Mantle
Loving the game! I Beat it a couple days ago and now i’m thinking of speedrunning it! The game has so much potential and I look forward to more content like this from the developers!
– Real player with 4.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Linear Atmospheric Games.
Great game. It takes me back to the side scrolling games I loved as a kid, though it has more depth and explores the concepts of mental health through beautiful visuals and complex stage design. I cannot recommend this enough, I love it.
– Real player with 4.6 hrs in game
No Going Back
Fun puzzle game with a nice mechanic with fun challenges. Can’t wait for more levels.
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Linear Casual Games.
Indie Game: The Movie
Main Feature:
A candid look into indie game development. We follow Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes of Team Meat through uncertain times during the development of Super Meat Boy. From the insane three month crunch to finish their project to Microsoft’s careless handling of their release, it’s a harrowing journey. We also follow Polytron’s Phil Fish and the drama spiral that surrounds him. He struggles to release Fez, his passion project in development for nearly 5 years, despite a bevy of roadblocks. Like him or hate him the film provides an honest look at the personal difficulties and pressures that affected the game’s turbulent development. Fish seems open and vulnerable here, far separated from the man making headlines for inane, egotistical comments. There are also interviews with other indie developers, such as Jonathan Blow (Braid) who provides some unique insight into the indie movement and how developers try to connect meaningfully with their audience.
– Real player with 26.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Linear Great Soundtrack Games.
The struggling artist is a trope that we’re all familiar with, but most of us don’t associate it with video game developers. That is pretty understandable because until 2009 or so the only games we saw were big-budget games being put out by large corporations. With the indie game scene exploding in the last few years, it became much more obvious that there were people making games purely out of passion; people who put their financial stability and reputations on the line to create something beautiful. And that’s art.
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
Aquadine
Overview
Aquadine is a story about friendship, family, finding hope in the hard times, and most of all, the secrets we keep and the manifold chaos they sometimes bring on us if we don’t reveal them to the right people, or if we don’t have said people in our lives. The store page description tells you that at least the main character of the story is hiding a big secret, but beware! He’s far from being the only person in this town with secrets! This VN is mostly billed as a comedy, but it really brings a roller coaster of emotions. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will probably gasp at multiple points. Aquadine is also a kinetic novel of sorts, which honestly is usually a turn-off for me because it usually means that you, the player, have no control over the direction and outcome of the story, and you are placing yourself solely in the hands of the writers and hanging on for the ride. This is probably also the reason why the game has no achievements, and why it has been so unjustly overlooked. But let me say a few things about why I think that was a good move for this game, and why I think that makes it better than the average VN. First, you won’t have to spend a long time with this game re-doing old parts of the story trying new decisions to try to get different endings. You just read through all the routes and you’re done. Second, you just read that right. Even though it’s a kinetic novel, there are still multiple routes! Once you finish the opening common route of the story, you will reach a character select screen that presents you with 4 routes, each of which focuses on the given character and imagines how things might go if Robin were to enter into a closer relationship with that character. Only one of these routes is canon (you’ll see), but they all serve to give you a lot of background info on those characters, and are where most of the world-building happens. And when you finish all 4, a new option will appear on the main menu, which is the final route to the true ending. Third, the ability to focus on telling the story the way they wanted to in each route, while not having to allow for different combinations of decisions, allowed this developer to create a story that was more consistently high quality than any of the indie VNs I have played before. So you won’t have to worry about parts of the story being given less attention or not being paced well. During my time with Aquadine, I went from seeing it’s potential but being skeptical, to seeing it come closer to my expectations, to having every expectation far surpassed in every way, to even being left speechless by the quality of parts of the story. I know you won’t be disappointed either.
! Actually, there is one thing I was disappointed by, and it’s the fact that I have some unanswered questions after the true ending. Maybe they’re leaving the door open for a sequel? I can only hope so.
– Real player with 36.8 hrs in game
After finishing Aquadine I can say with the utmost sincerity: It’s not getting the award for Sound Design.
A long gameplay later I managed to finish the game, I had fun for about half the time while the rest felt either disappointing or not that much engaging. Unfortunately more things in this game drag it down than elevate. Sound side of this is pretty poor, voiced lines get irritating pretty fast (I wish Grandpa would just shut up) while background sound at times is just too loud (Elisabeth bike ride hurt my ears). Music was average but I played without any sound with my own music in the background, thanks to the game’s overall sound design that did not encourage listening to it. In the graphics department the game looks quite beautiful but I do wish it offered more “places to visit” because at times it really undermines the story (with Cameron route for example). I would take the voice budget and put it into more graphics and add more characters (Cameron route could use a few more visible characters). At different times we will see full-screen static images, those are well done.
– Real player with 35.7 hrs in game
Hollow Destiny
10/10
I will use this game as a basis for my next shadow the hedgehog fanfiction.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
Nice
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
The Gardens Between
Imagine playing with a very beautifully illustrated and intricate pop-up book. That is about as good a description I can give you for what The Gardens Between is. You can close and open the page to make things move backwards and forwards. But seeing as this is a digital pop-up book we can add some other mechanics too such as using lanterns to clear fog which would have otherwise been blocking your way. We can spin a dial to mess with the chronological order of other things independent of us….and just in general we can manipulate time to solve puzzles and uncover a fully relaxing and heartwarming story of two friends who love each other.
– Real player with 7.8 hrs in game
The first time I loaded The Gardens Between and saw the title screen, I knew I was in for something special. I was reminded immediately of the initial screen for “Braid” a game that I constantly referred back to for The Gardens Between. And like “Braid”, The Gardens Between is a beautiful puzzle game that often uses time as a mechanic and rewards patience, interest and pondering of the tales we tell ourselves of our rose-tinted youth.
The Gardens Between is a universal story then, all told without a script, dialogue or any written words whatsoever. As you journey with our young friends, Arina and Frendt, you get a sense of their personality and their enduring friendship and moments together, through objects that make up the levels and the snippets of moments they share when each is completed.
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
Scarlet and Blank
PROS
-Great writing
-Nice soundtrack
-The melancholic vibe
-Art style
-It’s FREE
CONS
-A bit too short (characters don’t really get fleshed out).
-A few bugs.
I really enjoyed this short visual novel.
8/10
– Real player with 2.3 hrs in game
I enjoyed this beautifully tragic tale, the narration and music set the atmosphere nicely for the read
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Love of Dragons
Cute visual novel. Though some of the back story is not… Anyway, decent read. There are choices, but they don’t seem to matter much. Might suggest getting on discount.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Thistledown: A Tragedy of Blood
It’s an imaginative novel that you get to maneuver your way through, exploring a beautiful world and unique lore. A great interactive story you can experience in one or two sittings. It’s surprisingly dense with lore and narrative world building and I really liked some of the emotional beats the game managed to hit. Really liked the music as well.
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game
it’s a very good and fun game, the platforming is very nice, and I love how the character evolves. Her journey is incredible, and as the player, I felt a connection to the character, but also, a connection, as more than just a player, as if I wish I could be an active observer, instead of a passive one, it is a beautiful game, as is 100% worth a buy seeing as the price is very manageable, and it is such a good game (so far).
– Real player with 1.7 hrs in game
Kolobok: the Return
An atmospheric and emotional 2D pixel art platformer based on a Russian folklore fairy tale.
Hunger and misery has driven an old couple towards complete insanity and they have decided to eat their own grandson, Kolobok! However, he manages to escape to the Dark Forest. WIll he manage to survive and keep his humanity throughout the horrors of the woods?