Facettes
The game
Sitting at her messy desk. The objects that dress it evoke chimeras, stories and fantasy characters for our protagonist, the Author. Dreamy and immersed in her imagination, she brings this decor to life.
Through this introspective adventure, explore the identity questions of the Author, this faceless protagonist. Let yourself be guided by this inner journey to the rhythm of her personal wanderings.
The Author is the character that you will play and follow through her inner journey.
The gameplay
Dice in hand and perched on this desk, the Author of Facettes invites you on a journey of identity initiation. At your fingertips is a dreamlike world, populated by heroines, Potentials and life paths to discover.
The Author keeps creating more Potentials using tabletop RPG mechanics: roll a dice and assign values to various characteristics in the process of character creation.
There is a set of Potentials to collect, alongside the objects which inspired them and the voice recordings of the Author’s thoughts.
The Potentials
Her experiences give life to fantastic creatures and worlds yet imbued with reality that nourish the personal construction of this mysterious Author.
These creatures are the “Potentials”, enigmatic women whose stories represent many possible lives for this mysterious protagonist. They each have a past, a purpose, and ties with other Potentials in this introspective journey.
The world
The stories of these chimerical women gradually come to life through the dreams of the Author in the phantasmagorical world they inhabit.
Mirror Island is the main place of this fantasy universe. There is where most of the Potentials live, but some of them are not terrestrial beings.
The island is torn apart by a conflict involving many of the Potentials rivaling to rule this land.
Features
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An inclusive and LGBTQIA2+ game celebrating the queer identity, which is also an accessible and nice-looking game introducing an issue by experiencing it
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A metaphorical and poetic experience sharing the process of self-discovery and accepting one’s identity
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A relatable story that contributes to build empathy with the Author, the characters and LGBTQIA2+ community, providing more content to understanding the issue and self-questioning
Nuances
Facettes is the third game from the Nuances series which holds a strong message about feminism, LGBT+ themes or inclusiveness.
It follows Sweet Love, a game about moral harassment within a couple, marital rape and femicides and A Comfortable Burden, a game tackling mental load with an otter couple.
Read More: Best LGBTQ Female Protagonist Games.
Heart of Enya
OH MY GAWWWD!!! This game is PHENOMENAL!!! Wow, I don’t even know where to start. First of all, the representation is just amazing–the party members are predominantly queer and trans people of color, which was so special to me. I loved that the characters came in not knowing one another well and progressed to become such a beautiful family. I genuinely teared up during a lot of their backstories and found them all so relatable and beautifully written. The party was small, which left a lot of space to really flesh everyone out in a wonderful way. So story and characters get a 193/10.
– Real player with 6.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best LGBTQ Lore-Rich Games.
I really enjoyed this game, I loved the art, especially Raina design. The characters were all likable and it was interesting to discover their story and what caused them to participate in this dangerous adventure.
Gameplay really hooked me, I kept on playing until the final boss, although it took me some time to figure out good strategy, but once I did, the game was much easier.
I had so much fun, I wouldn’t mind if it was longer. I’m definitely going to replay this, as I really want to defeat all of the Frost and I think it’s actually a great challenge.
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
A Museum of Self & Space
A Museum of Self and Space should be a reminder of not only the beauty we can bring into the world, but how cruel that beauty can be.
A museum about our inner demons and how they’re reflected in the world around us. A Museum of Self & Space is a first person narrative game where you will explore a surreal museum of about a failed architect. It is about life, love, success, and the lack of all three. Explore a house that won’t stop changing, a collapsing apartment, and avoid eye contact in a locker room.
In A Museum of Self & Space you will interact with narrative vignettes each with their own novel mechanic, while learning about the life of Jules, the fictitious creator of A Museum of Self & Space.
Read More: Best LGBTQ First-Person Games.
BAD END THEATER
Bad End Theater attempts to deconstruct common fantasy archetypes by introducing a personality modifier system that influences timelines. The game fails to achieve its deconstruction meta-commentary by not allowing its characters enough time to flesh out their ideologies and motivations.
Part of what makes a bad ending so tragic is your investment in a story’s characters. Games such as 999 or Higurashi are able to have impactful Bad End scenes because they did the due diligence of establishing character interactions and relationships. Without the time to come to grow and love the characters in a story, it’s difficult to be invested in bad things happening to them.
– Real player with 5.0 hrs in game
I spent 4 hours during the online classes playing this game, wow! 8/10 quite good-
It’s overall fine and also impressive for an indie game! But the game still doesn’t seem to.. satisfy me enough :(
SPOILER:
I still don’t feel connected to the characters or feel any guilt to the end. The true ending self-insert and friendship thing actually doesn’t feel right, it isn’t the same as Undertale that you truly feel for each character.
Actually, while I was collecting all endings I was aiming to see worse, darker, and more intense ending. It turned out to be a quite heartwarming game, but still doesn’t feel wholesome enough for me. I think if the game were longer and had more intense stories and endings(that isn’t repetitive ending from different views), maybe it could’ve been better. I’m probably a masochist for painful story like TRAGEDY said xD.
– Real player with 4.1 hrs in game
Hell Boba Café
Get ready to mix drinks and date demons! Prepare delicious boba tea with demonic ingredients. Make dialogue choices and flirt with a devilish cast of customers and build new relationships. Enter the cute & spooky world of Hell Boba Café!
Hell Boba Café is a visual novel set in a boba shop at the edge of Hell. In order to appeal to the local demon population, you’ll have to use mysterious spooky ingredients to make them something tasty!
Over 1400 boba combinations
Make beautiful boba drinks with a medley of flavours that appeal to humans and demons alike, each with their own unique taste profile! Most demons haven’t ordered boba before, so you’ll need to figure out what they like!
Service with a Smile!
Demons can be tricky customers! From rude behaviour to cryptic orders, every demon will present a new challenge. If you can make great drinks and provide engaging conversation, you’ve got a long career as a bobarista ahead of you!
A Chance for Romance?
Some demons are thirstier than others! Improve your relationships over time and get to know the locals. If your dialogue choices impress the four romantic interests, you can take one of these dazzling demons out on a cute date!
Casual Demon City Vibes
With its striking character design and eclectic soundtrack, Hell Boba Café is designed to immerse you in a vibrant world and help you take a break from the day-to-day struggles of modern life. When you’ve got boba and demons, what more could you ask for?
Main Features
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Build-a-boba: Design over 1400 boba creations and serve them to demonic clientele.
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Chat happy: Use dialogue options to provide excellent customer service and set the stage for romance!
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Breathe in the atmosphere: Escape to a neon demon city and lose yourself in its striking art style and catchy chillhop soundtrack.
Knight Bewitched 2
I just fell in love with the story and the characters of Knight Bewitched 2 and its predecessor and can’t wait to play the remastered version of Knight Bewitched :) Not one boring minute in this game. No overly complicated puzzles that give you a headache for days and no mindless backtracking all the time. Just perfect for some chill hours and a good laugh here and there. I highly recommend this game. Also looking forward to Celestial Hearts, looks promising so far ^^ And who knows, maybe Knight Bewitched 3 will be announced some day in the future, I have not lost all hope yet ;)
– Real player with 37.9 hrs in game
A fantastic rpg that has all old school elements done extremely well. Eight characters with different skills and plenty of weapons/armor/accessories and upgraded skill slots just add to the fun. Great story and interactions between all the characters enhances the enjoyment. Many interesting quests with terrific battle system and lots of useful items. Towns are nicely designed and there is a map. Exploring everywhere can give you nice bonuses. Hoping for another future Knight Bewitched game. This is a must play rpg!
– Real player with 23.3 hrs in game
No Longer Home
NLH is a game made with a great deal of care by very talented people. There’s a lot to explore in it but that’s really on you, the player, to engage with. I’ve played through it three times now (only once on steam) and every time I discover something different I never noticed before, or find a different path to go down. I do think it trusts the player to want to engage with it and think about it and do the legwork. I think it’s probably easy to rush through and that’s where people get short playtimes but it’s a game worth relaxing into and making the effort to explore,
– Real player with 7.2 hrs in game
It’s simple: this is Cultural Marxism disguised as a video game.
For reference, I gave this a chance, and finished the game with several achievements.
Let’s start with the good, because credit is due where credit is due:
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the moving geometry designs are really well executed.
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the music and sound effect are spot on. Little details here and there give the game its charm.
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the game won’t make use of it, but supports ultra wide screen (ie, it will boot and run at 21:9 on a 32:9 screen).
Now for the bad.
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
Ochitsubaki
A fallen camellia is a beheading, every time, every petal falling at once: a severing.
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TW: CSA, animal death, violence, suicidal ideation
OCHITSUBAKI || 落ち椿 is a visual novel about the impossibility of translating trauma. It is a bilingual JPN/ENG game about translation and how it can run as deeply as the way hypermarginalized people constantly “translate” their identities and trauma for the understanding of others, no matter how far it is from the source material. It’s about recovering from trauma through the genuine compassion and consideration of another person, who manages to See the aftereffects of trauma and are willing to meet that person’s unique needs, regardless of if they “understand” them or not.
Ochitsubaki is only loosely a visual novel, which is to say it is a story-based game with a strong aesthetic component. Ochitsubaki has a deep, rich tapestry of aesthetics in unifying modern elegance with unique retro anime-inspired character portraits. The original soundtrack derives inspiration from traditional Asian pentatonic scales, particularly but not limited to Japanese ones, that also derive a modern, Genshin’s Liyue-type twist that sets it firmly in contemporary times. It has three language options: JPN, ENG, and JPN translation. The ENG/JPN versions are two different renditions of the story, thus requiring a separate JPN translation, emulating what happens when you try to translate something as complex as identity. You can consider that the only real choice you make in the game is which language to play it in, and each language option provides a different “route,” a similar but very distinctly different iteration of the story. The language modes mimic the powerful loss that happens when stories–when trauma–is translated.
The demo only contains the first two ENG chapters, an estimated 30-45min of playtime.
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Hanashiro (he/she/they) and their few remaining kin all react differently to the trauma of being immortal and witnessing the apocalypse over and over again in different cycles of reincarnation. Shiragiku is unfazed and cheery and flippant and whimsical and capricious; Shirayuri is nowhere to be found; and Hanashiro? Hanashiro is planning on their death in 10 years, when the camellias fall, if they cannot find a reason to live by then.
Hanashiro and Shirayuri have witnessed THE END OF THE WORLD before. But no one believed them. Shiragiku has seen many, many apocalypses, but she has never been hurt by any one after the first. Shiragiku has remembered every single end; Shirayuri has remembered none; and Hanashiro only remembers some. Which? Even he doesn’t know.
Hanashiro misses speaking her fey mother tongue, but she can’t seem to find anyone willing to listen to her, not even her own kind. And then she makes an enemy who just might. Their name is Lun Kochouran.
And they might be the first one in a millennium to learn the Amayuri tongue.
They also might be the first to kill an immortal.
Rose Seed Replica
The most heartwarming story I’ve ever seen in a lesbian game. There’s also an underplot as to how the girls ended up where they did, but it’s not the main focus of the game. Also, there’s a few strange glitches that can occur that seem to be related to the fast forward button, but they don’t break the game or anything.
– Real player with 41.6 hrs in game
Full disclaimer: I was a beta-tester for this game and I’m in the credits.
Rose Seed Replica is pretty good! It’s also really hard to describe, as it turns out. I guess calling it a lesbian love story first and an adventure game second might be accurate enough. A big draw of the game is the many branching paths within it. These paths do tend to converge after a point, but there’s a ton of dialogue to see and hunt for across multiple playthroughs. Personally speaking, I did four playthroughs, one for each of the advertised romance types. I still definitely missed out on a lot of dialogue.
– Real player with 31.9 hrs in game
Tell Me Why
Title is an Overrated Backstreet Boys Song But The Game Is Not!
We all had that moment when we saw the title of this game and sang that song in our heads. It deserves a better title imo and I stand by that. So this game is the pinnacle of pride month for June 2021. So I am extremely thankful for the Devs for providing like literally the whole game for free. Short story goes that the game is very atmospheric, not much puzzle invested and emotionally can be terrifying. It is by the devs of Life is Strange, so I did compare or was going to compare as soon as I installed the game. The two are very different in terms of atmosphere and the creativity. I feel like this game is more of a statement than an actual game. Common factor on both games is that protagonists in both games share an abnormal power of no origin.
– Real player with 19.2 hrs in game
Tell me why the music is no good in this game?
Tell Me Why is a new game from DontNod studio behind such masterpiece as Life is Strange and other good games such as Vampyr or Remember Me. Well this is not Life is Strange. I loved both LiS games they made and I liked this one. It’s a good game, just not as good as both LiS games.
The game is about twins and the mystery behind their mother. One of the siblings killed the mother and other one took the blame. After years of separation they finally meet again and go to the old house wanting to tidy up it up a bit and get some stuff before selling it. But suddenly they’re start finding puzzles and secrets their mother left and they start wondering about her past and who their father was.
– Real player with 15.7 hrs in game