Return NULL - Episode 1
Calling this a point and click adventure is stretching it a little bit. It is more like a choose your own adventure book. Theres very little interaction, your character is just drawn as part of the background. The writing is fan-fiction quality, maybe its better in german. The “gameplay” consists of clicking on 3-5 items in each room, which are drawn as part of the background, and choosing whether to look at them (which gives a 1 line description of the object), pick them up (or move to another room), or use an item. Theres no options menu, which is annoying because the game is insanely loud and only runs in fullscreen borderless, and there are no resolution options either.
– Real player with 16.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Interactive Fiction Comic Book Games.
Quick review:
This is a low budget but nicely envisaged BEGINNING to a story set in a dystopian future. The art is of a comic book style and reasonably well drawn. There is no animation and no voice acting (I don’t find this a big problem) but the plot so far makes me hope that this could turn into an engaging and enjoyable story. The puzzles are traditional point and click style inventory puzzles that are sensible but too easy. You’ll get through the chapter in around an hour. I don’t feel chapter 1 was worth paying for on its own purely because it is so incredibly short.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
ESC
First off, I haven’t spent 14 hours playing (reading?) ESC. I played half of it, went to bed, then played the other half in the morning. Ironically, I was afraid of pressing esc and possibly losing my progress.
First off, the writing, music, and atmosphere are phenomenal. It was so immersive and I felt like I was actually there with the characters (who weren’t actually there themselves). The multiple story reveals felt earned and organic. At times the writing was creepy, at others it was witty, and at some it was so engaging that I forgot to breathe. I laughed out loud at some parts and was on the edge of my seat for others. The ending was bittersweet and the ending of the chapter right before the epilogue made me cry, ‘cause I’m just that sorta person. The themes of the story resonated with me so strongly that I was even more invested in the story that I thought I’d be when I started, this was also due to the fact that I adored all the characters.
– Real player with 14.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Interactive Fiction LGBTQ Games.
This story is beautiful, a truly enrapturing exploration of identity and social experience. It explores existential themes without losing connection to the grounded experiences of humanity, and it explores mundane experiences without losing appreciation for their greater significance. And on a more personal note, as someone who came into adolescent internet use in the mid/late 2000s, the MUD framing gave me a profound feeling of connection to the mysterious internet experiences of people 10-15 years older than me, contextualizing the many scraps of references I’ve collected through the years to a bygone web I just barely missed experiencing. Then while I was sat there thinking about that fact, the story went and explored that theme of a reality shaped by place and time of birth too.
– Real player with 4.4 hrs in game
Across the Grooves
This game has a really interesting and suspenseful story, and very beautiful art. Very similar mechanics to Along the Edge, but the game was more polished. I have a few things negative things to say about the game play, but found the game to be highly enjoyable regardless, so overall the pros overshadow the cons.
Cons - I played through several times. You can hold down the space bar to fast forward, but I’m not sure if there was a skip option? Maybe there was and maybe not. Choices do matter some, but I wish it mattered more, like it did in Along the Edge. Mild spoiler,
! the general ending is somewhat similar no matter what you choose. The person you end up with is different, your job is different depending on your choices, and there’s two special scenes that can be unlocked, but otherwise the endings felt very similar . Some of the gameplay was good concept, but not the best execution (but not poor execution either, just meh). Your choices influence your wardrobe and hair style.
– Real player with 13.8 hrs in game
This visual novel is certainly an interesting ‘slice of life’, but it is quite different from Along the Edge. I have only done one completion so far, though I intend to revisit it soon, probably better to make another run shortly after a first. Because to be fair, unlike ‘Along the Edge’, where it is a little more clear which answers will be for which type of answering rationale, there is perhaps a little more guess work with this VN, though that is totally fine, if anything it more reinforces a more ‘answer how you feel’, though the downside is you might not fully remember which choice you made on a next run (I guess if you have a great memory you probably could), so you might end up choosing the same choice again. But, that’s sort of small thing.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Section Six
Pleasant game! A 19th century Orwell/investigative game. However, it is terribly too short.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Follow my Steam Curator page for more reviews https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35705466
Section Six is a text-based adventure. You read the correspondence between nobleman in the eve of the Russian revolution. You get to decide if you should snitch on any of the parties and of what crime you will accuse them, which could lead to a few different endings.
I really enjoyed ruining a few lives. In my playthrough, which took around half an hour, most of the characters ended up dead.
While the game is made by a Russian team, the text was NOT directly translated by google from Russian to English.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine
16 hours in, as of this review.
Feeling like I have barely scratched the surface of this narrative adventure.
A completely American story. Completely.
This game delves into American history, an era when our history was in turmoil, The Great Depression. A decade that brought great struggles, small joys, and growth, both upward and down. A completley American story. Odd travels through time, that confused me at first, now make more sense (you do flow through time, forward and backward…).
– Real player with 44.8 hrs in game
They created a lot of beautiful trailers for this game, but the one that represents the gameplay properly is #7.
This game is special, but very much not in the way stand-out games typically are. It sure as hell isn’t meme-able or made for Twitch streaming. Frankly, by the standards most games are held to, it’s a broken mess, littered with minor bugs and arguably unwise design decisions. It’s doomed to be a niche title, and a financial flop.
And yet, the reviews are on point for the most part, perhaps only a tad generous. If you see the trailers and think, “I can enjoy this,” it can be your niche flop. This game gives America the proper pantheon of perfunctory parables that a declining global empire deserves.
– Real player with 29.2 hrs in game
Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story
‘‘Our prime purpose in life is to help others and if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them’’ - Dalai Lama
Accidental Queens have followed up A Normal Lost Phone over 6 months later with a similar UI mobile interface but with a different, yet vital, informative theme for the player to uncover clues to solve the recent dilemma.
In this continuation of the Lost Phone theme it is centered around the female protagonist, Laura, who has an active social life & is a lively confident woman who starts a relationship with Ben who she encounters on a night out. Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story has you acting detective with her phone to uncover the reasons why the phone was ‘lost’.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Another Lost Phone is similar in concept as the developer’s previous game A Normal Lost Phone . This one, however, has a deeper story which I enjoyed more than the previous one. You’ll find a phone belonged to a woman named Laura and learn how her life used to be before this phone was lost. She has many friends who care about her and has a nice job too. But there are things people don’t know until they pry into other people’s life. The story is intriguing, some people may relate to her problem as it is very common but no one actually speaks about it.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
To the Moon
Reminiscent of online flash games before flash became outdated - great storytelling but clunky gameplay. The story is not logically perfect, but is sufficiently engaging. Gameplay - the same way you advance the dialogue (click anywhere on the screen), you can also cause the game to automatically select the top option in a gameplay decision. Fortunately,
! this doesn’t affect the outcome at all since this is pretty much a visual novel. Not crucial but also wish there was an option for sound balance - I found the audio way too loud.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
starting off promising then quickly losing steam by the end of the story
- plot: had a strong premise. The story explored some interesting themes like mental illness, love, grief… However, I didn’t really feel anything at the end of the game although I was expecting a tear-jerker story (I’m also a very emotional guy). Was it because of meh dialogues at times even though this is a story-heavy game? Or the weird plot twist that threw me off a bit
! (joey)? Or the underdeveloped characters and relationships? I’m not sure but it just rubbed me the wrong way.
– Real player with 6.1 hrs in game
A Bird Story
tl;dr - Join a mute, lock-and-key boy on his long acid trip where he nurses an injured bird back to health. 11/10 lackluster emotional ride.
A disclaimer before we begin: I have not played To the Moon yet. I currently have a cat, I had rabbits on two different occasions, and also a budgie. I did not play this game for 4 hours, it was more like ~1 - I left the game running while I went out because of its horrible checkpointing system; I refused to play through any scene again.
I got this game gifted to me by a generous friend, and was interested to see what the text/voiceless gameplay would be like.
– Real player with 4.7 hrs in game
A short, whimsical, bittersweet interactive story with surreal elements, lovingly detailed and narrated without any dialogues.
A bird story is one of those games where much of your enjoyment will depend in your pre-existing expectations of games, and in what you will read into the themes and the story. It is only mildly interactive and quite linear, and much of the time you are simply watching scenes unfold, yet I personally found some of the interactive moments all the more impactful because of that. It is simultaneously visually impressive for what it manages to create out of its tools, and pretty simplistic. The sometimes funny, sometimes sad visual story will be very evocative for some and almost saccharine for others, and I can easily understand both points of view. And yet I could vividly remember every detail of the 1 hour experience, a week after first playing the game. Emotionally, it hit all the marks for me. The way it manages to utilize the pixels, the colour palette, the music, the sound, the subtlest of animations to create its unspoken narrative is masterful. A second playthrough made me smile when I realised how much it uses little gaming conventions (taken out of their usual contexts) to help tell the story. There are just so many clever design details jam-packed into this tiny story, that a second playthrough actually felt worth the time, despite the fact that there is no new content to experience.
– Real player with 2.5 hrs in game
Edge of Reality
A game in which there are several options for the development of the plot. You can choose any language that suits you. Nice picture and good music.
– Real player with 13.4 hrs in game
This is a review when I wish Steam had a ‘maybe’ option. Overall, this is a solid game and only the minor grammar errors let the side down.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
Drinks With Abbey
All of the awkwardness of a first date without the price tag or the time wasted (that almost sounds like a reason to recommend this game…)
Unfortunately it’s not much of a game. It’s a 5 minute long choose-your-own-adventure graphic novel where you answer anywhere from 5 to 20 questions to get one of 9 different endings. I suppose if you’ve never had a date before this all might seem novel and interesting, but it’s just a cliché summary of stereotypical first-date night-at-a-bar tropes that ends long before it bothers to be unique or interesting.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Game emphasizes being honest
I say that the waitress isn’t that hot since she looked kinda “meh” to me
Abbey accuses me of being a lying bitch who’s just trying to impress her/not make her jealous
That’s when I learned that when a lot of people say “I like someone who is honest”, what they really mean is “I prefer someone who gives answers that I like”
Observe how she’s alright with throwing the wool over your eyes (the waitress, gives false idea of pool skills, etc.), yet if you tried to mislead her in any way, she’s all “dude wtf!?”.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game