Exploring the Itch.io Collection #6

I am slowly working through the collection! I don’t know how long this will take me, but I’ll keep progressing!

Many games here today, some from the previous article, and
some from the next.

Experiences

Grievance: Less a game than a short interactive story. It’s black text on a white background, there is no music, and your occasional input is to choose where the plot goes or what some characters say, though I assume these do not make a ton of difference in the end. This tells the tale of three characters. A farmer, a guardsman, and a princess, all of whom have their lives impacted by a meeting with the king of the land. The store page describes this tale as a fable about power, how it corrupts those who have it, and how it damages those who don’t. No happy endings here, that’s by design.

You might see why I didn't want that pic to be the one
everyone would see when I was posting my link to this review.

A completely normal dating simulator that is definitely completely sweet, innocent and normal: Yes, that’s the title. This is… a parody of dating sims. All the characters are one-dimensional, the art is stick figures over child-level drawings, the music is just someone singing to themselves, the plot is absurd nonsense, only one minor character (an author avatar/cameo) has all their lines properly voiced, and the text is packed with spelling mistakes. And… I’m sure this is on purpose. Like some dadaist thing. I kept expecting it to take a hard swerve into a different direction, like DDLC, but nope. It’s more annoying than anything else, to be honest. Good for maybe a few laughs, though, if you can tolerate what it’s going for.

The kids have got to leave the nest at some point!

One-Eyed Lee: Prologue: A young elf wants to escape from his wheat-farming family and see the world; but all his attempts were thwarted by his parents, his two brothers, and his sister. One night, at last, he makes it out of the wheat field, only to find a shadowy creature that grants him a worrisome, yet freeing, superpower… This visual novel has no decisions to make, and is just a story you can follow at your leisure. Not much of a game, but it IS intended as a prologue; its creator DarkChibiShadow only released one full chapter for this series yet, which I’ve also received in the Itch.io bundles I purchased. Someday, I’ll get to it! In the meantime, I could enjoy the good art, nice music, and character complexity shown in this short product.

Social Reach

Yup. It's like I said. Every single line pulled right out of the
transphobe's playbook. This game may awaken sad memories
for those who did go through this sort of thing with their own
families.

Boa Retina: A game by Jennifer Raye about someone experiencing gender uncertainty and finally confronting “the family” (represented by a winged monster eye) about her discovered trans identity. The eye will run through the whole transphobic script, starting at utilitarian excuses (“You’ll have a harder time finding work”) before moving on to emotional/physical abuse. To say nothing of the protagonist doubting her choice. You go through four documents re-exploring the protagonist’s self-discovery, hoping to find better arguments and defend this life-changing decision, without luck. I’m as cis male as they get; I will never live this. Thus, I could only guess that transition is tough for any person that has a family that would react like the monster eye. Seeing it firsthand through this game, however short, gives an unmistakable impression of just how mentally taxing making that choice, and especially coming forward about it, can be in some families. Something tells me that it is inspired by Raye’s real-life experiences, and as a result, it portrays this reality with eye-opening brutality.

I use the "Social Reach" part of these articles to showcase
games that treat important social issues in some way. And
islamophobia, even portrayed through allegory, counts
as a great social problem.

Devtheism: This game was created on RPG Maker. Its meta setting presents the tale of someone who is mocked for their belief in “Developers”, which clashes with the beliefs of other NPCs in an “Engine” that created everyone. After being mocked once again over it (“Your kind blows up people that disagree with them! Your kind can’t take a joke when we picture what you believe in!”), the main character sets out on a quest to prove the existence of Developers… or, perhaps, they will find a life truth: That what one believes in shouldn’t matter, what should matter is how good each person is. It is unfortunate how easily you can guess this game’s developer’s faith based entirely on the insults their main character receives; goes to show, those stereotypes are unfortunately still far too widespread. This is an allegory for religious persecution, so the topic is heavy; but the tone is lighthearted overall. And very metafictional.

Social Justice Warriors: The title is explained on the game’s page. Attacking, ridiculing and silencing each other online with terms like SJW or troll “not only fails to achieve progress but has an additional effect of escalating the conflict and wearing you down in the process”. Pick a class (which gets given traits pertaining to a specific online community), then battle against increasingly difficult “trolls” that use hateful rhetoric. Keep a close eye on your levels of patience and reputation; enemies have those too, and to defeat a troll, you must deplete either one. No patience means they give up, no reputation means their reach is destroyed. The same applies to your character, and casting your “spells” often costs patience or reputation. Clever and hilarious concept, with a fair bit of challenge to be found, especially late in the game when your stats have been lowered through many tough battles and it becomes a struggle for survival. Hey, you can raise an important point about society and still be funny about it!

Plain Games

So, I guess this is in the future, because shape sorter
toys cannot be that old- ... ....right?

(Not Escape Room): In this visual novel, three women have been trapped in what they assume is an escape room game by an AI. It is meant to be an inescapable trap for them to stay in forever. The three friends still treat it as solvable, and you, as the AI, will attempt to sow division to increase tensions. You select some of the ways in which the “escape room” game goes, to make the puzzles impossible to solve. Can you really keep these three trapped? (Probably not.) Fun little game; the characters are enjoyable, though there aren’t many choices to see how you could break their friendship. I assume there are multiple endings.

Of course my first pick was the dog. It's easy mode.
Not that there's much difficulty to be found here.

Eternia: Pet Whisperer: In this visual novel, your character is looking to adopt a pet to liven up their empty apartment. The shelter they visit has six pets… and they all talk! You can some time with them every day, and then adopt them. You are even given the option to time travel in order to adopt all of them! Or you can end at just one pet, too. Either way, this is a no-stress game, you can let the story play out. You can tell the Hatoful Boyfriend inspiration here. It’s pretty good and the art is neat, though since the choices are never too difficult, it’s very much an “autopilot” kind of game where you can just be in for the ride, without having to do much in the way of input outside of choosing which pet to focus on during each loop.

The gate is open! Quick, go through!

Eves Drop: An arcade-like game in which you control a hacker’s digital self, breaking through many barriers of a Big Brother-esque program on the eve of the new millennium. The digital self freefalls through a corridor. You can float towards any sphere using WASD, spin it around with A and D to aim, and then shoot by holding down and then releasing the sphere with S. The goal is to shoot spheres to destroy the gate to the next level, and then float down and pass through. Careful, though; enemies get increasingly frequent and dangerous the deeper you go. Tricky game to figure out and play at first, but I reached the end on my fourth attempt. It’s an energetic game for an interesting idea.

I'll be right back to you, just gotta stuff the pot
with ALL the fod I can fit in it. Don't worry,
I will catch up on our conversation in a sec!

Hot Pot Panic: Your friend is in town, so you go to an all-you-can-eat hot pot restaurant to chat over what’s new in your lives. The goal is to cook your food in the pot, eat it, and end on a full stomach before you run out of conversation topics. You must keep track of what your friend says, because she’ll ask for your input. And you must keep track of how your food cooks, because it’s only good to eat for a short window of time where it shines gold in the pot! You can lose either by not having a full stomach after running out of topics, or your friend figuring out, due to repeated wrong responses or staring at the pot too much, that you were more focused on the food than on her. Surprisingly challenging (the timing is tricky), and a great way to practice quick reading!

Bit of SUPERHOT in there too, since
enemies move faster when you move.

TRAINBOW: The biggest pain with this one was making it work, as I had to go into its folder and manually open the game with the actual app within the files. In this arcade game, you are Manpuck, the circle on the screen, and you are tasked with taking every flower bulb in each stage and taking it to the exit, one at a time. Careful, though; every picked flower will sprout enemies that will chase Manpuck. However, if you hide behind walls while they’re hunting you, they will eventually selfdestruct. Or you can run over a sprouting enemy to kill it before maturity.

The Primary mode is made of seven tutorial-like stages; their completion unlocks Secondary, made of 40 levels. In that mode, each stage has 8 bulbs, and the more bulbs you’ve collected, the more stages open. Still not enough? There are endless modes as well! It’s a fun little game with more depth than one could expect at first; I didn’t finish it, but I see its worth and challenge.

Took me like 10 minutes to get up that tower of skulls.
This was not the end of the game, it was the second area.
Everything else after it was much easier.

Cardiac: A monochromatic horror game in which you control a writhing mass of flesh that can move around thanks to tendrils. Right-click to extend the tendrils forward, left-click to be pulled in the direction of what they caught. The game begins with moving around through tunnels, then evolves to semi-platforming. The struggle is real. Gameplay is tricky, since you don’t control where your tendrils go, which makes movement difficult – that’s on purpose. The atmosphere is down pat, the music is appropriately tense, and the sound design… euuugh… all that squelching, all that wet sound… Still got chills of disgust.

Waving through the space snakes...

Dragons In Space: Not actual dragons. In this abstract game, you control a ship and must stay alive, destroy enemies, and pick up the escape pods. You gain one star in a level for each task successfully completed (the “stay alive” one is earned by not getting hit at all). Eight levels, with enemies and hazards getting meaner and tougher to face. The ship you play cycles between three weapons, you don’t control which weapon you’re using in a level, and not every weapon is good in every situation (and the worst weapon is automatically selected against the final boss!). The gameplay has its hiccups, it’s not well optimized; but the abstract art style gives it a charm, in a “makes it look like it was drawn by a child” kind of way.

Forget the ghost, I wanna know what's the trouble with that
one jackass in the chat that's crapping over everything that's
happening. Don't we have mods or something?

LiveScream: Visiting a haunted mansion for views, how hard can it be? In this point-and-click, your character enters the mansion in search for supernatural events. You can see the chat commenting your actions as you play. You can solve little puzzles, and push through in the face of adversity. Manage your fear level (if you get too scared to continue, your character runs out screaming!) and your audience interest level (which goes up when interesting stuff happens). The point-and-click aspect is limited, as it only involves investigating across 3 rooms (+ one more, if you can find it) and performing actions (such as pushing forward when something weird is happening). There is no “true” ending, though there’s a wide range of outcomes. It’s got some in-game achievements, too!

Better walk out of this room before I go mad
from the discovery. Yeah.

Remnants: In this point-and-click created in RPG Maker 2003, your nonbinary character in a cool cape is investigating a hidden cave under a dying forest. The deeper they go, the creepier it gets, from abandoned sewers to a secret base and then, downright Eldritch locales. The character can find flashing items and use them to find their way to lower floors. Almost everything they can look at will elicit a comment on their part. This game focuses far more on narrative and setting an ambiance than on difficulty, but that’s to its benefit. Plus, there are many comedic moments from the character’s quips.

Next week: A full-length review!

Quick Review: Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York

Oh hey, nice coincidence covering this game in October.

I went for the artist. Didn't even know he was gay.
As an outsider, I'll say, I do appreciate VtM having
decent LGBTQ+ representation, and general diversity.

Developed by Draw Distance, published by Dear Villagers, and released on December 11th, 2019, Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York is set in the universe of the Vampire: The Masquerade RPG. I’m not too knowledgeable with most tabletop game universes, including this one, so I’m learning and discovering that world as the game progresses. This is a visual novel, so there’s little “game” to speak of, aside from getting to choose how some interactions go and the order in which to do the quests.

Feels like I'm  being kidnapped by Vampire John Wick.

You pick one of three protagonists – they have preset names, but you can change them. A good chunk of the visual novel remains the same, but elements will differ, such as the inciting incident and specific personal elements. The three are [Eric], a hot-blooded Asian American; [Amanda], a businesswoman; and [Lamar], a gay African American artist. One way or another, they are bitten by a stranger and transformed into a vampire (a kindred, as the secret society calls it). The character is then found and taken to the Camarilla, the leading caste of vampires in NYC, and forced into this new life. Not that they have a choice; it’s not like there’s a cure. You character is basically a dead person walking.

Again, not much of a choice. You can leave this room
undead, or dead dead.

The Camarilla have a strict set of rules regarding the Embrace (the act of turning someone into a vampire); if the act was not permitted by the Camarilla, final death (since vampires are already undead) for both the childe (the newly created vampire) and their sire (the one that transformed them). However, before your character is executed, they beg for mercy and are taken under the wing of Sophie Langley, a member of the Camarilla that advocates for this childe to stay and become a valuable member of the secret society.

Welp. Gotta pick someone to assault for blood.
Just gotta hope we don't run into another secret vampire here.

Your character will need to learn to control their thirst for blood (the Hunger). They’ll learn to hunt; they’ll have to keep themselves in check by feeding regularly, but never to the point of overfeeding, as both it and underfeeding have dire consequences. Once the character is settled into this unsettling new life, they’ll be told by Sophie to assemble a team, a “Coterie”; basically, go out and make friends. Her suggestions involve four vampires from other clans; there’s 13 such clans, of varying levels of threat and trustworthiness. Create your friend group, prove your worth, learn about all the inner politics of this society. Still, through all this, one question will remain: Who turned the protagonist into a vampire… and why?

It takes a while before you finally have your entire
nights to yourself, with a lot of possible quests to take on.

You can worry about vampire nicknames later.

As you can see from this plot-heavy description, there’s a lot to take in. This game is more of an interactive story with moments where you can occasionally pick the course of the plot. Your choices do matter in the long run; it all depends on how you interact with the other characters. The story is set over a specific number of nights, one that makes it impossible to recruit all four potential members of the Coterie in one playthrough; thus, you have an incentive to play through the game multiple times.

You will often need to use your character’s new abilities to turn events to your favor, but this may cause their Hunger to grow and they’ll need to suck blood from a prey – however, the chances you have for feeding are limited depending on the current scene and which options pop up. It’s limited to very specific points, with only your character’s first “hunt” being the one time they have freedom to choose a “victim”. It hardly comes up otherwise, aside from dialogue options that either close or open depending on whether they feel the Hunger or not.

Yep, I needed that dictionary to properly write some of the
paragraphs in this article. Hey, it served its purpose!

If this priest truly knew who he was talking to, our character
would be on the receiving end of a Vade Retro Satana.

You even have access to an in-game dictionary of terms specific to this world, since they add up over time. Once you can choose what you do each night, you get more freedom, with occasional quests adding themselves on top of your search for a Coterie. Some nights you’ll be able to pick two plotlines to follow, but usually you’ll have one mandatory plot event and then just one of your choosing. Hey, nights are short, and you can’t stay up till dawn. And, well, as soon as you finish one character’s story and begin a new one, you’ll notice just how similar all three end up being – you have some agency in what you can do, but everything builds up towards the same climax, even if the events leading up to it, and its resolution, can differ based on your choices.

This guy looks intense, but then again, most vampires do.
But don't worry, gathon is a good dude, if you can disregard
that he's basically a wizard doing blood magic.
Hey man, wanna join a Coterie?

That said, there were two DLCs added that I’m told diverge a lot more from the base game’s three scenarios. Personally? I might do one scenario and be satisfied with it. If you already like this TTRPG series, or are intrigued by it, I could see this as an interesting purchase, since it has a good story, and explains a lot for beginners.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York is available on Steam on sale for 3.99$ till the end of October!

Alright, gonna be back to regular-sized reviews soon enough – I might take a week off, these Quick Reviews took a lot out of me.

Exploring The itch.io Collection #2

I've already got three articles' worth of stuff from itch.io, so you know what, I think I'll get through them right away. Still very short games here, all requiring under 10 minutes to finish.

Experiences

One of my biggest issues with these itch.io articles, right
now, is how I keep having the reflex to say these games
are short. They still take under 10 minutes to finish
at the moment!

Good Morning Hon: A game that I believe was made on RPG Maker. The story of Ash, who lives in her apartment with her fiancée Eve. That morning, she cannot shake the feeling after getting up that something’s not quite right. Sweet, yet with a devastating twist. “Why do I feel like I’m forgetting something?”

Homing: A 3D game about how carrier pigeons always find their destination. The letter being sent is recited as we follow a pigeon on its journey towards the letter’s recipient. You can control the pigeon to fly left and right, but once you let go it will always course correct towards the goal. You can get new bits of text based on which blue buildings you fly over. Clever!

It may be low-poly, but it's still looking nice.

HubWorld: In first-person view, you travel around four hub “worlds” (hence the title) while accompanied by vaporwave-ish music. The worlds are dubbed Island, Forest, World and Sky, and moving around is all you can do. Want to see the next level? Just left-click, and you’re there. The game ends after the fourth level. This one kind of hurt my eyes after a moment, and the lack of interactivity with anything meant I didn’t feel a need to spend much time playing it.

This one is a classic, for a good reason!

The Majesty of Colors: I loved this one! You play as someone’s dream, in which they were one giant underwater creature with three eyes. You control its lone tentacle, and it becomes aware of the human world after grabbing a balloon. From there, you can choose to befriend humans, rescue people or toss fish into fishermen’s boats. Or you can be hostile, kill people by dragging them underwater, and see the armed response with bombs and torpedoes. I’m told this is a remake of a classic web game? This one has five possible endings depending on your choices, so although it can be finished in five minutes, there’s enough to discover by replaying and trying different avenues to make it worth coming back to.

I spot a light in the distance. Must be relevant.

What Happened To Survey Team 4?: A walking simulator in which your character is investigating the disappearance of a team in the wilderness. All you can do is follow the path. Occasionally, you can find data cards with text from those you’re looking for, or glowing balls that you (ironically) can’t use to light the way as the night falls. This game has a horror vibe to it and offers good ambiance. For a game allegedly made in less than a day’s worth of time, it’s not bad, but it is a little empty.

Equaboreal 12.21: Set at the Winter Solstice in a world of sentient plants (that somehow wear clothes… don’t ask), the village is worried as a coming shipment of light, their main source of nutrients, has gotten lost in the woods. Basic controls moving around, not a ton of gameplay to be had. Putting aside the slightly absurd tone, the story didn’t feel all that interesting. Still, its creator likes the project enough to have made additional chapters.

Self-care

Yeah, just a "look out the window while listening to
vaporwave" simulator.

…might just ditch this category if I fail to find enough games for it, and add it to Social reach instead.

VIRTUA BLINDS: Blinds simulator. Not blindness; blinds. Watch the skies change as the day comes and goes outside, turn on the lamp, get rid of the clutter of post-it notes on the desk, turn on the TV and its vaporwave music, and relax. That’s all. Not much else to it. It can be soothing, but chances are that unless you’re big on vaporwave you won’t give this one much of a chance beyond 5, maybe 10 minutes.

Social reach

Well, Mrs. Goldman, I didn't expect to meet you
at this point in time!

Conversations with Emma: Your character encounters in Toronto the ghost of Emma Goldman, a famous anarchist who conducted leftist activities in the U.S. The conversation veers into the issues of modern hyper-capitalism and how bad things have gotten. Despite having parts with apparent choices, none lead to different results, so I think that was a bit of a missed opportunity. Hey, at least it spreads awareness of a historical figure that’s seldom mentioned otherwise.

falling is not the same as dying: A story told through text about the struggles of being a Chinese teenaged girl who's into girls, presented from the point of view of that character, a student playing tennis at PE class. Particularly brutal is the commentary on the preference for parents to have boys rather than girls in Chinese culture, and the impacts of growing up as a girl with that baggage – even if said girl isn’t even growing up in China. That's before even factoring in the LGBTQ aspect.

In My Friend Carrie’s Car: A text-based game in which the protagonist is reflecting on her life dealing with eating disorders, OCD and depression, and how they affected her life through school and until now. You make choices by pressing the key of the first letter of the choice you want; you can “stay in the car”, or you can divert towards other thoughts to learn the full story. This one does hit, it shows the impacts of those issues, and some of the ways in which they impact life.

Shut up, anxiety!

1365: Made at the end of its creator’s time through high school, with the title reflecting the number of days spent in high school. And how a struggle with mental illnesses – mainly overbearing anxiety, which ends up working as a vessel for other issues such as dysmorphia, depression and suicidal ideation – made it a particularly tough couple years for them. It’s a tough subject, but the integration of mechanics into the story, such as being able to keep going even after what only looks like a Game Over, is especially clever.

Okay, Nic... try to think of a funny joke... no... not that...
fuck, that one's too dark... oh Hell no... neither... ...Nope,
every joke I wanna make will reference real-life events
and I'll hate myself for making it.

The Night Fisherman: This could be just a narrative, but considering all that’s going on right now, it feels so much more fitting here. The only controls are the mouse to go through dialogue, and the left/right arrows to change the camera angle. On English waters, you play the eponymous character, who is accosted by a shadowy boat led by someone in search of migrants passing the frontier in hiding. Unfortunately, your boat hides one such migrant under the tarp, a young child. And your choice inevitably boils down to handing the kid over to that racist monster, or keep protecting the child and get murdered for it. nICE. Very nICE. It’s tense, it’s scary, and… well, right now, it will hit really damn close to home for many people.

Plain games

And the end result is pretty, too!

Central Limit Theorem: A shmup in which you control the circle at the center of the screen. Enemies come from the edges, in three different patterns. Learn the pattern and shoot fast to beat them? Oh, it’s not so simple. Each enemy leaves a color trail behind them. If an enemy weaves through that trail, it learns that other enemy’s pattern. The challenge turns into fighting enemies that constantly evolve the longer you play. I got all the way to 55 kills, not bad for my first time. Very clever idea, though I don’t know if it could ever be expanded into something larger.

Looks cool, and I don't say that just because of the field
of ice we seem to be driving on.

Derpy Deep Drive: Drive your bus as far as possible into an endless(?) field of ice with obstacles. Everything is done with the mouse – both driving the bus and controlling the camera. When you hit an obstacle, you lose health, which is regained by driving without hitting anything. The further you go, the more common obstacles become. How far can you get? I got to 2,200m. This could make a fun minigame in a larger product.

Falling Skies: Feels like somebody’s first shmup. You control your ship, destroy enemy vessels gather power-ups, get better, go through an asteroid field, then beat up the boss. All over five levels, the total of which can be beaten in under 10 minutes. It’s not reinventing anything or being super creative, but it’s just fine for a quick shmup pick-me-up.

LAZA KNITEZ!!: A game that’s more interesting for its context than for its content. Play alone or with up to three friends, and control a knight in space that shoots lasers from its spear. Kill the other knights by shooting at or ramming into them. Solo Mode calculates your number of kills, while multiplayer is more about depleting every other knight’s health bar until only the winner stands. It’s fine as far as minigames go. Just don’t buy it at its current 100$ price tag (see link as to WHY it’s now at that price).

Dunno how to describe the look of that game/animation,
but I do know I like it.

Out The Window: a car trip sim: A game about a child watching the world through the window of a car. You have an “imaginary friend” which you make jump over obstacles. If you get a good score by keeping a streak going, you earn tokens, which can be spent on snacks in gas stations. It looks cute, and dips into that odd, shared experience we’ve all had as kids imagining stuff in the world outside during long trips. This one’s sweet.

No doggo shall escape my petting hand!!

Pet The Pup At The Party: Your social batteries are running dry so you fall back on your old tricks of seeking the nearest dog and petting it instead of doing small talk. You explore the procedurally generated houses, looking for the good boi or good girl. You can look for little “Arf”s on the screen or listen to guess where those sounds are coming from. You start with a 2-minute timer that replenishes by 30 seconds at each puppy petted. There are more than 52 dogs to meet! I liked that one, it’s got a very funny tone and it’s quite challenging if you get lost easily!

Guppy: Play as a little guppy looking for flies to eat. You don’t have a ton of control in your motions, alternating between the Left and Right keys (or A and D) to move around. Find flies and eat them, then hide from predators. Repeat, go for a high score. This game looks relaxing but gets quite tense at moments. I think there may also be a few secrets and scenes to look for.

Making a moon was easier than I thought. Just a click.
Also, wow, that'Ms a funky planet.

Petty Puny Planet: Play God! Here’s a brand-new planet, now add something new to it. After every decision, you rest for 100 years. How does the world change on each cycle? Do you lead them its inhabitants to wealth? Do you advance them to the point of leaving? Do you lose them all to natural disasters? Or do you take a fantastic twist to things, ending into a Lord of the Rings-style world at best, a zombie apocalypse at worst? So many possible endings. This one was fun!

The crowd is growing, better not disappoint all these
folks. Just focus! ...if the game lets you.

Stage Fright: An odd mix of rhythm and horror, you play the piano in front of an audience, using the S/D/F and J/K/L keys. However, your character is dealing with intense performance panic, and so your playthrough of each song (there’s only 4) will change depending on how well you perform. Doing badly? The screen will blur or flip upside-down. At its worst, you can expect a jump scare. But if you do well, you may see your audience in the room grow. Decent idea on paper, but the screen effects make it harder to learn a song you may already be struggling with, not to mention you need great coordination and an eye on both sides of the screen. No way to tell which notes are to be hit at the same time, either.

Stealth Fishing: You’re fishing in a marine theme park tank to rescue fish. The owners, obviously, don’t want you there. Steer the boat left and right with Z/X, control your hook with the arrows. A hooked fish will fight as you pull it up; you can let go of a fish by pressing Space. You can’t let your boat or hook be spotted by the searchlights – instant game over! You get points for staying alive, 10 for fishing out coins, and 25 or 50 for a fish. Can you survive all the way to 1000 points? It’s gonna be tough.

Stay tuned, there's one more of these coming up next Friday as buffer while I work on actual, larger reviews.

Quick Review: Last Word

Ooh, another RPG Maker game playing with expectations!

Looks like it's missing a room. Or twelve.

Made by Twelve Tiles, published by KOMODO and released on Steam on May 8th, 2015, Last Word combines a visual novel and an RPG. This story takes place long ago in the fictional country of St. Lauden. You play Mrs. Whitty Gawship, a photographer invited alongside several aristocrats to a manor owned by linguistics professor Chet Chatters. The man plans to unveil his newest invention, a one-way transmitter, and test it in the guests' presence. There are stories going around involving every person at the party, and it becomes your task to untangle these dynamics and figure out the greater picture, even if it means dueling every guest in heated debates. Needless to say, Chatters has an agenda of his own...

There's a reason that talk about most topics
is labeled "gossip" in the chat menu.

Whitty collects “topics of conversation” by talking to the guests, learning more about this world and the backstories. And it’s high society, so everyone’s life is messy, they’re just good at hiding it. The topics you discover “level up” as you find new twists, with each having thoughts about the development. The game plays with the arrows and Z, X and C; C is the action button, X is the Cancel button and game menu button. Z lets you open the “topics” menu and change Whitty’s subject of conversation. The same menu keeps track of progress at the latest level of a conversation, showing what you've discussed, with whom, at that level.

Talking is a free option. Discourse, however...

The sprites are colored silhouettes and everything happens in one place, giving the game a Clue-like feel. Discussing with guests on specific topics and interacting with décor elements can lead to “special events”. These grant Whitty extra “stored EXP”, the game’s currency, which can be spent at the house servant for new skills to use in “battle”, or on the cat first seen in the study for new topics and perks. The skills require “Bows” obtained by advancing the story and discovering secrets, though you can also buy some from the cat.

That cat’s really got everything.

Sometimes, it's best to save Tact. Other times...

Combat, AKA "Discourse", is a whole other ballgame. The conversation is displayed as a bar at the bottom of the screen, with a gauge at the center; if you push it all the way to the right, you win, but if the opponent pushes it all the way to the left, you lose. There are three types of arguments (Disruptive, Submissive and Aggressive), which come in three flavors (Subtle, Normal, Overt). A Disruptive argument gives Power, which is spent with a Submissive argument on the next turn to obtain Tact. Then, Tact is spent when delivering Aggressive statements, which push the meter a lot further towards the opponent’s end of the scale.

I'm beyond return? That's bad. And it's tough
to make a Colonel go uncivilized, too. OK,
let's do rock-paper-scissors, circle beats star...

Discourse is further influenced through a rock-paper-scissors element. Both characters have a Composure bar with six nodes. When a character uses an argument that wins the rock-paper-scissors game on what the opponent last said, the opponent loses a Composure point, which means they’re getting heated up. Aggressive statements made against someone who’s lost a lot of composure push the gauge even further towards their end.

At the end of a “Discourse”, you earn both EXP and Stored EXP. Levels determine the starting point of the Discourse; it’s closer to your end if your level is lower than the opponent's, and vice versa.

It’s a complicated system to figure out on your own. There are some early tutorials, but the system would have benefited from being explained in even greater depth. The Skills you can purchase with Stored EXP further alter the mechanics. Most characters have skills of their own, too...

The Seymore Discourses function more like
puzzles within the game's combat system than
"battles" proper, and some are TOUGH!

Of course an elderly judge would have a lot of
experience Discoursing. Boasting (yes, that's his
name) won't accept a Discourse with you
until you're around Level 25. Quite a ways in!

I’ll always applaud RPG Maker games that do something new with the software; this one ups the ante by being something I’ve never seen before, period. The visual novel aspect is great on its own, its only weakness being that all characters have only one pose and expression. An engaging story, lots of worldbuilding, clever twists, and enough information to let you solve the mystery by yourself. Discourse is one of the most unique "combat" ideas I’ve ever seen, with surprising depth and complexity. The game also includes a few side-quests to look for, such as challenge battles involving the shy Master Seymore, who got to the manor at the same time as Whitty.

Although, it’s not perfect; come Chapter 5, level and money grinding becomes necessary, and though it encourages looking for more secrets, it stops everything in its tracks. Although I learned to appreciate them, both systems aren’t intuitive; it takes a moment to figure out how to switch between topics of gossip, and Discourse still feels difficult to grasp even once you think you understand it all. It takes a lot of getting used to, but it's worth it in the end.

Yeah, you should give this unambiguously unique experience a try!

Last Word is available on Steam for 9.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Narcissu 1st and 2nd

No, I’m not crying, you’re crying.

A creation of stage-nana published by Sekai Project and released on May 15th, 2007, Narcissu 1st and 2nd is a visual novel that veers far more on the “novel” side. It’s hardly interactive; outside of selecting the new chapter when that screen comes up, there’s nothing here but the story and its progression, with some voice acting.

The size of the pictures, within that big void
of black... it feels a tad claustrophobic.

700km? A decent road trip challenge for
some people who've never seen the world.

This product is a double pack, hence the name. Narcissu 1st is about an unnamed 20yo boy with a disease that’s never stated clearly in the story, all but left to die at the “seventh floor” of the local hospital. The hopeless cases, who will go back and forth between that floor and home, just waiting for the inevitable. Which never takes too long to come. During one of those boring days, the boy gets acquainted with a girl staying there as well, Setsumi Sakura, also suffering from an unstated disease, who seems disinterested in everything and resigned to accept her fate and basically stop living. Dying here, or dying at home… Faced with those depressing clear-cut choices, the protagonist gets a crazy idea for a third option, which Setsumi ends up joining on. Impromptu road trip? Impromptu road trip.

Narcissu 2nd is actually a prequel to the first, and over double the length, for a total of about 6 hours for both. Its protagonist is Himeko, originally a volunteer at the seventh floor, who also winds up diagnosed with a deadly disease and transferred there. She meets Setsumi, making the girl the tying element between the two Sides, and a friendship develops there as well. Road trip? Road trip. (Yeah, don’t ask me to explain either of these.)

It's sad when a hospital room seems like the
preferable option.

Lots of "Un." "Not particularly." and other
repeated phrases here.

Both games are available in both voiced and unvoiced versions, and with two translations – those were done by separate translators, so there are small differences between them. The presentation is minimalist; we rarely get to see the characters on the theater-wide strip above the text, and we instead get a lot of visuals of places without characters in them. The intention was to let the players fill in with their imagination (though we do get a few glimpses of the protagonists from time to time). The voice acting is still in the original Japanese, and is a lot more present in the second story than in the first. Both pack a fair number of emotional punches; it is, after all, a story of dying people, many of whom have already learned to cope with their situation. That said, the story is not kind to the health system in Japan, though as you can imagine, in a story that’s tied this closely to it, commentary on the subject was inevitable. Long story short, if the story does hook you in, then it will tug at your heartstrings more than just a few times.

Narcissu 1st and 2nd is available for free on Steam. If you were touched by the story, you might also like the 10th anniversary anthology project that includes a number of extra stories as DLCs and a lot of bonuses.