I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this game: the pixel art is done very well, the environments are very detailed, the characters look distinct and original. The soundtrack is not intrusive and helps create a good ambiance. Unfortunately, rest of the game is mediocre. Here are the main flaws for me: * Story. First couple of chapters were pretty intriguing, The team did a lot of worldbuilding and were actively building up the characters. I expected some interesting developments or some twists in the end, but close to it the story's culmination was pretty banal and disappointing. Additionally, the pacing is poor. 75% of the game you get tension building up, but then the latter part is just text dump after text dump explaining everything. And all the building up of the world and characters didn't matter at all * Dialogue. They are alright, but sometimes it felt like they were written by a kid * Spelling. A lot of mistakes in the English localization Another thing was the gameplay. A lot of it was solving basic puzzles, e.g. place different sized gears on pegs to connect a gear chain; rotate some tiles with patterns to connect beginning and the end; look at a tangle of wires and follow them to correctly determine each wire's beginning and the end. It got old pretty fast. And my minor pet peeve are the controls. Your character walks around slowly, but you can hold a button to make them run. As a result I had to play with that button held all the time, because there is no reason to not run. Overall it's an alright game strongly ruined by lackluster story pacing, dialogues and mistakes, which should be the main strength of such story-driven games. It's alright for a single playthrough, I'd recommend getting it with a discount.
Our Life is a VN about a person growing in a peaceful beach town with their friends and families. It's done using RenPy engine, so gameplay-wise everything is smooth. The art style is sharp and consistent. The music fits the mood of the game well. Now with that out of the way I'll talk about the main part, the story. Disclaimer: I've completed the free version without any DLCs and I'm not going to play them. The game's story tells of 4 periods in life of the main character, each period is basically a couple of slice of life type of small stories. There's no tension, no build-up to anything. The characters seems like they came out from slice-of-life animes like Azumanga Daioh or K-On. Everyone is always happy and is very friendly, and whenever someone's upset, it gets resolved lightning fast. In this regard the story is a bit boring. However the overarching line of childhood friends growing up and growing apart is done well, I enjoyed it. The choices, and there are a lot, seem to matter, even some of the small ones, though I felt like a lot of them, like "what kind of crepe do I get" were there just as a fluff. Those choices do actually change the following text, but they don't really affect the story. The story is very heavy on LGBT and gender themes. As a regular dude I just found it annoying, but people for whom these topics are close will probably enjoy those options. Overall the main impression I've got from this game is that it feels like these fanfics that girls like to write where they "ship" characters with each other. Everyone likes and wants to marry everyone, everyone is happy, all ends well. I admit this kind of narrative isn't for me, but I do think this is a good VN overall. If you like this kind of narrative, or if gender/LGBT issues are close to your heart, it's 5 stars from me. Otherwise it's 4, because it's still more or less solid and is free.
If you like oldschoold pixel-art adventure games, this one should be great for you to spend an evening on. It has a good pixel-art artstyle and a decent soundtrack. The puzzles are reasonable. I give it three stars because of the story. The game seems to reference Metal Gear Solid a bit too heavily. The past/future feature mentioned in the description is overstated: you play most of the game in the past and have a short segment when you play in the future. The game seems to have quite a bad way of using its assets: there are a couple of locations with voiced characters that are not used to progress the story at all which seems like wasted resources that could've been used to make other aspects better. Overall I enjoyed this game for a night, but I don't think I'll come back to it.
It's a very short voodoo and pirate-themed adventure game. I finished it in ~2 hours. The game has a story that doesn't really matter, oldschool 3d art and animations, simple puzzles, voice acting and attemps at humorous dialogue. Ultimately the reason I didn't enjoy the game is that it's obviously heavily oriented towards kids. This shows in the game's difficulty, in voice acting and the dialogues. It's like watching a cartoon from your childhood: you may have found it delightful when you were a kid, but now it is just bland. I would recommend this game only to hardcore adventure game fans who want to experience as much of the genre as they can. For adults this game will be boring and forgettable, and for kids there are better options out there in 2022.
The Gateway Trilogy are three Flash point-and-click adventure games in an isometric perspective. Generally they follow the same overarching design: you have separate rooms with mostly self-contained puzzles. By progressing through rooms you advance the plot. There is an inventory system, you can combine items and use them on the environment, but that's a very small part of the game. The art style of the games is minimalistic and is consistent among the three parts. Because it's made using the old Flash technology I recommend setting the quality to "low" and turning off special effects in the settings menu, because otherwise the game experience will be choppy and unpleasant. The sound design is simple but fitting. Music sits in the background and doesn't attract much attention. Now to the games! The Gateway 1 It's the first installment and it is easily seen if you play all the three games. The puzzles are less elaborate, the characters don't speak, the story is non-existant IMO, and it's the shortest of the games. The Gateway 2 It felt like an improvement over The Gateway 1 in all aspects: the puzzles were more interesting, the characters got dialogues and we got a story that managed to tie in all the puzzles in a nice manner. I found this one to be the best out of three. The Gateway 3 This one tried to be an ending to the story we mainly saw in TG2, but it didn't feel very convincing and just felt like some psychedelic experience. The puzzles are a downgrade: instead of them being a natural part of the story now we have sets of puzzles following different rules, e.g. set of puzzles where you have to light all tiles in a room by walking on them or a set of puzzles where you have to color shapes in a certain way. All in all, I would recommend getting it on sale. I completed the whole trilogy in 2-3 hours. However I must add that I would highly recommend the next game by this developer, the Dream Machine. It has a similar trippy feel, but is much more elaborate.
The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day is a point-and-click adventure dealing where you play as a robot living in a post-human world. The story's premise is pretty interesting. It deals with the questions of humanity's extinction and of robots becoming the new "humans". The graphics are great, the soundtrack, though repetitive at times, is alright as well. Here's where the game falls flat: * It's too short and ends on a cliffhanger. I finished the game in 3 hours and didn't expect it to end when it did. Plus, honestly, the pacing of the story in these 3 hours was far from ideal as well * Generic puzzles. Game gives you a task like "fix the generator", and all you have to do is some kind of a generic puzzle game to fix it. This was acceptable in 90s and early 20s, but nowadays it feels just lazy * Unnecessary game mechanics. E.g. the game has a driving / racing sequence. It is not fun at all and I fail to see what purpose it serves other than making the game maybe more console-friendly? In any case, it's better to have nothing than half-assed mechanics like that I recommend to buy it on sale for people who are fans of point-and-click adventure game genre. In other cases it isn't really worth it.
Order of the Thorne is a short game made with AGS engine about a bard on a quest to find the queen of the Fairie Kingdom. Game design is solid. Most puzzles were pretty logical and, when you have no idea what to do and resort to trial and error method, there are not many items you can have at any given time, so that isn't very irritating. The gimmick of this game is that you can play songs that affect characters around you. However it is very annoying that every time you play a song you have to listen to its jingle without the ability to skip it. When you're doing trial and error it gets annoying really quick and adds tedium to the game. The story is basic fantasy with a lot of feel good vibes. No twists and turns. The characters are also pretty simple and one-dimensional. Sad thing is that they ended with a plan to make a sequel, but, as I understand, it didn't happen unfortunately. However the story of this particular game is pretty much complete in itself and sequel not having been made doesn't really hurt it. The artstyle is what you'd expect from AGS games - similar to oldschool 2d adventure games. Overall everything was pretty. One downside is that, unfortunately, there's some pixel hunting required in the game, and the interactive objects sometimes don't stand out too well. One time, I had to consult a walkthrough after inspecting every available location just to find out I didn't notice a pretty small item on a table. Music is pretty nice, but I was a bit confused by electric guitar being present in one track that is used during the intro and during the game's culmination. The game is also pretty short, can be completed in 2-3 hours. Overall it's a nice way to spend an evening if you like point-and-click adventure games, but nothing too spectacular.
When I bought the game I thought the description was weird having no words. After completing the game I think it actually perfectly describes the game. You play as ElecHead, move from screen to screen and solve puzzles using basic platforming and your two abilities. First one is that your head generates an electrical current that runs through everything you touch, second one is the ability to launch your head a short distance forwards or upwards. There is no fighting, there is no story, there is no text to read. Difficulty progression is good. Later puzzles took me more time to figure them out, but I wasn't stuck on any for longer than a couple of minutes. All the puzzles are reasonable, I didn't encounter any nonsense. For people who like it, there are secrets hidden throughout the levels. I didn't bother collecting them all, so I don't know what the reward is. You can judge the artstyle from the screenshots. Soundtrack matches the visuals (chiptune). Overall I definitely recommend it if you like puzzle games. Was perfect for me to have an evening of relaxed gaming.
