Under the Counter
Under the Counter is a narrative simulation in which you run a bar on a local market. Your task is to solve the mystery of its missing people while serving food and moonshine to both city residents and demonic forces from a parallel world.
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Serve your famous stew and drinks to customers. Be careful to do it right so the payment is adequate.
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Help the locals, the resistance movement, and even the invading soldiers (at least the ones who are friendly!) by using your exquisite networking skills and natural charm.
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Test your senses and serve simultaneously. You know, like a good bartender who pours the pint while chatting up his guests.
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Immerse yourself in a wartime story with a supernatural twist. Surely Eastern European urban folklore is not something that you can experience in video games very often?
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Enjoy the alluring hand-drawn graphics and animations that reflect the strange atmosphere of the unfolding story.
You play as Vincent, an ex-sailor who started his stall with food and drink. People still need to eat during the war, and you can cook the best stew basically out of anything. To make things fancier, your second specialty is home-made booze. [And in times like these, people drink a lot.] It is unique not only because of its sheer alcoholic content but also in the way it is served. Most people will drink just as a straight shot, but AT YOUR PLACE they can mix it with cherry juice! Simple, but genius.
The biggest problem that interferes with your business is the Great War that has started a few months ago. So, your city is now occupied, the enemies are imposing their new order, and they don’t treat your people in a good way. But by some strange twist of fate, they do seem to like you and your services. It makes you the perfect double agent and you immediately start plotting with your former friends from the military.
The war is in its prime and the enemy is omnipresent. But that’s not all. The market keeps getting weirder. First, you hear about the disappearances. On top of that, there are rumours about an odd military unit that has just arrived in the city. Since the day you heard about it, you’ve kept having eerie recurring dreams about a monstrous entity slithering in the darkness and gazing at you with its many eyes. And your customers seem to become increasingly stranger each day, not to mention that mysterious woman who carries a faint, yet so easily recognisable scent of the sea…
Read More: Best Hand-drawn Mystery 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 Based On A 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
The Sych story
This game is fucking incredible.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Chronicles of Tal’Dun: The Remainder - Act 1
This is the first chapter in the story and new chapters will be released in the future. It’s pretty short, but it packs in a lot of beauty and story-building.
The characters are very mysterious and surprisingly fleshed out considering how short the story is. The music is beautiful and the art is amazing. This story also has characters that use different pronouns (they/them, xe/xir) and it’s refreshing to see.
If they make the next chapters cost money, I would pay for them because I love this so much. 10/10
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
This is one of my absolute favorite visual novels. Esoteric, foreboding, and romantic vibes beautifully written and rendered in digital ink. Playing and replaying (which I’ve done several times now) gives me a feeling similar to watching Mushishi at 3am or reading too much poetry before bed: strange, melancholic, and sort of comforting all at once. Goes well with tea.
– Real player with 3.4 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
The Game For Skippers
I honestly can’t criticize the game, it does all that it promises to do, namely giving you the achievements for free
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
=)
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
The Last Survey
Warmly recommended to whoever enjoys novels.
Warning, game offers close to zero interaction / agency, if a game must have these for you to enjoy it, walk away.
But if you can enjoy this, take it like a “novel++”. The story is intelligent, the writing is evocative yet concise, and art/audio fit perfectly, strengthening immersion into the story.
Hope the author(s) make more games 3.
EDIT oh, seeing my posted review, one last thing to temper expectations: it’s short. Appears as 3+ hours because I had the game paused while running for an errand, but it’s shorter.
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
This is a short and no-frills visual novel designed for a single playthrough, drawing attention to a serious and important topic, and it’s pretty good at what it does.
It makes no attempt at being “a real game”. Your options are limited to reading the protagonist’s well-formulated observations, memories, and considerations; watching the mesmerising ways in which the illustrations morph into each other to support the narrative; clicking to continue, and sometimes choosing one out of two lines that impact the outcome.
– Real player with 2.3 hrs in game
Wind from city
This is an anime visual novel that tells the story of human beings wandering to a survivable planet with 42% oxygen content after the destruction of the earth. Human beings cultivated through genes have developed 2800 years later. Because of the high oxygen content, various giant species live on this windy planet. Human beings have gradually evolved magic energy.
Features:
1. Tell the story in 2D comic style
2. Rich plot and story
3. What kind of society will a windy planet develop?
Woebegone Woods
This is the absolute cutest game I have ever played.
If you want a cute, pure Visual Novel then this is the game for you!
It easily put a smile on my face and cheered me up with each cute little interaction between characters.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
Super cute and great if you love story lines. The tutorials are very helpful, and I can’t wait to keep playing more!
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Yakuza Cats
Story
Tsukiko, a black cat that was abandoned in an alley as a baby and adopted by Mitsuo, a Yakuza leader. It is a coming of age story that puts the player through different ethical choices while tackling themes such as identity and prejudice.
The game begins 18 years later after a tragic murder forces Tsukiko (the player) to dig deep into the underground community of Tokyo, rise on the Yakuza power ladder and figure out the mystery of his origin all while trying to protect his family and his integrity on the way.
