Painting Werther
The Sorrows of Young Werther, was written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1774.
Loved by artists and emperors, it shows the inner struggle of a deeply romantic man.
Or at least that’s what I used to think…
Come with us on this interactive visual novel to see another version of this legendary story.
Was young Werther really a romantic? Or was he just a man with a death wish?
How deeply did he really love his friend Wilhelm? Maybe his letters hide some clues…
Did he even loved Charlotte? Or did he just love the idea of an unrequited love?
For all these questions and more, Mad Cream Games presents you and overloading artistic experience, full of brush strokes and ink spots, where Chopin played the sax and Mozart the guitar, where love turns into hate, and pity into madness:
With this game we want to celebrate the mastery and abilities from the painters and musicians that came before us, presenting their work in a new original and respectful way.
Read More: Best Hand-drawn Visual Novel Games.
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
Read More: Best Hand-drawn Visual Novel Games.
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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
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
Read More: Best Hand-drawn Emotional Games.
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 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
Highly Likely
This is one of the most tedious, poorly crafted, boring, pointless games I’ve ever played.
The art is phenomenal. The developers' interactions with folks on the internet is disappointing. It’s buggy and slow and repetitive.
There are no puzzles, there’s barely a story, there is no skill involved, it’s poorly translated, it’s a little sexist, and the characters' motivations are all over the map. There’s literally a segment in this game where you need to cross a river, so you hold the joystick to the left for over a minute while he slowly turns a crank. This happens multiple times. The most engaging moment of the whole thing is a long and laborious multi-part fetch quest.
– Real player with 4.6 hrs in game
Highly Likely is a short and light-hearted point-and-click game that is set in a rural Ukraine and follows a man named Mikola as he tries to get himself out of an enormous debt that he owes to the bank. He finds himself a new business opportunity, one that is risky and could land him in trouble with the law, but he knows that he’s got no other choice. This is the basic story premise that is very relatable and could happen to just about anyone.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth
This game is exactly what a video game should be. The art of wrapping up a brilliant story in the right way. Far from stressful and repetitive games, this work is unique and often made me feel very different from other games. There is not a lot of interaction and is mostly limited to conversations, looking at objects, and the character’s thoughts on a particular object or person. But that’s what made me feel so immersed in the game and this world. I haven’t read the books, but I’m glad I had this experience without knowing the original. Thank you Daedalic !
– Real player with 25.6 hrs in game
Hurts having to give a thumbs down to a game with such a well constructed narrative, but…
For a story game, the story is unsatisfying and the “best bits” feel incredibly rushed. And for a point ‘n click game that is similar to a Visual Novel in many senses, it has a weird pacing whilst 75% of the game consists of slice-of-lifeish moments.
Think of it like this. The game starts incredibly slow. And then, BOOM, there is a big moment and it looks like the story is REALLY going places… But then no, there’s more build-up. And after that, even more build-up. And then even moreso. You’d imagine the story is building up to something grand, right? And that is true!
– Real player with 25.5 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