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
The 39 Steps
This is a Visual Novel. That means there are no real puzzles, no real gameplay, and it is just the story. If you like point and click adventure games, a visual novel isn’t a big step backwards from that sort of thing. You just don’t get the puzzles that come along with the adventure genre. So when you want a totally relaxing time of just visualizing a story a graphic novel will succeed in doing that without making you have to think much about solving any puzzles. The 39 Steps is probably one of, if not the best visual novels I have ever played. It adds a lot of extra background and lore to explore within this as well that most visual novels don’t contain.
– Real player with 14.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Interactive Fiction Adventure Games.
Disclaimer/TLDR: The game is a Visual Novel based on a novel from 1915, featuring harder-than-everyday’s English, strong Scottish accent, and is about as interesting as it would be to read the book - keep these things in mind when purchasing. The story itself is really nice, but it’s not presented in a way that it’s easy to digest.
39 Steps is one of the worst good-games I played. The story is great, but because how the story, the era, the book is, the story is not the most pleasant to be experienced as a game. The story rather features classes, than real personalities, and focuses on the present - not even a hint what will happen, barely any reflection to the past than remembering the chasers makes the game enjoyable only if you’re actively progressing in it - either the story lost parts when it got implemented as a game, or it’s not exactly a type of story that works greatly as a game.
– Real player with 14.7 hrs in game
Seers Isle
To sum this wall of text up: this is not a “every choice matters” game, it’s a “none of your choices truly matter, here have some cheap drama instead.”
This had looked so promising and then it all fell apart because we’re drowning in fake choices and that mass effect-y “whatever color you choose, your ending still explodes in a steaming pile of manure” thing.
First off, there are 7 characters in total, but one of them does not matter at all, one is there to help justify one of the ending variations of your sad unfulfilling outcome, and one is the reason you can’t have nice things and always get your life ruined, and you can’t do anything to stop it. Out of the remaining four who can be your “soulmate”, 2 are friendship-only (Connor, Freya), so don’t get your hopes up. The game does not care whom you, the player, like or want to succeed (or romance – what meager amount of interaction is supposed to pass for romance here before boom, let’s have sex since we’re running out of screentime). It cares about the number of answers chosen in four rather non-transparent categories (I’ve played through all 4 paths and I still sometimes don’t get why a choice gives you points in something). Each two-stat combo correlates with one of the main 4 characters – and the path you get is determined by the 2 highest numbers, not your choices. Even if you want to connect with a chosen someone, unless you pander to their assigned answers set, you WILL be booted to another path no matter how many times you try to indicate you want this other companion during special events. You think you can determine who among the rest of the group accompanies you to the endgame point? Wrong again, it is always a one male, one female exact combo depending on your “chosen one”: Arlyn-Duncan or Freya-Connor. And then the lower numbers person literally vanishes into thin air before they can make any impact on anything, because screw your attempts to save the group or use extra companions to change the ending.
– Real player with 27.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Interactive Fiction Mystery Games.
Pros:
1.) Variety of characters. Most of the characters in the game came from different backgrounds and have different motives on why they are here.
2.) Multiple endings. I like how an ending of the game was based on all the decisions you have made and how it showed you the payoffs and the consequences of those decisions.
3.) Choices. Compared to “Along the Edge”, “Seers Isle” had more choices to choose from and how the characters interact with one another.
4.) Artwork. The visual designs consisting the environment, the characters, and the choices placements felt fitting and not out of place.
– Real player with 22.4 hrs in game
Detective Hank and the Golden Sneeze
A VN mystery solving game with four routes in the main game and 3 in the bonus. I liked the artwork mainly for its simplicity and minimal nature. This is easily a game to play when you want to play a quick game but don’t want to invest too much time in it.
My playthrough is longer since I had to take breaks in between my office work. The story is very simple and looking for clues amidst the conversation becomes easier on your second play through. However, by the time I was on route 3, it did start to become a little too repetitive - thankfully, they have the option to skip the dialogues until the next choice. Be warned though, you may potentially miss out on any different dialogues.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
This is a wonderfull visual detective novel suitable for younger gamers. The mysteries involve simple things from finding out who stole a cookie to who stole the Golden Sneeze from the museum.
Light hearted and funny mysteries that can be played through in a single evening.
I had a lot of fun playing this with my nephew and watching him solve the mysteries. Made babysitting the kid really enjoyable.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
Along the Edge
Foreword:
A few hours ago a friend of mine logged to tell me about this visual novel. I checked the game title, I never heard of it. I checked the development company, I never heard of them. I looked at the trailer, and the art style intrigued me enough to try it out.
Along the Edge is a visual novel that tells the story of a Ph.D. student that due to certain circumstances is forced to give up on her research and move from the city to a town. It is a fairly interesting story of self-discovery, of family grudges - possible ways to solve them (Stabby! Stabby! Or other more boring venues of conflict resolution…) and between scientific reasoning and the occult.
– Real player with 14.6 hrs in game
So Along the Edge is interesting but the characters fall a bit flat and I don’t really find the romances compelling. The art style is nice and you are capable of taking many branching paths. One of the things that I find interesting is that you can take the skeptical route and never see confirmation of anything occult or magic. You get different' alignment choices but none are considered evil or good inherently, which is a nice detail. However the “60 endings” is misleading. In a way, yes, you do get that many but it plays it off like they are all very different. They are not. There’s only a handful of majorly different endings and then the DETAILS of each of those major endings can be varied. But they are not full stop completely different, most of those details are easily forgettable and not very impactful.
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
Hostil
It’s a great story with a linear path. The story has been told a hundred times, so it will become familiar quickly and the ending will be obvious, so obvious that I would only pay 50 pence for this game. Wait for it on the sales, it’s worth it just for the art and the sound which is well put together for this size of production team.
Hostil is aptly named, and the first game released by a tiny team in Spain, and this is something that draws me into these kinds of games, the dedication of often small, and in this case a 2-person team. I often visualise a small town with very little going for it and some energetic people making a dream a reality by doing a thing they love by writing these games instead of getting a safe job flipping burgers.
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game
Hostil is a short, simple adventure quest game of the click-based and hidden-item varieties. The graphics are very pretty and the gameplay isn’t terrible, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The interaction lacks substance, the story is cliche, and it is very easy.
There is no backtracking in Hostil. The game consists of a series of painted scenery pages, and you travel from one scene to the next by clicking things in the right order. You do have an inventory, but there are very few places to click on, so the tasks you must perform are never difficult to figure out. Most of the gameplay simply involves moving your cursor back and forth to locate non-obvious things to click on. There are a few simple puzzles at the end which involve clicking on things in the right order based on sounds you hear. Hopefully you played with the sound turned on, because you can’t solve the puzzles if the sound is off, and the game allows you to turn the sound down to make solving it impossible. There’s also a puzzle where you need to click on phrases in the right order, so you need to be good with English and even then the order of the phrasing does not make perfect sense so you’ll need to try several variations.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
Puzzle Agent
First off, let me say: I come from a Professor Layton and Ace Attorney background. I live and breathe puzzles, but that’s not to say that I’ll take whatever I can get. My feelings towards the core factor of the game, puzzles, in Puzzle Agent are a bit mixed, but lean way more towards the positive end than the negative.
Let’s start with the negative. First off, some puzzle instructions are a bit difficult to understand or are surprisingly vague. However, this only happened to me a few times, and was far from the majority. Secondly, there were some jigsaw puzzles that, if you’ve played the Professor Layton games, are like the ones where you have to fit items into an area without them overlapping. There are a few here too, but it’s odd in pieces automatically click together when placed correctly, and they STAY together, which greatly lessens the challenge. Those puzzles could definitely benefit from a better system, especially one where the general shape of objects were outlined and could snap together even if they weren’t placed correctly.
– Real player with 14.0 hrs in game
It’s like Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick and Professor Layton sat down at a dinner table at Twin Peaks and said “let’s make a game!”
This creepy little animated puzzle game is made by Tell Tale games ( https://telltale.com/ ) and seems to be in the transition period when they went from comedy story board games to overly adult themed games. The game’s story is heavily inspired by the ‘Grickle’ Comic series which I had heard nothing about til playing this game. ( https://www.grickle.com/ ) You can imagine my further surprise when I discovered that the game and comic is loosely based on a real folk lore tale of the Icelandic huldufolk aka ‘The Hidden People’.
– Real player with 10.2 hrs in game