Reviews by manonamora
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A Winter Away is a high-quality short visual novel about a Duckling moving to a foreign region to follow her dream, exchanging letters with the ageing mother she feels guilty having left behind.
Between the dialogue, the letters received, and the ones composed, you get an emotional story exploring the hardships and fulfilments of moving to a different place - I so could relate to this, having moved quite a bit myself… It’s hard! People you love now live far away, and you can’t just drop in for a chat or a hug. You don’t get to be there for the big moments. The things you are used to do or have might not be possible. And it can feel pretty alienating if you are not fluent in the language. But it can be so fulfilling, too. Meeting new people, learning new things, finding passions… With the limited length, the game managed to encapsulate all this.
The game itself is so beautifully done, I can’t believe it was made in just 5 DAYS. It is so polished in its presentation, with the SFX used, the different illustrations and sprites… it reminded me a bit of children’s book in the style. It’s really lovely!
An Exercise in Emotional Honesty is a short conversation between you and (I think) the author of the game, where the latter opens up to ongoing struggles with their health and creative drives. Made in Twine, the interface and use of music emulates a light Visual Novel genre, where the sprite changes along with the conversation, smiling at you or looking away.
There is a very comforting and sweet vibe to the piece as a whole, and the warmth of sitting down with an old friend to catch up. And the discussion itself were quite lovely, opening up this way about the want (nay, need) to create but being unable to. Really nice.
The Impossible Conversation is, like its name suggest, an impossible conversation, or at least one that will probably not lead to a happy ending in its current form. You (an unnamed person) is having a conversation is your (probably former) best-friend following an unexplained conflict. Your choices in where you bring the conversation forward should influence how your relationship with the person go.
Due to the nature of the conversation, the writing is heartbreaking and painful. The end of relationships are hard, especially when people have strong bonds with one another, and it is the more painful when both parties have hurt one another (though, in this case, the hurt seems more one-sided). The bareness of the interface (keeping to the base Harlowe UI) and interactivity (click to show the next words) does add to the struggle and dreariness of the situation.
Come back soon, Oddie is a short linear Visual Novel, formatted mainly as a monologue from an unnamed soul, waiting for their friend, Oddie. The soul, shown as a shadow in a field of yellow flower (symbolising friendship), awaits the death of his friend, so they can be once more reunited - though he still wishes for Oddie to live a long and happy life until then.
Aside from its gorgeous interface and calming music, this game also includes voices, narrating the text with an emotional tone, balancing longing and grief. It is quite touching, the way the words are said aloud. It was really lovely.
I also didn’t expect Oddie’s actual name…
Marooned is a short dialogue piece made in Ink between two castaways on an island, waiting to be rescued… though your castaway-partner has other ideas. The story starts around the 6-month mark, and shows snippets of (frustrating/ed) conversations of a handful of days. Through your choices, you can reach different endings - I’ve found two so far.
The writing takes the less is more approach, going right to the absolute bare of dialogues to describe the situation the characters are in, the frustration one feels towards the other, their wants and wish. I quite enjoyed both endings, giving different vibes to the story (though (Spoiler - click to show)the rescuing being a choice removed from the original PC’s actions feels a bit strange).
Honestly, it’s a wonder they were still alive by the time the game started.
How Do You Like Your Pain? is a short grim visual novel made in Ren’Py about a demon looking for death, or at the very least learning what death feels like. Contracting a painful disease, which he inflicted on himself willingly, the demon must now endure a painful operations to remove it, lest the pain would make him wish for actual death. The procedure is done by another demon, who finds amusement in the situation.
While the game is part of the Art Without Blood series, knowledge of the other entries is not required, the game being enjoyable as is. There are 4 endings in this game, through my choices, I found 2.
Formatted only as a dialogue (even the choices), the two characters get into a dance of quips and flirting. The writing circles between dark violence and borderline eroticism in the way it interacts with the flesh. The implication of pain, whether it happens during the game or prior to the story unfolding, looking for it before being forced to endure it as so to reduce it is masochistic but really grasping. The pursuit of knowledge about death backfiring, making you wish for or afraid of death…
It is uncomfortable but drawing to the point you can’t take your eyes away from the screen (ironic considering the procedure).
I don’t want to talk about it. is an emotional short Ink game about grief and connections. Set in a therapy office, you meet with a patient who recently lost someone and is reluctantly going through grief counselling. It is heartbreaking but also beautiful, in the way the story unfolds, as you ask the patient more questions and try to help them talk about the person they lost and what they are struggling with the most.
A beautifully made and executed short entry.
Who Stole My Sausages is a quirky little mystery made in Twine, centred around the theft of a package of sausages in a communal fridge of a student house. With your background in psychology, you are chosen as the mandated detective. With its light-hearted tone, you end up encountering a lot of sausage-related puns (like when you choose your name at the start, PI Porkins).
The mechanic of the game is fairly simple: interview your housemates, find flaws in their rebuttal and confront them about it, and… solve the mystery. You will need quite a bit of back and forth between the different NPCs to unlock the true ending (any wrong reveal will send you back right into the action).
The interface is pretty cool, as it was made to look like a Visual Novel, with sprites of the different NPCs, separate backgrounds for each location, and cool background music to match. While it is getting more common to see Twine games with a custom interface, it is not every day that you see a Visual Novel made in Twine.
The story itself relies on twists and half-truth, with a shocking ending that no one could have predicted (wink wink if you check the suspects list before making up your mind…). It works as intended.
Though, I do have a bit of a quip when it comes to the overused trope of (Spoiler - click to show)the vegetarian who will still eat meat in secret here and there because *shrugging* why have moral convictions…
One last thing that would have been helpful is a way to review the clues found, especially when it comes to counter-argue with the housemate. You get quite a bit of information from each NPC...
A Gaul village mystery, April 28, 2024 Le chaudron d’Anaritium is an interactive mystery made in Open Adventure (the author and system is one), set in a Gaul village at the dusk of a dreary winter. You play as Isara, a bard-in-training tasked to find a missing artefact before the gods turn on the village. Will you find the artefact and its thief? and figure out the why and the how?
On the Open Adventure platform, you are introduced to the mystery at hand, and the different paths you can investigate, whether it be visiting locations or talking to other characters. As you find more clues, new paths may be open to you. Along with two large maps, some paths are also illustrated, in a watercoloured comic-style.
Every path taken is listed one below the other, in a way that you can re-read them with ease. The engine also lets you know when you’ve already visited a section, and only puts forward on the main page the most interesting location for you to visit.
The prose is quite lovely as well, bringing to life an atmospheric setting, filled with mysticism and legends.
And when you believe you’ve solved the mystery, you can fill in your answers to the different questions in a text box, before how correct you were and get the epilogue. But, because of how the game is set up, you’ll never truly be wrong at the end. The website collects the answer and gives you the solution right away, regardless of how close you were to the truth. So while the mystery was interesting, and fairly simple to figure out, I wished there would be a bit of a consequence to who you accuse of the crime or explain how you think things happened.
Insatiable Jeunesse is a short "storylet"-based interactive story, where you incarnate some sort of creature needing to hunt down people to keep young. You come across potential victims, judge the situation (will you be satiated? is it dangerous), before you get to choose whether to eat or move on. But, watch out, if you're caught or starve, it's game over!
There are (as far as I could tell) three endings: the good one, dying of hunger, and getting caught because you were too suspicious.
The blurb describes itself as an unbalanced prototype, which is pretty on point, as you end up going through the different potential victims pretty quickly and it is *very* easy to die (or I could just be unlucky). Quite a good deal of randomisation, in the situation text (variation in victims, feeding and danger levels) and in the consequences of your action (how suspicious you are before you are stopped). The game requires quite the balancing act to win.
I am sure it is possible to win, but I have still not been able to do so...
On the game page, the author described their plan for a future update with more narration and locations, and a more balanced gameplay. I hope I get to play this update one day!
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