have nice things and always get your life ruined, and you can’t do anything to stop it. Out of the remaining four who can be your “soulmate”, 2 are friendship-only (Connor, Freya), so don’t get your hopes up. The game does not care whom you, the player, like or want to succeed (or romance – what meager amount of interaction is supposed to pass for romance here before boom, let’s have sex since we’re running out of screentime). It cares about the number of answers chosen in four rather non-transparent categories (I’ve played through all 4 paths and I still sometimes don’t get why a choice gives you points in something). Each two-stat combo correlates with one of the main 4 characters – and the path you get is determined by the 2 highest numbers, not your choices. Even if you want to connect with a chosen someone, unless you pander to their assigned answers set, you WILL be booted to another path no matter how many times you try to indicate you want this other companion during special events. You think you can determine who among the rest of the group accompanies you to the endgame point? Wrong again, it is always a one male, one female exact combo depending on your “chosen one”: Arlyn-Duncan or Freya-Connor. And then the lower numbers person literally vanishes into thin air before they can make any impact on anything, because screw your attempts to save the group or use extra companions to change the ending.
– Real player with 27.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choose Your Own Adventure Indie Games.
Pros:
1.) Variety of characters. Most of the characters in the game came from different backgrounds and have different motives on why they are here.
2.) Multiple endings. I like how an ending of the game was based on all the decisions you have made and how it showed you the payoffs and the consequences of those decisions.
3.) Choices. Compared to “Along the Edge”, “Seers Isle” had more choices to choose from and how the characters interact with one another.
4.) Artwork. The visual designs consisting the environment, the characters, and the choices placements felt fitting and not out of place.
– Real player with 22.4 hrs in game
The Adventurous Four
The Adventurous Four is the sequel to Wild Island Quest, a choice’s matter visual novel game by NLB Project.
The game starts with you (Henry) snuggled up to your newly wedded wife in bed, with your dog Snoopy at the foot of the bed. You are woken by Snoopy as he barks at someone ringing the doorbell, disturbing your Sunday morning lie in. You crawl out of your pit and go to check who is at the door at this time of the morning. It’s Doyle, a friend of yours, who seems excited and starts to explain why he’s here so early. He says that he’s just finished his project which he’s been working on for the last three years and wants you and your wife, Irene, to be one of the first to see it.
– Real player with 5.8 hrs in game
A ‘choose your own adventure’ with very few actual choices, but that’s not really important or why I quite enjoyed this. First the story starts rather normally although something was slightly off with the characters or setting. The story dialogue is stiff and feels like it’s been maybe translated to english but nothing too out of the ordinary although it gradually becomes an outright wacky adventure that doesn’t seem to involve good storytelling or decent character dialog. And this is where it begins to shine. The rather charming if unintentionally funny 3d models, their poses and facial expressions, odd narrative choices and descriptions that range from the oddly mundane to comically over the top and often somewhat inappropriate.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Along the Edge
Foreword:
A few hours ago a friend of mine logged to tell me about this visual novel. I checked the game title, I never heard of it. I checked the development company, I never heard of them. I looked at the trailer, and the art style intrigued me enough to try it out.
Along the Edge is a visual novel that tells the story of a Ph.D. student that due to certain circumstances is forced to give up on her research and move from the city to a town. It is a fairly interesting story of self-discovery, of family grudges - possible ways to solve them (Stabby! Stabby! Or other more boring venues of conflict resolution…) and between scientific reasoning and the occult.
– Real player with 14.6 hrs in game
So Along the Edge is interesting but the characters fall a bit flat and I don’t really find the romances compelling. The art style is nice and you are capable of taking many branching paths. One of the things that I find interesting is that you can take the skeptical route and never see confirmation of anything occult or magic. You get different' alignment choices but none are considered evil or good inherently, which is a nice detail. However the “60 endings” is misleading. In a way, yes, you do get that many but it plays it off like they are all very different. They are not. There’s only a handful of majorly different endings and then the DETAILS of each of those major endings can be varied. But they are not full stop completely different, most of those details are easily forgettable and not very impactful.
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
The Barbarian and the Subterranean Caves
The dialog are well-written. The graphic is unique yet weird, i find it funny somehow but actually liked it.
The story itself is about 20 mins long. Who you visit at the beginning will make you run into different endings. However, even accept the mission from different people, you are going to meet the same person and get the same loot at the end. But your decisions, thoughts, enemies, and your story ends in different ways.
Aren’t these real lives?
– Real player with 6.8 hrs in game
If you hope for many H-scenes then this game is not for you, but if you want some decent VN game that has many choices for you to explore within few hours so this is the good one.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Non-Linear Text Quests
It was linear. FALSE ADVERTISING!
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
What a very non-linear text based quest that was. Truly captured the essence of what a non-linear text quest should be. I especially enjoyed the non-linear aspects along with the text based components. Every non-linear option was paired nicely with a text based option, making the story very whole.
Overall, I give it 10 non-linears out of 10 text quests.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
I Know Everything
The questions are okay, although very difficult. The achievements are ludicrous. ‘Get to the top 10 for all players’, or multiplayer victories with a dead playerbase. Nope.
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game
So I picked up this game because I was bored of the games my friend and I usually play every day. It’s not the most polished game, as there are many spelling/grammar errors, but we had fun for 30 or so minutes. My biggest complaint is the difficulty of questions and the limited category choice. Maybe the developer(s) plan(s) to add more categories in the future, that would be nice. If $3 isn’t much to you, I guess it’s worth it for maybe an hour or two maximum of entertainment with a friend.
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
Signs of the Sojourner
This game is fantastic. There’s hardly a negative comment I could make upon it.
Story-wise, your mother passes, and you’re responsible for keeping your hometown alive through her story/trade caravan. You meet a variety of people and learn about/influence their stories, learning hidden stories about your mother’s past on the caravan route and ultimately finding an appropriate ending to the caravan problem (the town relies on the caravan for business, and your store needs to be successful for the caravan to justify coming around.)
– Real player with 43.6 hrs in game
Probably my favourite game of this year so far. I was honestly close to just quitting within the first few minutes, but once I got used to the concept the whole thing became weirdly addictive. I got drawn into the game’s world and was excited to plan my trips, explore all the places, meet the people, solve the mysteries, find out about all the subplots…
The first playthrough took me about 5 hours, and apparently the other ones weren’t much shorter because there was always new content - and admittedly also because I’ve spent quite some time figuring out which cards to collect and to play and on retrying conversations… I’m almost done with my 5th playthrough, all of them lead me to a few new places, people and stories, and there are still some left to explore.
– Real player with 30.7 hrs in game
A Case of Distrust
𝗔 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗻𝗼𝗶𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝟮-𝟯 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀.
My favorite two aspects of the game were the art and the story.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝘁, 𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰, 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘆 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀' 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗼𝗱𝘀. Never did it feel like it was missing something as it definitely fit the format.
Now, the story took me by surprise. 𝗜 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗼𝗯𝘀𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗜’𝗱 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝘁 𝘂𝗽 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘃𝘆 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘂𝗲, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗲𝗹𝘁 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻; it’s sort of reminiscent of Agatha Christie stories, where you’re presented with a handful of characters connected to the case and you have to use every tiny piece of information you get to come to conclusions.
– Real player with 4.7 hrs in game
Introduction
I like detective stories and video game adaptations of crime novels. It’s no secret that my favorite game of all time is LA Noire and that my nickname is a wordplay on one of Agatha Christie’s most elusive antagonists, U.N. Owen. Unknown until the appropriate moment, as any worthy mystery should be. A Case of Distrust is the Steam debut of Ben “The Wandering Ben” Wander, a gaming industry professional (not quite vetern yet) which left the AAA standard and its various limitations/pressures for the overall freedom offered by the indie scene. A wise choice, no doubt.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game