LoveSick Darlings
LoveSick Darlings is a grounded, realistic, emotional story about a close group of friends at school growing up and trying to understand their own feelings - as well as the feelings of those around them. You play as Syd, a sixteen-year old boy who goes to Foster Hill High - a school in a quiet Australian town. The school year is coming to a close and Syd has to decide whether he confesses his feelings to his crush - all this while juggling the several other friendships and potential love interests in his life.
Such as Maisy, the wild and outgoing girl who lives on the same street as Syd and calls him her “best friend.”
Jayda, the sweet and awkward artsy weeb who loves anime and video games and thinks the world of Syd.
And of course the cool and intellectual Steph, who loves books and music… and who happens to be the person that Syd has been crushing on all year.
Spend time with these characters in a close-knit friendship group over the last four weeks of school, developing your friendships potentially into something more! But be careful, each decision you make can affect the entire friendship group. Spend too much time with one character, and another may get jealous. Or say something mean to someone, and someone else may think less of you for it. Or alternatively: maybe if you say something mean, another character might like you more for it! LoveSick Darlings is packed with group conversations where you get to know characters by watching how they interact with others as well as yourself.
Determine the fate of Syd and all his friends as you help him make some of the hardest decisions in his life. Choose whether to confess your feelings, accept or deny the feelings of others, sabotage or repair broken friendships, and get to know Syd’s friends in a way that he never did before. Enjoy these last few weeks of the school year while they last, and make your limited time count to the fullest!
And ultimately decide: who will you ask out to the school dance?
Game Features:
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An engaging and emotional story rooted in reality and real relationships
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Gorgeous original sprite artwork
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Romance multiple different characters
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Characters with agency and who react in natural ways to your decisions, giving them more impact
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Week and day system where you choose how you spend your limited free time!
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Original soundtrack with 25+ songs
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30+ CG artworks
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Develop close relationships bit-by-bit with each character as you spend more and more time with them!
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No set “routes.” The game seamlessly flows between events and scenarios based off of your decisions in a natural way
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Multiple unique outfits for each heroine
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Highly customized playthroughs featuring dozens of variables that make each “ending” unique
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15 hours of gameplay per run - with dozens more hours in alternate endings and scenarios!
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Comprehensive “Player Review” system that assesses your relationships at the end of each play-through! It also tells you what each character thinks of you by the end, how to get other results, and maybe even hints at a few secrets!
And not to mention an increible cast of artists and creatives working on this game!
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Ippers: Original character design and sprite artist. They’ve done so much work for this game. You will notice their distinct style has given LoveSick Darlings its completely unique visual identity. This game simply wouldn’t be here without them.
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Phiphi: CG artist. Phi has done a great job of showing the characters in LoveSick Darlings in all kinds of situations and bringing their personalities to life in their artwork.
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Edhelsen: Colouring. They’re responsible for all the vibrant colours and little touches you can see on the sprites for LoveSick Darlings. Their work is amazing, and they’re an amazing person too.
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Maddy: UI and misc asset artist. She did several UI and text box elements. Made the logo, and did original art for sections of the story and various icons!
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Awan: Promotional artist. Has done a ton of additional promotional art for LoveSick Darlings!
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Tim Reichert: The offiicial composer for LoveSick Darlings and countless other VN hits!
Voice Actors:
LoveSick Darlings also features an all-Australian all-star voice cast! This game features partial voice acting from all these talents.
Voice of Maisy Anderson: Aimee Smith. The energy and passion Aimee brings to a character as big as Maisy is unmatched!
Voice of Jayda Silvestri: Emily Goeman. Her performance as Jayda is filled with so much love and care.
Voice of Stephanie Azoulai: Sarah Kennedy . The cool and kind Steph comes to life with Sarah’s wonderful and considered take on her troubled character.
Voice of Sydney Ivankovic: Alec Shea. Last but not least, Alec brings it home voicing our young and hesitant hero.
… Oh, um, and also me I guess! I am the writer, director, producer, and pretty much everything else you can think of for this game!
NOTE:
The game is still in production you encounter any bugs or issues in the demo at all, let me know ASAP. Contact me over Twitter (@LoveSickDarling) or via Steam, and I will make sure that it gets fixed :)
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Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness
Cant recommend this yet. I have no problems with the usual early access stuff; broken game mechanics, bugged quests, and balance issues. Those are all easy to fix. However, I do have some main concerns that the small dev team may or may not be able to fix for main release:
1. Performance issues. Long load times and poor frame rates on high end machines with SSDs. Not acceptable from a game that looks like 1998. Since you get a loading screen every time you enter/exit an area or building, long loading times severely impact the overall experience. Pretty much every streamer who streamed this said the same thing.
– Real player with 66.2 hrs in game
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Party-based computer rpg similar to NWN, Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, et al. If you like those type this game should fit your needs. It is RTwP for those who only play one type of combat.
I think there is enough here to support for sure:
Pros:
Quite a large variety of stuff to find for the hoarder in all of us.
Melee combat is fairly robust and healing gets the job done.
The painted map backgrounds are mostly pretty.
Good variety in classes.
I will cover cons in detail since they need fixing:
– Real player with 23.3 hrs in game
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
it’s a review so i have to say that this game is MAGIC (no magic involved in the actual game). If you’re a geek who loves medieval history, then just buy it already! it’s just 10$ on sale right now which feels criminally cheap for what you’re getting. you’re going to get tons of hours and an incredible amount of options to choose from in terms of skills, combat and play style which ultimately allows your Henry be exactly who you want him to be. The combat is challenging, and even though my coordination and rhythm is poor in life and all video games i’ve played, there are ways around this (in most cases), as you have many ways to resolve issues. I play a charismatic yet weaselly man who can talk or run his way out of anything. i can handle a sword if it comes to it, but i’d rather not. what i’m getting at is that you shouldn’t be intimidated by some reviews that rightfully point out how challenging some scenarios can be. get creative! the game allows for that.
– Real player with 169.6 hrs in game
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As a game, it’s very difficult in the early parts. Food and money are really hard to come by, though there are some “public food pots” if there’s no choice. You are weak and getting ambushed is hell, especially when you haven’t saved recently. Speaking of saving, you have to CRAFT a potion to save, or find a comfy bed. Fighting more than 2 enemies is an automatic fail, more so if they are armored. Though to be fair, anyone would struggle to fight 2 people in real life.
Yet, once you have top level armor and weapons, this game is one of the best “knight simulators” of all time imo. Get some potions that fortify your defense and raise your warfare/strength skill and you’re a killing machine. Then there’s also the fact that money and food become pointless because you’ll be filthy rich (even without ‘that’ DLC) and you’ll get hungry a lot slower. I absolutely love the combat system. Even if many people aren’t fond of it, i don’t think there are other games that can capture the essence of medieval fencing. This game got me interested in HEMA. Anyone who says the combat is “trash”, is actually trash at understanding the combat mechanics themselves.
– Real player with 162.7 hrs in game
Voices from the Sea
Voices from the Sea, where do I start……..
Well I guess I should preface this by saying I bought this VN instead of starting out with the free version, although I was happy with what I got I’d recommend getting the free version to see if you like it before investing money.
Now that’s out of the way; I came across this VN when it was up for kickstart and it sparked an interest in me, now that its up on steam I was able to read it and see what it’s creator had in store, and Im pleased to say I was not disappointed.
– Real player with 50.4 hrs in game
So the story goes …
I was bored one afternoon after school and didn’t feel like playing my usual games and felt quite sad/not in a good mood so I decided to just check out the steam store and look for some free games to try.
I came across this game and I didn’t think too much of it, people seemed to like it a lot and and the average play time was about an hour so I thought I might give it a try and see how good that hour would be.
At first it was a bit weird playing a novel game because I have never played one before but as I progressed through the story I felt very connected to the story and felt myself getting pulled in and wanting to know more.
– Real player with 17.4 hrs in game