Before Your Eyes
–-{Story}—
☐ Doesn’t have any
☐ Something isn’t nothing I guess
☐ Not greatly told
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
✔️ Will make you cry or smile a lot
—{Gameplay}—
✔️ Try not to get addicted
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Nothing special
☐ Ehh
☐ Bad
☐ Just don’t
—{ Grind }—
✔️ Nothing
☐ Only if you care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn’t necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ Insanity
—{Graphics}—
☐ You forget reality
☐ Masterpiece
✔️ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Will do
☐ Bad
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Emotional Indie Games.
Extremely beautiful and emotional story. I loved the unique art style and game play. Played it twice and left me crying for hours after each run through - would definitely recommend. Absolutely worth the money and time.
– Real player with 4.2 hrs in game
Thing-in-Itself
I was absolutely, completely certain that I had already written a review about this game..
Every review talks about Kant, but I don’t even know who he is, so let’s get to the other aspects.. ahah
The game itself sells at 2,50€, at least in the Euro zone, and actually it’s quite a high price for such a short game. It can be long and a little bit frustrating if you want to achieve every ending and explore every dialogue, but nothing more than two hours overall.. from my achievements' page you can see that it took my around 80-90 minutes to get all the 10 achievements, which aren’t that easy to get actually.. and as before, I was 100% sure that I followed a Steam guide to get the last two achievements but there are no guides as of today O.o Anyways you can figure everything out and look for some threads in the forum or on the Internet :)
– Real player with 6.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Emotional Philosophical Games.
Party for Introverts developed this visual journey (they say before it starts that this is not a game experience but an ‘informative short story’) based upon the German Philosopher Immanuel Kant’s concept known as ‘Thing-in-Itself’.
What is the ‘Thing-in-Itself’? Kant theorised that material objects don’t exist in the way we see them, instead we use our own viewpoint to shape our perspective of the object.
The ‘journey’ starts off sharing this idea during a bedtime chat between Molly & Ted where Molly uses the theory to explain why they disliked the music at a party yet everyone else enjoyed it. What follows afterwards is shown from Ted’s perspectives.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
Linda & Joan
Linda & Joan is a forthcoming narrative game about a British family. You play as Russell, Linda, and Joan — son, mother, and grandmother — switching between them to help the family cope with a series of traumatic events. Based on a true story.
The main game is scheduled for release in 2022. It will be part two of the Linda & Joan story. Part one is Prologue: “Four Months Earlier” which is available now.
Players experience the events from the perspectives of Russell, Linda, and Joan through exploration, conversation, and tasks designed to give emotional insight into the themes of caregiving, dying, bereavement, and homeland.
What sets Linda & Joan apart from other branching-narrative experiences is that while the player has many choices to make, nothing can change the core events that follow — there is only one ending.
However, actions, dialogue choices, and task completion, do affect the characters’ perception of events. By spending time with happier memories, taking care of themselves, and choosing the right things to say to each other, the characters — and therefore the player — will find themselves able to deal with the impossible.
The characters’ emotional states will be graphically represented in the game. The player will have to carefully balance the needs of the characters to progress, sometimes requiring difficult zero-sum tradeoffs.
These mechanisms attempt to mirror the real-life feeling of being powerless in the face of looming trauma, when you realize that no decision can affect the outcome, but you can affect how you and others feel about it.
Even when life’s story feels like it’s on rails, we still have some power over our own realities. There is still room for dignity, compassion, honesty. For fear and for love. There is a time for self-care. There is a time for duty. The choices we make will define the memories we hold for the rest of our lives.
Read More: Best Emotional Stylized Games.
Forgotten Fields
Forgotten Fields
Forgotten Fields drags you into the story with its cinematic and interactive approach. I was captivated from start to finish.
Brought to you by the same developer who made Rainswept, Forgotten Fields is an atmospheric, narrative driven, cinematic experience, chronicling the events of one Summer in a quiet town. The inspiration gained from the developer’s own home town near Goa, India.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
I loved Rainswept so I had high hopes for Forgotten Fields. For me, it fell short in a few areas. You control Sid - a 20-something guy with a deadline and a case of writer’s block. His mother is selling the family home and he is at that cusp in life where each of us recognizes that we are going to have to be a grown up. Much of the story and dialog is between a set of friends who are about to step out into ‘real life,’ each in their own direction.
In parallel, Sid is writing a story about a princess in a fantasy world. About half the game is controlling the princess within her own adventures. There are definite tie-ins between the choices facing the princess and the choices facing Sid.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
Our America
Our america allows the audience to experience life as a Black person. This VR experience follows a father and his son on the way to school. The audience experiences the branching narrative from the fathers point of view while they make decisions and interact with the story. In the VR headset they will battle overt and subtle racism as the story culminates at a climax where they must make the correct decisions to get to school on time.
The Book of Distance
What can I say that hasn’t been said already?
About 30 minutes, not much to “do” but so much to read & feel.
You’ll need a solid 1.5m x 1.5m space to get the full effect.
Ok, enough with the technical stuff…
Such a wonderful VR experience!!! Just wow.
It resonated with me so much, (lens got foggy, something in my eye…both eyes, weird) as I am first generation after my father immigrated to the United States.
He worked very hard & for almost nothing for decades to provide for our family. We were very poor, no Nike’s or name brand stuff but always had food.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
This game is a great way to introduce VR to beginners.
Truth be told I did not believe the other review when they said it will make u cry.
The first 3 minutes when i played this the atmosphere just captured my attention and It made me teared up because of the ambient. From the tone of the narrator to his father’s point of view. It got me on edge. Granted there are a few flaws in the game. But from the way The game was made and told You know that the developers wanted to capture the story telling. Making an immersive experience. Keep in mind that this story is a sad one.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
If On A Winter’s Night, Four Travelers
This was a wonderful point and click experience. The pixel art is really beautifully done, great story telling, fun puzzles. I will definitely be purchasing the supporter pack. Great job and thanks 3
☾ DIFFICULTY ☾
🔲 Easy
✅ You have to use your brain
🔲 Normal
🔲 Hard
🔲 Dark Souls
☾ GRAPHICS ☾
🔲 Bad
🔲 Okay
🔲 Good
✅ Beautiful
🔲 Masterpiece
☾ MUSIC ☾
🔲 Bad
🔲 Not special
🔲 Good
✅ Excellent
🔲 Best
☾ STORY ☾
🔲 No Story
🔲 Bad
🔲 Average
🔲 Good
✅ Very Rich
☾ PRICE ☾
🔲 Perfect price
✅ Cheap (It’s free!)
– Real player with 6.9 hrs in game
“If on a winter’s night a traveler, outside the town of Malbork, leaning from the steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow in a network of lines that enlace, in a network of lines that intersect, on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grave - What story down there awaits its end? - he asks, anxious to hear the story.”
“If on a Winter’s night, a traveler” is a novel by Italo Calvino and possibly one of the greatest italian literary works published in the last two centuries. Each chapter consists of the beginning of a new novel, in a search for the pleasure of reading.
– Real player with 5.1 hrs in game
RUSA Odyssey
RUSA Odyssey is a third-person exploration game set in the post-apocalypse world. Play as a lone deer and travel to the unknown world. Discover the story and mystery that lies along the way.
Note: “Rusa” means deer in Malay/Indonesian.
The Gardens Between
Imagine playing with a very beautifully illustrated and intricate pop-up book. That is about as good a description I can give you for what The Gardens Between is. You can close and open the page to make things move backwards and forwards. But seeing as this is a digital pop-up book we can add some other mechanics too such as using lanterns to clear fog which would have otherwise been blocking your way. We can spin a dial to mess with the chronological order of other things independent of us….and just in general we can manipulate time to solve puzzles and uncover a fully relaxing and heartwarming story of two friends who love each other.
– Real player with 7.8 hrs in game
The first time I loaded The Gardens Between and saw the title screen, I knew I was in for something special. I was reminded immediately of the initial screen for “Braid” a game that I constantly referred back to for The Gardens Between. And like “Braid”, The Gardens Between is a beautiful puzzle game that often uses time as a mechanic and rewards patience, interest and pondering of the tales we tell ourselves of our rose-tinted youth.
The Gardens Between is a universal story then, all told without a script, dialogue or any written words whatsoever. As you journey with our young friends, Arina and Frendt, you get a sense of their personality and their enduring friendship and moments together, through objects that make up the levels and the snippets of moments they share when each is completed.
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
The Palace on the Hill
Play as a teenage boy who uses his passion for art to escape poverty.
Set in a small and secluded hillside village in India, overlooked by the ruins of a 15th century palace The Palace on the Hill is a cozy management game which follows the story of a young boy, Vir as he discovers his passion for painting stories.
Made with beautiful painted 2D graphics, you explore ruins, meet people, set up a farm, manage a tea shop, fish, and run errands.
The unique mechanic in this game takes the branching narrative style of storytelling and applies it to create paintings inspired by Indian miniature art.
The paintings, each depicting a particular event in history, are strung together to form a story of the past.
Each painting can have hundreds of possible combinations of choices which helps in creating a unique experience for each player.