Sonata Theory
If you enjoy narrative experiences, you’ll enjoy this game. What I like best about it is how it expands on its visual novel core. There is some environment exploration, some light puzzle-solving, and branching endings based on how you play. Game scenarios tend to have multiple solutions, and it is fun to try to find them all. Visually it is bright and colorful with good audio. Plus, it is essentially a one-hour experience (and less with each subsequent play-through), so you don’t have to commit a lot of time to enjoy this (free) game. Note: I was the faculty advisor for this project.
– Real player with 4.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hand-drawn Puzzle Games.
The music was great, the level was beautiful, the character design was unique, and the story was fairly good. Menus had a few issues, quest items didn’t disappear which made it a bit confusing, the relationship portion didn’t seem effect gameplay, and the dialog boxes could use a redesign. Overall I actually enjoyed the game music and level design were major Pluses.
– Real player with 1.1 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
Read More: Best Hand-drawn Visual Novel Games.
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
The Sych story
This game is fucking incredible.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hand-drawn Visual Novel Games.
Kalaban
In A Nutshell
🔵 Pros
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Decent free-roaming, survival horror gameplay.
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No hand holding: players need to figure out everything on their own.
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Quests also being “mini-puzzles” based on how to use found items in solving problems.
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Sufficient variety of equipment and enemies.
🔴 Cons
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A few but significant bugs that can lead to major gameplay disruption / force a reload.
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Autosave-only saving system at each area transition, no manual saves whatsoever, not even at fixed points.
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Sometimes certain quests can glitch, preventing progression.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
This is a 2D top down horror themed survival/twin stick brawler hybrid game with a rich story and handmade artwork. Explore an alternative universe Finland and fight off creepy monsters, keep yourself alive long enough with the tools in your inventory and you may unravel the choices-matter interactive story.
There’s a few good points here, the atmosphere is good and the game launches under Windows 10, which puts the game above so many other indie titles. As far as handmade art goes, it’s perfectly acceptable and fits well with the theme. Unfortunately there’s some deficiencies, too. Resolution and controls are both fixed and can’t be changed, which makes the game fall below minimum standards for PC. Also, the game lacks polish and suffers from many gamebreaking bugs and crashes. Finally, twin stick top-down genre died a long time ago shortly after 3D accelerators became available back in 1995 with the S3 Virge.
– Real player with 5.0 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
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 Dreamwalkers
The Dreamwalkers is a 2D Visual Novel/Point-and-Click Adventure Game in which you can project yourself into the world of Dreams.
You play Morgan, a student in History of the Arts in Paris, who’s life is about to be turned upside down. Along his journey he will meet new friends, whose fate will be into your hands.
Features
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5 acts of an hour each. Perfect for lunch break diversions!
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Highly replayable: the story is divided into 3 mutually exclusive branches, each focused on the relationship between Morgan and one of the Dreamwalkers.
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Romance: will Morgan fall in love with this Dreamwalker or just be friend? Your decision!
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8 different endings depending on choices you’ll have to own up (and no Mass Effect-style: some endings will depend on choices made earlier in the game)
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Explore Dreams: scenes in the world of dreams can be explored in point & click phases to discover more about the universe.
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Original Universe: inspired by Neil Gaiman and Inception, we created a world where myths and reality intertwine.
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Backgrounds and characters drawn by talented artists.
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The original music is a symphony in 5 movements created by a composer and played by an orchestra!
Bioid
Bioid is an exploration adventure and puzzle game from two dreamers.
Owl-like’s Space Library features oddities from across civilizations and the crossroads of worlds. Just open the book, and unknown creatures burst forth or drag you into the book. Worlds collide in the Library! Offering you the opportunity to become a mediator between various funny and paradoxical creatures.
The White Bioid Reef stands out among dimensions. It’s a conglomerate of shape-shifters with powers of telekinesis and gravity control. Open tunnels in the bioplasm and travel through white labyrinths to meet higher-intelligence creatures. Fight the parasitic thorns and world devourers.
Have fun exploring while listening to great ambient music.
Dead-End Detective: The Sixpence Strangler
Set in the 1950s, and with jokes and double entendres that have all the subtlety of many of the comedy shows of that time, this is a reasonable reproduction of a typical police yarn of that period. This is more a visual novel with choices than an actual game, though you do get to create the character of the protagonist. You play as a police Inspector out to catch a serial killer and during your enquiries you meet the staple characters from that period: the complaining neighbour, the vampish bar girl, the ribald sailors and a pair of constables, one of whom is an eager and ambitious young man, and the other a typical cynical policeman who has seen it all, as well as a jealous colleague who resents your success. Its set in a cold, wet and wintry London.
– Real player with 3.3 hrs in game
The Medieval Psychologist
STORY
Bernard is a stranger who has just arrived in Lostworth. Its purpose is to help people spiritually. He can solve the problems of his patients, sometimes by talking, sometimes by preparing medicine or magic, and sometimes by lying. He is not a priest or a sorcerer. He is just a researcher who knows a lot about the spiritual structure of man. The source of this information is his books.
While focusing on patients' personal stories and solving their problems, Bernard finds himself in the strange events in the city. Bernard will face the truth about himself as he uncovers the secrets of the city.
The Wanderer: Frankenstein’s Creature
As someone who thoroughly enjoys story-heavy games, I knew that I was in for a treat when I got the opportunity to play The Wanderer: Frankenstein’s Creature (by developer La Belle Games and publisher ARTE France), from the name alone. True to its title, the game heavily incorporates its source material, Mary Shelley’s notorious novel Frankenstein. However, the game has more to offer than simply story. It not only leaves open opportunity for a few diversions from the original and infamous tale, but also gives the player an artistically engaging and awing experience, that gives new dimensions to an otherwise complete character and story.
– Real player with 53.4 hrs in game
I could continue on about how the music is incredible (if Gris met Octopath Traveler) or how the visuals are some of the best you’ll see this year, but honestly, words feel cheap when it comes to recounting what I experienced. This is really one of those games that can change you because it makes you feel something that you thought you’d lost in your youth and would never experience again. Yet that reaction I had after the first stone was cast awakened in me something absolutely visceral — the pain and suffering of rejection by others due to the abandonment of those who were supposed to care for you. My creator, neglectful, should have gently eased me into my understanding of the world and shielded me in my youth; instead, I painfully learned that others feared me, and I, in turn, feared them.
– Real player with 5.0 hrs in game