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She Sees red has an interesting story locked away in it somewhere but it’s annoying to try to find it. I like it when games branch the story based on choices where it changes your journey to the end and the end itself but the way that She Sees Red is setup I have to play through multiple times making different combos of choices just to see more of the main story. This means 20-30 minutes each time just to get an extra crumb of the story. It would have been much better if the game would let you load the game from each choice or allow you manual saves to cut down on the back tracking. It does have a skip feature but I think it was broken for me because any scene where I tried to skip it didn’t do anything. It didn’t give an error, it just did nothing. I did like that the game allowed you to choose the original Russian voices with subtitles as I don’t enjoy media with dubbing. I find it just takes me out of it and looks weird, this was no exception. The acting was decent but to be fair the actors weren’t given a lot to work with dialogue wise. The game also seemed to jump around a lot as to events that happened at different times and it just gave things a spastic feel that I didn’t like. I played She Sees Red on Linux using Proton. It never crashed but it did have other issues. There were these strange pauses where the game would just pause until I hit the escape key to bring up the menu and then again to go back to the game. They happened more frequently as the story went on. The English subtitles also had one spelling error. There was one setting for resolution. You could also save and exit the game bringing you back to the point next time you loaded. The game ran great even on Intel onboard graphics. My System: Intel i5-12600K | 32GB DDR4-3200 CL16 | Intel UHD 770 | Mesa 23.0.4 | Western Digital Black SN850X 2TB | Trisquel 11.0.1 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.9.1-gnu | Proton 9.0-1 | MSI G2730QPF 2560*1440 @ 165hz
Kathy Rain has a lot going for it. The story starts off pretty interesting and only gets more so. The music is well done. The puzzles are largely great. There are a few downsides though. While the story starts of well by the end it does leave several questions open and I found didn’t do a very good job explaining just what was going on. Several interesting side plots are also brought up but not resolved. I also didn’t like how the majority of responses from Kathy are just hostile and impolite. It didn’t make me like the character much. I will single out the padlock puzzle, the IT puzzle, and the briefcase puzzle as my favourites. I didn’t like the poem puzzle much. Overall I liked that most of the puzzles made sense. I wasn’t a huge fan of the graphics but then again I’m not much of a fan of pixel graphics. There is very little detail on much of the game. I get that it’s meant to be a throw back to the old days but some pixel games do manage to make things look a little better than this although most are on par. The voice acting was very well done. I played Kathy Rain on Linux using Steam’s Proton. It never crashed during game play but sometimes the game wouldn’t launch. It wouldn’t give me an error message but just wouldn't open. I had to validate the files, of which usually one was bad and had to be downloaded, and then restart Steam. The game would also crash if I set the Nearest Neighbour Filter setting to anything over 6x. Once the game could launch I had zero issues. There is just the Nearest Neighbour Filter for graphical options. You can’t turn the subtitles off. You can manually save any time except for when making a dialogue choice and I didn’t notice any limit for how many save slots there are. The game had a frame rate cap of 40 FPS. It managed to stay at a constant 40 FPS even on my Intel UHD 770 onboard GPU so at least performance was good. I’m not sure if my technical issues were related to Proton or if they would have happened on Windows as well.
There are some good elements to LustyVerse but just as much bad. I found at least four different endings with possibly more and yet I didn’t love any of them. Some were better than others but none were really ideal to me. I think the problem lay in me not liking the main character much and not being given an opportunity to really make many meaningful changes to him. He’s the same vain, short sighted, borderline scumbag at the end as he is at the beginning. It’s not surprising that in many of the endings things don’t work out ideally for him. Speaking of choices there was a decent amount but there was a noticeable dry stretch of over an hour in chapter one where there are none at all. The worst part is I can think of many spots where I would have liked a way to branch the story as I didn’t like where it went. Overall though I did enjoy many of the characters and most of the second half of the game got really interesting. I wish that some of the characters that got introduced had more of a role later in the game such as Patricia and Felicity but they just seem to get dropped for me. The animations are well done although the lewd scenes could have used more choice and variety. The models and object detail were well done as well. I hated the AI like voice that narrated the game but luckily the volume is adjustable for it and I just turned it off. The music was a bit repetitive but it’s volume is also adjustable. I played LustyVerse on Linux. It never crashed but I noticed at least a dozen spelling errors which is a crazy high amount compared to most visual novels I play. The game also lacked the ability to skip text or to go back. You can manually save whenever you want and there are fifty four save sots. I paid $10.16 CAD for it and was able to see four of the endings in eight hours and thirty eight minutes. There are better visual novels out there as well as worse. The price and amount of content keeps the value in a good place.
A Night at the Watermill was impressive for a few reasons. First is that the developers managed to make a full fledged point and click game in Ren'Py which is usually used for visual novels. It now has the best of both worlds where it has the traditional puzzle and inventory aspects of a point and click game combined with the dialogue choices and story branching of a visual novel. The puzzles themselves are fairly well done save for one where you make a pen. I found logic in the other puzzles but not that one. The atmosphere, story, music, and visuals were all well done. I would have liked to see more done with the story as each of the endings were decent but all left me wanting more as they don't provide a ton of closure. Aside from the endings the story did a good job of revealing things and does a good job of building tension. I played A Night at the Watermill on Linux. It never crashed and I didn't notice any spelling errors. You can manually save whenever you want and there are nine save slots. The game ran just fine even on Intel onboard graphics. Game Engine: Ren'Py 8.1.1.23060707 Game Version Played: 1.0.794 Disk Space Used: 639 MB Input Used: Keyboard and Mouse CPU Usage: 1-6 % RAM Usage: 4.3-6.1 GB If you enjoy point and click games that focus more on narrative than puzzles then I would recommend A Night at the Watermill. The puzzles are good overall but the story is the better reason to play it. I finished the game in forty eight minutes and paid $5.39 CAD for it so i'd say the value is good. I really would like to see what future projects Neon Tales does. If they can build on this then I think they have a bright future. My Score: 8/10 My System: Intel i5-12600K | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | Intel UHD 770 | Mesa 23.0.4 | Western Digital Black SN850 500GB | Trisquel 11 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.7.8-gnu
Week Two of The Fetish Locator does a pretty good job building on the first week. You get to know the characters more which is good. I liked where things went with Stacey; AmRose; and Daisy but I wish Nora was included more for those who made her angry. I'm still stuck with Lydia though. I don't mind the character but let's just say i'm not as into her as the MC is and wish there was more options to not side with her as much although one can choose to not show as much affection. There was an interesting story line introduced with a judge but while I felt it was fun I saw it as an opportunity to take the MC down an optional dark path where it really only amounted to a cop out. I get why the developer probably did it as if they did what i asked it would probably cause a huge storm brought down on them by some people. I also wish that more was revealed about the app itself. It felt like the majority of the week was people talking about what to do about it without actually doing much. In any case I am excited about Week Three so the game did it's job. The lewd scenes are just as good with the animation quality and I felt like there was more variety and choice with the scenes than last week. One thing I did notice though was less choice with the fetishes themselves. Where in the first week pretty much every one gave you the option to reject them in the second week I only saw that once or twice. I played Week Two on Linux. The game never crashed and I didn't notice any spelling errors or bugs. The import of the previous week's saves could have been handled better. It is required to have Week One installed and the saves in their proper spot for week two to see them. Not the biggest deal but I would have liked it had the game just allowed me to point to a folder I had them backed up in. I ended up having to reinstall the first week and recopy the saves back to the original place. This may be a limitation of the Ren'Py engine. You can save any time you want.
Fetish Locator does a good job of incorporating a wide variety of kinks as well as structuring things in a way that they’re all optional without losing out on the actual story. You close down avenues of making points in the app but you also have plenty of other opportunities to make enough to get by. The story itself was decent. There is a plot involving the app and makes you wonder just who it’s creators are but in my opinion it was one of the less interesting aspects of the story. There were several other characters I was far more interested in. As with many visual novels like Fetish Locator I was the least interested in the woman that the main character was supposed to be pursuing. You can obviously pursue other women as well but had I been able to opt out of Lydia like I could the others I would have. The animations are pretty good compared to the competition but I would have liked more choice in how certain lewd scenes play out. The voice acting was a weird hybrid model that many visual novels use. A small portion of the dialogue is voice acted for certain people. I find is jarring this way because you never know what parts will have voice and which won’t. There was also a small issue where some parts of dialogue or noises made by certain characters were in different accents. For instance when saying certain things the character would sound North American but others would sounds British. None of my nitpicks are big and none detracted from my enjoyment. I played Week One of The Fetish Locator on Linux. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any spelling errors or bugs. You can save any time you want and I think there were infinite save slots as they never seemed to run out. My System: Intel i5-12600K | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | Intel UHD 770 | Trisquel 11 |
The Fall Part 2 does a lot to improve over the first game but it also does a lot worse. It adds in combat in a couple different variations and both were enjoyable to me. You have some gunplay when playing as Arid going through the virtual network world and some hand to hand combat as One. The game adds new characters that Arid takes over in over to achieve certain goals and they were distinct and interesting. The voice acting was also well done across the board. I was going to knock the game in having faux choices early on but it actually gets explained later on so I gave that a pass. The story was overall pretty decent. It starts a bit convoluted and slow but gets better. The game includes an optional video that explains the events to the first game which is a nice touch. The last act of the game really annoyed me though. It included a lot of backtracking between hosts and really highlighted the game’s biggest fault in my eyes: lack of explanation. The game would introduce various mechanics but do very little to explain them or nothing at all. I didn’t even know I could change perspectives or hosts later in the game and that is required in order to proceed and solve puzzles. I can respect not wanting to hold the player’s hand but there is a middle ground between that and what The Fall Part 2 did. The puzzles in the last act were also a little more annoying. I dislike when I just have to start clicking on everything randomly instead of having a solution make sense. This is especially bad with a certain puzzle where you have to do things in a very specific order but are given no hints at all as to what that is. The graphics were decent overall. The game did a good job of having distinct looking worlds for the three hosts you encounter. The lighting and shadows were the best part. I did find the aiming kind of clunky as well. There was an option to adjust the sensitivity but for the life of me I could not figure out how to edit it.
Attentat 1942 is certainly a unique game. There are elements of visual novels; puzzle games; adventure games; as well as going from FMV to comic panels and back again. For the most part it really blends nicely. You basically interview people in FMV form and try to piece together info about your grandfather’s past. Sometimes the game will switch to a comic panel form when you are reliving their stories and you will have a variety of tasks to do such as hide items; plan escape routes; choose what to get rid of before the Gestapo come knocking; and more. One thing I didn’t like was that you pretty much have to replay certain interviews to get all of the info. I was hoping that you would only have to if you failed certain parts but overall I don’t see how you can do some of them in one go. You can skip parts so you don’t have to redo the whole thing but I was still mildly annoyed. Also I got the feeling during some of the puzzle parts that you could screw up and still get to proceed. I got this feeling based on some of the text making it sound like you made a poor choice but made out unscathed anyway. If true it makes the choices pointless as there is no negative consequences. The game’s strong suit was the history though. It did a fantastic job of blending fictional characters with real history as well as finding ways to weave facts into the game play. For instance my favourite part was a point where you had to choose what to dispose of in a characters desk as he was worried the Gestapo would be visiting soon. Whether you choose to keep an item or get rid of it the game informs you of whether that item was problematic or not and why. You also earn coins which can be sued to redo interviews but I never could figure out why you earned coins or didn’t nor could I figure out why you earned a certain amount for some things but wildly different amounts for others. Overall I think the coin system could have been removed without any effect.
Sally Face was all over the map. For the first 4 episodes I was really liking the narrative, save for a few bits, and not too keen on the game play. For the 5th episode the narrative went off the rails but they introduced some combat into the game play which I really enjoyed except for one aspect. The parts of the game play I didn’t like in the first four episodes was how many times the game wanted me to pretty much have to search room by room to find things without giving much of a hint as to where they were. This was made worse by how some items in the game, like doors or objects, would show on the screen that they could be interacted with but others wouldn’t. This meant that sometimes I would be running all over Addison apartments trying to find something that I may not even notice I could interact with. Some of the puzzles were well thought out though and could be solved with logic. In the fifth episode the game introduces a variety of combat such as a sword; guitar attacks; and other such things. They each feel unique to each other and work well. My only complaint for them was that the game had one hit kill enemies so you had to be perfect to progress. I was really liking the atmosphere of the game in the first four episodes. It had a really dark and gloomy part to it that I loved. This really got ratcheted up in episode four which was, story wise, one of my favorites. I wish the game took more time to explain the back story to Sal as I felt like there was a lot left unexplored to that aspect. I also think that in the fifth episode the game got a little to grandiose story wise and tried to make things too big and world encompassing for the game’s own good. The game’s visuals were as all over the map as the rest but in a good way. The game incorporated cartoon styles; polygonal styles; claymation; and more and they all looked great and worked well. The music was also fantastic. The save system was also terrible. The game auto saves but doesn’t tell you when.
Epistory had a great start and had me loving it’s game play; it’s story; and it’s visual style. By the end though it managed to fizzle out in various ways but still was a good game. The game play is surprisingly engaging. The voice acting was very well done and the story starts off as the telling of a girl’s tale and you learning more about their life as they remember more and more. The game handles exploration well and you need to not only find reveal points to be able to see more of the map but have enough XP to unlock them. You also gain points to use to unlock skills to help tailor the game to your liking. That being said I never fell short and there are always enough ways to gain XP a;lthough later on I maxed out all of my skills with over an hour left in the game. The difficulty curve was a big issue. I started off on the “insane” difficulty and for about the next five hours the game was what I would call challenging but fair. I died a bit but I always felt like I could tweak my strategy of what powers to use; which enemies I target first; etc. During and after the mining level however the nests I encountered forced me to reduce the difficulty bit by bit until by the end I was at the “easiest” difficulty level. Not only that but I was having a tough time advancing even on that lowest level. There were no more skills I could upgrade and strategies can only be tweaked so much. The puzzles you have to solve were fun and interesting to a point although a tad over done for some. For instance figuring out how to make three windmills spin at once was a good puzzle the first time but mundane by the fourth or fifth time. One thing I will also mention is that I found the game sometimes didn’t do a good job figuring out which word I was starting to spell if multiple enemies on screen had a similar word and it would act as if I wasn’t spelling it correctly because I was trying to target another enemy. The game ends with little explanation or wrapping up of the plot.