I purchased this to get a VN with some naughty sex scenes. I got what I expected but also so much more. The game is at core a VN telling a story about a character and his experiences at college. During the VN scenes you will have to make a lot of choices which will not only change the route that you are taking they will also change the decisions you will be given in the future. You form your character and you will have to live with your consequences,. The game does a great job in letting you feel those consequences over several episodes and even over both seasons. The story itself has interesting and believable characters in it you will start to care for more than you like. The more you get connected to some of those the harder the choices wil be you'll have to make. After a VN section a so called "Free Roam" scene will follow in which you can move through locations just like in a classic point and click adventure. You will get some tasks to perform and you can search for collectibles, talk to people or play mini games to collect money. You can also browse through the ingame social media app or watch unlocked scenes and collectibles by using your ingame phone. This phone serves as menu and will get upgraded during the story as well. The social media app will also reflect your choices, show you the reaction from other characters inside the game and gives you the opportunity to make comments. Never before in a videogame was I so immersed in the world it created. The story itself has twists and turns, a lot of emotions and crucial decisions and also a lot of sex scenes which deserve this name. However sex is not the same with every girl - some are afraid, some lack experience, some simply go for it ... another thing that makes this feel so real. The Soundtrack of this game is out of this world and fits the game like a glove. Highly recommended if you are not afraid of explicit sex scenes - even more if you like those.
Yes, this is an experience, a sort of interactive movie and not a game - but even on their own store page Freebird never claimed to be anything but that. So I completely fail to understand the complaint. We all know what we are into when buying a Freebird game, don't we? And if we don't like such experiences we simply won't buy them. Still there is a target group for these kind of games , too and I am a part of it. I cried like crazy at the end of To The Moon and also really enjoyed the specials and Finding Paradise. Bird story is nothing as epic or memorable but still nice imo. When I watched the trailer of Impostor Factory I hoped and expected to see the main characters Eva and Neill from the prvious games again and so I was a little bit disappointed when this was not the case. After a while however I liked the new characters as well. The story starts slow, gets really confusing and after a big WTF moment it leads to a section that feels a bit like To The Moon ... then it gets different again until the big bang that makes everything clear ... well, almost everything. The story again is humorous, emotional, touching and deeply humane. It also asks a lot of philosophical questions so I would say it has something for everybody., even though Neill and Eva are missing and as another reviewer stated, the replacements long cat and ricebot don't stand a chance to replace them. (Here I originally complained about the bad German translation of the game (which reduced a star for me) but since they fixed it I change my review to 5 starts rating and no complaint :))
I don't even own the game and normally I wouldn't have written anything in the review section in such a case. However since GOG announced to delete certain (those apparently not following the review guidelines - no detailed explanation which they menat) reviews I decided to write one anyway (hopefully according to their guidelines) as a countermeasure. As it has been said again and again, this game is not DRM-Free and should not be here at all. A skeleton of the game is playable without an online connection but a big part isn't. If IOI should decide to turn off the servers (something even GOG did when they dropped the GOG Downloader support, so it's not that unlikely) you will be left with that skeleton. That is the reason why nobody who really cares for DRM-Free and the freedom of gaming that comes along with it should buy this game (since it means to support DRM'd or partly DRM'd games on GOG). If you want to stay offline (or if IOI decided to shut down servers) you pay full price for only a fraction of the game and if you want to enjoy the full game and have no problems with being online you could as well pay less and buy it elsewhere because the main difference between GOG and other stores (and for me the main reason to prefer GOG) is that other stores sell DRM'd games. So if GOG does the same now - what's the point? So instead of buying we should not buy and if puchased already we should refund it (GOG already stated that this will be possible if you are unsatisfied with this game) to show GOG and IOI what we really want. This might even bring us a true DRM-Free version of this game in the end - but without losing sales for this game this won't happen and we might see more of such examples in the future.
I followed the development of this game since its kickstarter and the demo it included. When I played the demo it was a relaxing and a really cute and beautiful experience with some nice and creative puzzles on top. So I expected a bit more of the same from the full game. Boy was I wrong. While the game still is a beautiful and cute experience it also has become extremely challenging (at least for me) in several places and the creativity the devs had when developing the different portal mechanics simply blew me away. Luckily it is up to you how you want to play the game. You will have the opportunity to collect missing villagers, scattered throughout the game and if you want to collect every missing villager in the game you should prepare for some really challenging areas and several moments of "how the hell am I supposed to do this?". However if you don't like such challenges you could just follow the main path leaving out those villagers you consider to be too hard to get and you will still be able to finish the game ... but you might miss out some of the lore then because some of the lore is connected directly to the villagers. Each villager holds a piece of the story and if you collect everything you will be able to read the full story. Having collected the full story also will provide a path to a different ending ... so there really is an incentive to find every (or at least most) of those villagers. The different portals inside of the game really offer a lot of variety and with each new portal you will have to find different ways to solve the many puzzles the game throws at you. Everything in the game is beautiful: the artstyle, the animations, the setting, the parallax scrolling, the lightning, the sound effects and the soundtrack - pure perfection. It is also worth mentioning that you can rebind keys as well as controller buttons - so you can set the controls the way you like them. Five stars with every one of them well deserved!
This is why indie games are so good. They are creative and are trying something new. This one for me is the pinnacle of creativity. No matter what you think you will get in this ... well ... whatever ist is, because it certainly is no game ... you can be sure that you will be surprised. The experience is funny, dramatic. moving and exciting with so many different kind of none gameplay. It is well made and has voice over that shows true passion. I would love to say more about what I jutst experienced for 6 hours but this would destroy the fun. So if you don't mind that the ride won't take much longer than 6-7 hours then buy it and be prepared for everything.
I've just finished this amazing game/VN and my answer would be "no". Each location, each poster, the story, the characters, the dialogues, the soundtrack and of course the rain ... if you are even remotely a fan of the film noir genre you won't be disappointed. Of course this still is a VN at heart but unlike the usual VN it does not feel this way. It offers a few mini games and puzzles, gives you the opportunity to chose which hotspots you want to click on first or which dialogue you want to hear next ... last but not least there are the interrogation and conclusion scenes and the very few action scenes in which you have to shoot (don't worry - you can always retry if you fail). Then there is the fact that depending on the dialogues you chose you might unlock additional codex entrys (background of the universe the game plays in) and you can also collect some collectibles more or less hidden inside the scenes. However, even if this would just be the usual VN it would still be great because of the unusual artwork, the great characters and most of all the voice over they must have stripped right out of some noir movie since it is so spot on. Along with the atmosphere the mystery itself also unfolds nicely and the solution might surprise some. If the devs should decide to do a sequel I will definitely buy it on release. Highly recommended for every fan of the genre.
