My Lovely Daughter

While the game has beautifully stylized artwork, a lovely soundtrack, and effective sound effects, the sheer bleakness of the game and the far too grinding nature of the gameplay reduce the experience to both an emotionally and mentally numbing time. In My Lovely Daughter you play the amnesiac alchemist Faust. In an attempt to revive your daughter (the 'Lovely Daughter' of the title) you summon, level, and brutally murder homunculi in order to harvest their emotional energy. The homunculi are also your 'daughters' (or 'sons' if you choose the sex flipped option) and they look up to you as a father, which makes the ease and brutality with which Faust murders them offputting. The Devs are open to the fact that this is a rather blatant allegory of child abuse, and its the first text on the screen warning you to this fact. That Faust is completely without redeeming features, with the exception of two non-true endings, makes it hard to find enjoyment in his actions. This isn't a man summoning non-sentient entities to work and dispose of, but homunculi with personalities, emotions and voices that scream in horror at their demises. Still, I would have rate the game higher if the gameplay arc wasn't less of a grind. It's essentially a management game where you send your homunculi out to work, earning money and levelling up before you harvest them and attempt to get the right balance to successfully resurrect your daughter's soul... or go for one of the other endings. Unfortunately, once you get one of the endings, it then wipes your save game and you get to start over from scratch with a fresh save file with no carry over. This turns what should have been a short game into one that can take a couple of dozen hours just to work back up to the 'point where you meet the ending requirements. All up, if you're curious about it, just be aware of the content and that it is incredibly grindy to get the endings.

I really like the art style of this game. Music is simple but atmospheric and story while simple was better than I expected. That being said after some time game loop becomes repetitive, once you get your businnes going and unlock all the book bits the part of the game taking place in time isn't really fun to repeat. At that point only interesting things were different outcomes of rituals but since those can only be performed every 4 weeks I was starting to feel a bit frustrated. It took me 6,5h to reach main ending and personally I would like this game more if it was more 4,5-5h instead.

The gameplay is a terrible slog and a grind. It has little planning or agency, and is basically choose a useful combination, then wait. For hundreds of slow turns and unskippable animations. Graphics and music are solid, plot is thin but not bad. I'm not sure what the intent was, but it certainly meant something to the creators, but it didn't make any sense to me. The shocking stuff was shocking once, then it was just a mechanic. I really don't recommend the game, but it was made with care. It's just not fun, and games need to be fun.

I was bolcked at quarter an hour, and I had to kill the game as there was no exit