Space to Grow
Honestly I felt the game went for quantity over quality with the concepts and characters. I’d pay 4.99 on this, but I regret spending 9.99. The initial game “Our Personal Space” was very adorable and I thought about the game well after I stopped playing, which is why I caved and bought this. It’s obvious a lot of effort and care was put into this game, but i think if it would of taken longer and the team gave more time to the development, it would of been a much more well rounded, in-depth game.
– Real player with 41.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Story Rich Choices Matter Games.
Overview
Full disclosure: I am married to one of this game’s developers! That said, here is my honest review.
I feel that this game fills a really excellent niche that I haven’t seen much elsewhere. It delivers a mix of visual novel, simulation, and choose-your-own-adventure elements, and provides a fun what-if romp filled with parenting decisions, space colonization struggles, farm management tradeoffs. I’ll go over some of the main elements below.
Overall
We’ll start with the overview, then get into the details further on down.
– Real player with 41.8 hrs in game
Growing Up
Interesting spin on the “visual novel” genre that is lovingly crafted, but has its issues and is not quite as expansive as the store page makes it out to be. Still, considering the price, it is worth it, and given the casual nature and the topic, also suitable for people just interested in trying out this kind of games, or for those who would be turned off by weeb stuff.
Rating: 7/10
As is obvious, the game revolves around growing up and going through all of the early stages of life, and it does a remarkably good job at it too, at times at least. The characters, although in some regards laden with cliches, are fairly well written and I am not ashamed to admit, objectively looking at how I behaved and what I thought as a teenager especially, and what I remember of my friends, this is pretty spot on, lol. Unfortunately, the earlier stages of the game are quite rushed, and they are more of a short tutorial than anything, which is a bit of a wasted oportunity - the game really starts when you reach teen years.
– Real player with 38.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Story Rich Choices Matter Games.
UPDATED REVIEW @ 22 Hrs:
Growing Up is a life simulation that fairly-accurately simulates the experience of growing up in a relatively affluent family in a reasonably well-to-do area of the United States in the mid-to-late 1990s.
I’m a fan of this game for a lot of reasons. The writing is pretty good, and the resource management gameplay is challenging enough to be fun while never feeling unfair or too difficult. The music ranges from unobtrusive to fantastic, and the interface is intuitive; simple without being too stupid (more on this below). If you’re a fan of resource management games, or if you like visual novels and don’t mind some casual gameplay mixed in, this is one to pick up even at full price.
– Real player with 31.1 hrs in game
Odenavirus Online
I had fun playing the game. Although the main story being almost only dialogues, it has fun characters and an
exciting story showing some things we all as people are going through… A new virus, quarantines, fake news, negationism… I took 2 hours to complete the game. The online mode is fun too, I played it with a friend… We danced, kissed and drank some booze LOL
– Real player with 2.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Story Rich Point & Click Games.
Talk to Strangers
Where can I start with this Quirky little game. Talk To Strangers aka(Door To Door Salesman Sim) is one heck of a charming game with quirky characters hiding behind each door each with their own little challenges when you face them, The soundtrack is eerily catchy especially the main menu music and I cant seem to get enough of it, The game play is super challenging but fun and the game is super replayable especially as there seems to be no end of achievements to grab and endings to find! all whilst making sure you dont get either killed,too depressed or angry and rage quit oh and dont annoy your boss!
– Real player with 13.5 hrs in game
Surprisingly entertaining and even challenging casual game, if you are eager to make a sale at every house, learn about the different stories and endings, and maybe get all achievements.
I would describe it as choice-driven rouge-like drummer (*door-to-door salesman) simulation. I was quite flummoxed when I tried this for the first time and fell for some cookies from a nice old lady. Instead of quitting, I learnt the ropes, became an artful barterer, and can even count the Death to my customers.
– Real player with 12.8 hrs in game
Bed Survival!
This was really good actually, the dialogue was pretty good, liked light hearted stuff a lot, and the darker stuff was good too. Definitely worth $0.99 to say the least. The game takes 2 hours for that price fyi, not bad at all.
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
The game is just so horrible that I will not even play if the developer pays me to do so.
1. The story is just so stupid and stupid long, 75% story time and minimum play time.
2. Stupid long story time is not bad enough, they even trying to give you stupid dumb story. The ending is just, “What happened ?”
3. This “thing” costs RM15.5 … Just how did they priced this “Thing”
4. Lousy gameplay as you only need to apply what you learnt twice…Literally
Bought this game as the developer’s first game is amazing…But this….Just don’t buy it
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
Castaway Paradise - live among the animals
I’ve had my eye on this game for a while, given it’s so much like Animal Crossing. In fact, that’s what people are constantly comparing it to. I was excited to get it on sale for like five bucks, but…that excitement didn’t last long. I had most of the island unlocked within a day of playing, and after that, things get very repetitive.
Pros:
- It is a lot like Animal Crossing, which is nice because it’s a familiar gameplay mechanic. You run errands for the other villagers (quests,) catch bugs and fish to sell (or donate to the local museum,) and scavenge fruit and washed-up shells.
– Real player with 31.6 hrs in game
Pretty fun and addicting.. being a fan of Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon games I’m thrilled to see a game like this come to PC.
The game has room for improvement, yes, and it may not be everybodies ‘thing’ but I’ve been hard-pressed to pull myself away from it.
There’s something about Facebook and Mobile games (not calling this game one) that I like;
sounds weird but I always liked the ‘feel’ to them, but at the same time I hated the microtransactions.
So this game is perfect for me because it has that feel but without me needing to worry about spending any (extra) money haha.
– Real player with 22.8 hrs in game
Ciel Fledge: A Daughter Raising Simulator
Cute and charming little PM clone.
Gameplay: Similar to the PM games. You fill her schedule up and she performs whatever you have her do. Then she gains skills that help out during her explorations and influence what ending you get. You can also have her work to earn money, you don’t get a stipend so it is strongly suggested that you do this. You can also befriend everyone you meet to an extent but your schedule allows you to talk to a specific person on the weekend to raise your friendship points with them. But, during the week, Ciel can encounter anyone and you will gain some friendship points with them.
– Real player with 68.3 hrs in game
Me: sees title “I’m gonna pretend that your game (sub)title is ‘Princess Maker.’ No need for your selling points, straight to my library!"
…Another random encounter from browsing Steam store. This one is a… what?! I thought these kind of games have died long ago! I love Princess Maker games, and I really wished that the series hadn’t gone dead! I can’t believe it’s not a daughter raising simulator…! Thanks for the recommendation, Steam.
And who made this game…? Namaapa? That’s an Indonesian game studio, it’s from my own country! How is this even possible?! A match made in heaven! I didn’t expect anyone would ever want to make another game similar to Princess Maker in US, let alone my country… So this is how Indonesian Princess Maker looks like…. Unbelievable. I’m gonna cry in happiness….
! My life is complete now.
– Real player with 65.2 hrs in game
The Palace on the Hill
Play as a teenage boy who uses his passion for art to escape poverty.
Set in a small and secluded hillside village in India, overlooked by the ruins of a 15th century palace The Palace on the Hill is a cozy management game which follows the story of a young boy, Vir as he discovers his passion for painting stories.
Made with beautiful painted 2D graphics, you explore ruins, meet people, set up a farm, manage a tea shop, fish, and run errands.
The unique mechanic in this game takes the branching narrative style of storytelling and applies it to create paintings inspired by Indian miniature art.
The paintings, each depicting a particular event in history, are strung together to form a story of the past.
Each painting can have hundreds of possible combinations of choices which helps in creating a unique experience for each player.
Big Farm Story
I’ve never left a review for a game, but i felt i should leave one for this game. Firstly, I actually enjoyed this game. With that being said, i do think it has a lot of room for improvement. The biggest issue being the cost of crops vs what they can actually be sold for. I found that 90% of crops could only be sold for maybe 5-7 coins more than what it cost to grow them. And even certain crops say they make more when sold in the market, the difference is maybe 3-5 coins more than if they were just sold normally. This is also a common problem with other profitable items. There’s hardly any real balance, which makes it hard to make any real money even after grinding this game to a pulp in 60 hours after it’s release. The second issue i found with it, is the lack of actual story line. It’s a very slow progression to get anywhere, and then when I got to Chapter 6 I found myself saying “That’s it?” There’s not much to the characters either besides doing quests for them and earning friendship tokens, which just made it… boring. In terms of uniqueness, it is a very basic, linear story. Not really much to it. The MMO aspect was different though, but also random? I enjoy the idea of it, but in actuality the only real play ability with other players is visiting their house, and planting Friendship hummus to get more friendship tokens. Besides that I found it to be almost pointless and more of an inconvenience when trying to interact with quests in the town center. With all that being said, something about this game kept wanting to play more. It is similar to Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon, so it is an overall very mellow and easy game to play. I found it to be very stress relieving because it is so easy to play and get along with. I also believe this is developers first PC game after focusing on more phone games, so it definitely has the phone game feel. Which all the more stresses the fact it has lots of room to improve. I would absolutely come back to check it out after some larger updates in the future, but as of right now I feel I’ve finished everything that is worth accomplishing in the game. I’m excited to see where this game ends up in the future.
– Real player with 59.0 hrs in game
Big Farm Story is a cute farming game still under development so I’ll be a little bit patient with the current game’s flaws. The story starts off like most of the farming games, you receive a letter from your grandfather asking you to take over the farm because he has something else he needs to check on. Once you arrived at the farm, you find it in a bad state after the recent storm, but your neighbor’s son Benny offered to help you. Your mission now is to find out where your grandfather is.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2361237597
– Real player with 16.2 hrs in game
Depression The Game
Depression The Game(non-patched edition) is definitely not for the faint-hearted, as the experience includes a TV in a living room that shows some clips of real-life self-harm and suicidal acts(with reference/credits). I love the mini comic animation portraying the main character’s routine though :D.
For who to play:
-Healthcare workers
-Victims of low mood
-Anyone who wants to experience or understand what a depressed low-mood person feels or going through in their mind
playthrough
Player begins the game/experience in the main character’s bedroom, with 2 coloured real images of bloody hands hanging on the wall. /playthrough
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
So this game is a odd case. I refuse to believe that there was any game testers for this game. Before I get into that though, the positives. The textures are mostly alright. The main furniture looks fine for what they are. The audio is alright, besides when you sleep where it gets jumbled. The weird level select or whatever that was is weird. I don’t know if you plan more scenarios in the future or not, but that inclusion in the bad ending is strange. So for the reason I claimed there were no game testers for this game, the negatives of this game make it impossible for the testers to have actually played this game. The spelling errors are all over the place and one particular note where it fails to make a new line when using ‘\n’. Using the wrong form of ‘I’ in every note. Using capitals when they are not supposed to be there, these gems: ‘breave’, ‘coutch’ and the list keeps going. The amount of graphical bugs are hilarious, but I will usually let it go especially since it is your first game and the game was at 90 cents when I bought it. The graphical bugs though were hilarious. The UV job on the heaters were terribly done, because they are hilarious to look at. The gaps in the floor and the wall in the kitchen. The shoes clipping in the shelf. The doors are poorly placed within the door frames, you open some and they slide back into there already broken positions. Also, the paper clipping half way through the shelf and the one stuck behind the aquarium. The bubble column coming out of the fish food was funny as hell. In conclusion, this game was funny to run through finding all the bugs and graphical issues without even trying. This game is a 3/10 in all seriousness. You tried, this was definitely not one of the worst ones for a first timer. But, you got a lot to learn in terms of game design and programming. I will tell you this though, going through and finding these issues made me laugh so much that I couldn’t breave anymore, it almost made me warnt to give this a 4/10 instead of a 3/10, but I went with a 3/10.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game