MetaWare High School (Demo)
I found this game through a video of Alpha Beta Gamer and decided to watch it out of pure boredom. I stopped at about 15 minutes in because I was enjoying the dialogue and jokes so much I decided to experience the game myself without any spoilers.
All the characters have great designs and are very likable,
! even some of Nari’s lines made me smile and relieved me of some of the tension built up from the unknown.
The game has 10 different endings, and the true ending for getting the other endings. They’re not too hard to get and if you get stuck there’s a great guide which tells what you need to select.
! The dancing ending is the best one though.
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Philosophical Story Rich Games.
‘We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world’' - Gautama Buddha
What a deep quote huh? Definitely not the kind of words you’d expect to use for an opening to a review for a ‘demo’ but then again MetaWare High School (Demo) is not your typical demo. It begins innocently as a multi-character VN each with their own unique personalities to provide the Reader with some depth and variety during the first of many playthroughs. It then gradually morphs into a mesh of dark humour, philosophical ramblings & sardonic irony truly hooking the Reader into this multiple choice branching of five High School females who curiously try to interact with the Reader after discovering his/her presence.
– Real player with 7.1 hrs in game
Wonderful Everyday Down the Rabbit-Hole
This is a game that’s difficult to recommend to most people. Partly because of the elephant in the room (disturbing content that makes a lot of h*ntai look tame), but also because of its style of storytelling.
I was able to stomach the content pretty well, but the narrative was hard to follow for me and many others initially. I was willing to put the effort into trying to understand it as I went through, and that made the story much more fulfilling to me. This won’t be the case for everyone though. The story is difficult to keep up with, and at times it can feel like its own project trying to match your understanding with the pace of the game’s events.
– Real player with 398.0 hrs in game
Infinite ejaculation
I’ve been sitting on this review for a few months. I have a love/hate relationship with this game and a lot of opinions about it. Subarashiki Hibi is considered by many to be a masterpiece. I found it to be far from it, a schizophrenic mess whose positives are scattered throughout, but whose negatives come from the very meat of the novel. As this is a philosophical eroge, that meat is philosophy and porn. This bipolar contrast between highbrow and lowbrow has its appeal. “Infinite ejaculation” could be an apt metaphor for it.
– Real player with 110.2 hrs in game
Chuusotsu! 1st Graduation: Time After Time
Review with accompanying gameplay videos on Sinical Network
I recently received this game for free as a curator connect offer for my group Visual novel, JRPG, Anime. This kinetic visual novel from Studio Beast and Fruitbat Factory features a trio of unemployed teenage girls Arue Marisugawa, Koiro Hachisuka and Arara Fujisaki with Arue as the protagonist in this episode.
Arue, Koiro and Arara were ineligible to wear any authorization seal which renders them unable to hold any permanent stable employment and hence became Chuusotsu. Arue plans to take a re-evaluation exam and become a government official after missing a crucial exam during middle school from being hospitalized. To be able to survive in a foreign city on a stipend without having to work, Arue has to participate in an experimental study where she has to stay in Tabula Rasa apartments with Koiro and Arara, achieve sufficient synchronicity among themselves and give an answer to the philosophy of life.
– Real player with 11.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Philosophical Dystopian Games.
Chuusotsu is a cute sci-fi slice of life medium length (by medium I mean between 8-18hs, anything above is already into the longer side) kinetic visual novel with a lot of layers behind the seemingly simplistic front.
You follow the misadventures of Marisugawa Arue as she tries to reform her life as a shut-in, reach her dreams and obviously make some friends along the way. However, things quickly take a turn into the weird and strange but thankfully with a satisfactory conclusion and lead up to the mini sequel.
– Real player with 11.4 hrs in game
Primate Signal
Thought provoking, deep and twizted. Absolutely stunning graphics, audio and character development so much so that I actually was physically transported into the fucked up world of the minds of the Wainstop gang. This work, will replace the Bible in our churches. Thank you.
– Real player with 1.8 hrs in game
It’s not very often something comes along that is this unique. It has such a strong stylistic character that you feel transported to another world with the original artwork and music, not to mention the mind bending story. The time I spent in this world was totally bizarre in the best possible way. Nothing else like it.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
Incel Syndrome
“disgraceful caricature of us truecels”
Read the whole demo and i gotta say im not surprised at all what I read. Its another piece to put down lonely men in their 20s for not having success with women. The game has the same narrative that most media has on incels or adult virgin men. They are all either mass shooters waiting to happen or just smelly neets in their mother’s basement, while the game attempts to sound smart with its quotes from Otto. Notice how no where in the game a woman seems irrational. Of course that can change when they release the whole game but i highly doubt they will show the ugly side of women in todays society cuz truly lonely men are the worst of our race right? Normies will never understand the lonely male which is why they will just throw all of them in the extreme category of the incel group. Congrats on the cringey ass demo cant wait for the whole game so i can shit on it and laugh more
– Real player with 14.6 hrs in game
Is a novel, no a game-novel, rather full novel with no relevant decisions. The following comment is therefore a review of the plot (No Spoilers).
This stuff is not for everyone, hardcore incel issues, 90% of the characters are assholes (except for Jhon, love that bastard), thick text, references to a certain goverment in Germany in the 1930´s, and so on. However, I would argue the plot is pretty well done, the conflict of the main character is real, the characters are all flesh-made weak-but-true people and one can even extract an idea or two from this philosophy-elevated 4chan rant. The backgrounds and the music are perfectly aligned with the plot and so on.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
＜/reality＞
The story is interesting because of mixing spirit world mythology with technology. Quite an interesting match that really holds. The game itself is more of a book. Generally you read. There are some choices and they are meaningful ones but they are really rare in comparison to the development of the story. I think the use of communication technologies as a way to create narration through spekaing in chat in this visual novel was a good idea. It gave at start necessary ignition for the story to unravel. After that there were many unnecessary repetitions of the same phrases and questions. It made just the novel more lenghty.
– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game
TL;DR: This is branching VN. For the uninitiated, choose your own adventure picture book basically. Overall, the VN is nice, but I have a nagging feeling that something’s missing. Perhaps it’s just an indication that I liked the experience and want more.
Pros:
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Art is gorgeous
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Music is nice
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Story is interesting, although there are a few weird things here and there
Neutrals:
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Branching is decent, although there isn’t as much of it as you would assume during the first playrhough.
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Characters are, for the most part, believable. Human characters, I mean. Although some suspension of disbelief may be required, because character motivation might seem… well, shaky at times. Which is forgivable in light of relatively decent branching.
– Real player with 12.6 hrs in game
DIVINATION
This game disturbs me a little bit and I love it for that. I guess I should call it a visual novel because the only real thing you do is decide how to arrange the runes your patrons select, but even that little act can be a quite an experience depending on how into it you can get. What could this rune mean, what order do they actually go in, can I actually reverse the fortune by moving this one?
It’s very short (like 20 minutes tops) to go through a single time and the English text could use a bit touching up in a few spots, but for the cost of a soda or candy bar I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys the genre.
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
This is a very short game with only 4 characters but each divination change the outcome whoch makes the story very interesting. After the first round, you can use the flowchart to pick the options you decide and see the result, I do encourage you to not necessarily focus on the 100% chaos but to try to see how each result has an impact with the ending.
The 100% Chaos ending is really interesting, it reminded me a LOT of Chobits (not the animated version) as the plots turns a lot around the fact the robots don’t have the choice to live or to die.
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
SOULS
A good story that can make player’s sticked into it, and keep playing to the end.
Player would probably get complex emotions througout the whole story, from depress, anxious, anger, to relief.
The writer of the story put a lot of afford in descripting character’s psychological thought, which made the character nice.
The BGM of the game is AMAZING, suiting the story very well.
The Graphics of the game isn’t that appealing, but acceptable. Some of the background CGs do actually scared me with the combination of story and BGM all together.
– Real player with 19.8 hrs in game
I had just posted a review on this just a bit ago, but after some thought, I think this should only be recommended to people familiar with visual novels and have the patience to overlook the countless grammatical errors and subpar translation.
I did finish the game. In one session even. I engrossed myself in the story enough to overlook the errors. The plot had some good twists and the game kept me guessing til the end. However, there also tend to be some pretty big plot holes/unanswered questions
! like why it seemed like after the father was absorbed, it went straight to an elementary school instead of, for example, his previous place of work? And if it was because of the stench of negative emotion, why was everyone there so miserable?
– Real player with 8.9 hrs in game
Dull Grey
It’s not the choice that matters, but the way you make it
The Strugatskys, Dostoevsky, Tarkovsky. That’s what the store page said and that’s all it took for me to fire this up as soon as I could. And what greeted me was a vast grey-white, desolate landscape accompanied by droney, sprawling dark ambient soundscape… and then the black text box appeared with simple words and angular, sharp lines evoking that early 20th century futuristic Soviet aesthetic in black and white. From the colours, shapes, sounds to the words, and overall presentation, everything in this game oozes minimalism and simplicity. And that goes for its length too. It could be said that Dull Grey is an interactive fiction equivalent of a short story whose one playthrough can be finished in about half an hour. But it packs quite a bit in that short playtime especially as you play more.
– Real player with 2.7 hrs in game
Очень необычная визуальная новелла о выборе, самостоятельности и одновременно зависимости и независимости от окружения. Ну, во всяком случае, так ее понял я. Играть только на русском.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Eidolon
This is fun. And intriguing.
But discussing what makes it fun and intriguing without introducing a crap-ton of spoiler tags is nigh-impossible - and I imagine that to read something which resembled a declassified document just wouldn’t be much fun
! (albeit slightly intriguing…). Suffice it to say that “Eidolon” is not your typical VN.
This is what I can state without resorting to the aforesaid: interesting, thought-provoking stuff - but also more than one LOL moment - happens in relation to the fourth wall. Your choices matter, with some degree of tolerance according to the gravity of the given choice. I can also confirm that, in spite of their generally strong adherence to tropes, each of the romance-able characters is endearing in her own right (and the others - well, you’ll just have to find out for yourself… It all works though). In general, it would be fun to meet these ladies IRL.
– Real player with 9.2 hrs in game
Basically a more suitable version of Doki Doki Literature club. Doki Doki has an easier user interface (easier to skip/find alternate dialogue), but this game has more options and your choices make more of a difference. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the game to someone who enjoyed Doki Doki, but as the game is free, I’d still recommend a quick run through to get a feel for it if you enjoy dating simulators, visual novels, philosophy, and/or other games of this type in general.
– Real player with 2.9 hrs in game