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Number of Reviews: 6
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1-6 of 63 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Remember the friends you had in middle school?, March 8, 2023by Cerfeuil (*Teleports Behind You* Nothing Personnel, Kid) This game is peak nostalgia value. I spent so many hours on Neopets when I was younger. I mean, I came after they freshened up the UI, so the art was better than the janky nightmare-inducing art "Ruffians" uses, but it still felt like a blast from the past. Love the dedication to recreating a Neopets-esque interface, brought me back to the good old days. Stair even submits to a Neopian Times expy at one point, and I read those stories dedicatedly as a kid.
In general, playing this game really reminded of middle school. It hearkens back to the 2010s Internet and the things middle schoolers get up to on the Internet in their free time (read: the things I got up to on the Internet in my free time as a middle schooler), i.e. cringey roleplaying. The writing captures the earnest cringe people make fun of middle schoolers for, but because it's so earnest, instead of cringing it's easy to get caught up in how dang excited the main characters are to have epik battles with their epik ninja punching powahz!!!! This is wholesome 100 poggers content.
The voice acting and sound effects add a lot to it, makes everything feel so much more real. Rachel's voice acting is great, and the sound of the (Spoiler - click to show)abusive mother banging on the door was horrifying. Also, the ending song is fantastic. Felt like the credits scene from a movie. And seeing the kids grow up, from being in elementary school to applying to colleges and getting in, was sweet in a coming-of-age way.
I give this game a 5/5 because despite some minor quibbles with the dialogue (should the characters' typing styles be exactly the same for ten years? Maybe the earlier ones should be less coherent and the later ones moreso?), it reminded me perfectly of the shenanigans I got up to as a kid, especially the Neopets part. Also it felt bittersweet seeing Stair and Bee since they reminded me of friends I used to have. I drifted away from all of them, mostly due to changing schools and falling out of touch—though, and this is pretty personal—someone I was close to, but not close enough, who had a bad family, killed herself after we graduated high school. Playing through the game, as Stair, I couldn't stop thinking about her. Even the way Stair typed reminded me of her, she was one of the few people I knew who always ended her chat messages with punctuation. Maybe this isn't the best place to mention it, but at the same time, I don't know, I had to put it out there.
I don't know. Sorry.
I feel like many people have forged Internet relationships like Bee and Stair's, but they usually don't last as long due to being long-distance and founded on anonymity. Though I'm biased since that's been my experience. But this is a great depiction of the platonic Internet relationship, one where neither party loses interest or drifts away from Neopets and stops talking to the other. It's just sweet and mutually uplifting throughout the ten years. I didn't pursue romance with Bee, but appreciated that even if Stair gently pushes back their romantic overtures they can still remain good friends.
Playtime: about an hour.
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1 people found the following review helpful:
One of My New Favourites, December 30, 2022 To say I enjoyed "Lore Distance Relationship" almost feels like an understatement. After all, it's one of my new favourites. It's even tied for second on my list of all-time favourites. I absolutely loved the game.
It felt familiar and nostalgic. I've not been on a site quite like the one that was portrayed, and certainly not at such a young age. But I've spent much of my teen years on the writing/quiz site Quotev, and the game definitely reminded me of that.
The graphics were awesome. Really, just about all of the game was amazing. The only point of critique I could provide would be that the audio in one moment could use a bit of work. Otherwise, absolutely amazing! I even just about forgot I was playing a game at some points because I was so into it.
I really loved the characters. They felt so real. I didn’t realize how much I felt for them until the game had ended. And, I was kind of dazed, really emotional, and already missing them.
Conclusion: Lore Distance Relationship is absolutely awesome!
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Affecting even if you've never had a Neopet , December 9, 2020I am I think of the last generation to grow up without deep social relationships in online spaces being a thing, so there’s something strange to me about seeing a game like Lore Distance Relationship offer an affectionate overview of a decade’s worth of living, as mediated through an online game, complete with the slow improvement of graphics and eventual introduction of a phone client (the something that is a bit strange is realizing that I am old). While I don’t have any experience of the specific nostalgic notes LDR hits, I can certainly recognize how resonant its touchstones will be for lots of folks, and there’s more than enough craft here to make it accessible and enjoyable even for folks outside that audience.
This is a relatively long game that plays out almost entirely within the chat function of an online game about magic dogs that fight monsters – I gather it’s meant to riff off of Neopets – and it’s almost entirely in dialogue, since 99% of the time you’re choosing different options for the main character to use to reply to Bee, their best friend in the game. As the blurb says, the game takes you through ten years in its hour-long playtime, and while there are some fun grace-notes around how the game updates in that time, the overwhelming focus is on how the central relationship shifts as the two main characters go from age 8 to 18.
There are heavy themes discussed – there’s a prominent trigger warning about domestic abuse – but not, thankfully, depicted: you engage with the aftermath, as the main character and Bee grapple with how to understand what’s happening and hopefully chart a path free. Similarly, I was a bit wary since the blurb flags that there’s some sexual exploration – a tricky thing to manage in any circumstance, but especially so when everyone’s underage for most of the play time – but the game strikes a nice balance of making clear what the characters are up to without getting at all explicit or too uncomfortable.
Indeed, if anything, despite all the traumatic themes and plot points on offer, LDR felt pleasant, and ultimately comforting to me. Bee is a supportive friend (Spoiler - click to show)(and if you go that direction, romantic partner), and his dad, who gets called in occasionally to offer advice, is invariably respectful and helps set good boundaries (re-reading this review, I'm now not sure whether Bee's pronouns are ever specifically stated, but their magic dog is male so I thought of Bee as "him" even though that's a dumb rubric). The main character likewise has a loving sister who’s there when things get tough. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely painful and sad moments (Spoiler - click to show) (reflecting on why the main character chose “StaircaseHaven14” as their username was one of those for me – and both characters suffer some bullying and abuse for their marginalized identities, since the main character is trans and Bee has a disability), but the sweetness of the central relationship ultimately won out.
Partially this may be due to the choices I took – there are a lot of these on offer, as you’re prompted for input after every couple lines of chat, across ten different vignettes separated by a year each. And while most of them are more about emphasizing different aspects of the main character’s personality – especially around self-esteem and their ability to open up to Bee – I get the sense that your choices can add up in significant ways (Spoiler - click to show)(most obviously in how and whether you pursue romance with Bee). I mostly made choices that had the main character trusting Bee and trying to engage with their feelings, rather than bottling them up, which wound up working out really well – possibly the vibe is different if other choices are made.
I think either way, LDR would be effective, though. A good part of the credit here goes to the writing, which treats the situation, and the tender-age characters, with the nuance they require. The dialogue sounds exactly like I’d expect these characters to sound, with shifts over the time and clear differentiation between the two primary voices (the maybe-a-bit-uptight main character uses proper capitalization and punctuation pretty much from the start, but under Bee’s influence eventually loosens up). There’s the very occasional false note – at one point, the eight-year-old protagonist replies to a question with a diffident “Maybe. We’ll see.” – and maybe a few small anachronisms, but LDR overwhelming succeeds in creating a plausible milieu.
Where LDR maybe errs in going too far in creating plausibility is the jankiness of the presentation. Obviously the messy-but-improving-over-time graphics are both a gag in themselves, and a way to mark the passage of time, but I found some of the art actively off-putting (one of those dog-aliens will haunt my nightmares). You primarily move the story forward by clicking a large reload icon, and it’s occasionally replaced by a large picture of a keyboard or a blown-up mouse cursor. But the game window is usually at the top, so need to do a bunch of scrolling, and it took me a while to realize that the graphics are completely static and none of the displayed interface elements actually do anything. There’s also some timed text that I found sometimes went too slow, and sometimes too fast. After I played for 15 minutes, I figured out how the game wanted me to play it, and again, it’s clear that much of this is an intentional throwback to how much the early-mid internet kind of sucked, but it was still a bit annoying.
Anyway, though, this one is all about the relationship between these two characters, which it charts very well. There are lots of touches that I think a specific target audience will especially enjoy, but LDR’s resonance goes well beyond just those folks by offering a sympathetic, well-written depiction of a challenging but ultimately hopeful adolescence.
4 of
4 people found the following review helpful:
Tore my heart in two and then put it back together, December 3, 2020In this choice-based work you play as a kid who, in order to escape a bad situation at home, goes to a Neopets-like website called Ruffians and makes a friend named BusyAsABee. The game plays out over the course of 11 chapters and 11 years (you start as an eight-year-old and get one year older each chapter). The game primarily plays out through the chat function on the Ruffians website, though in the interludes there is some conversation with your sister (including voice-overs). Over the years you have the choice of how to develop your friendship (or romance) with Bee and how much to reveal about your troubled home life.
The middle part of this game is rough, with the player-character experiencing (Spoiler - click to show)maternal abuse and ridicule at school. Some of the scenes and conversations are heart-breaking. But thankfully, in the end there is still hope and things are looking up. Depending on how warm you've been in your conversations with Bee, the ending scenes can be beautiful in how much trust and love has grown between the two of you. I played through the game twice to try some of the other options. It is possible to get an aborted game if you don't want to open up to Bee at all in the beginning, and some of the best stuff is cut if you are more aloof towards the end. So in this game, as in life, it seems best to open yourself up to those that love you to get the best experience.
I thought this game did many things well, including a realistic portrayal of a now decades-old messaging system, and the speech patterns, cadence and abbreviations of kids chatting with each other online from elementary school age through college. The images of the Ruffians website were also great to help set the mood. I also thought the voice acting was very strong and really added something to the game. I loved the character of Rachel and her relationship with the player character. Finally, I had a huge smile break out across my face when the game ended with some music, a la the credits scene in a movie. It was a great song for the occasion and I let it play to the end.
The few things that I didn't like were the parts of the game where the audio looped until a part of a scene finished. Purposefully, the audio is intrusive to match what is happening in the scene. But the more it repeated the harder it became to focus on the text. I'd recommend the audio fading out or stopping after 2-3 loops. Also, sometimes the text and graphics were so big that I had to scroll to find the right place to click to continue the story, and I think that could be polished a bit to make it more compact.
Well worth your time!
5 of
5 people found the following review helpful:
Made me nostalgic for experiences I never had, October 28, 2020Immediately after starting the game, I was reminded of Secret Little Haven, another game about internet-mediated relationships, self-discovery, and fandom. I was a little disappointed that this game did not have the richly implemented fake internet GUI. Lore Distance Relationships is more of a visual novel, with interactivity only when selecting dialogue options in chat scenes, and only screenshots of the Ruffians website. Nevertheless, the game's story carried it through. It was consistently engaging, and I came to care for the characters. I really appreciated the uplifting ending.
The story follows the protagonist’s life, from age 8, in 2001, to age 17, in 2010, with each year being a new chapter. It takes place mostly as text conversations on Ruffians, a neopets-like website, between the protagonist StaircaseHaven14, and BusyAsABee, another user. They start out by roleplaying as their Ruffians, and eventually develop a deep friendship and might even fall in love as they grow up. The conversations felt authentic to me for the most part; maybe some of the early chats were too precocious for 9 or 10-year-olds, but overall it felt right. They felt like real people and real friends. The role-play segments were great. I liked that both characters had their typing quirks; Bee typed using all lower-case with messy punctuation and emojis, while Stair used mostly correct capitalization and punctuation and generally only used emoji in response to Bee.
In terms of structure, it seems mostly linear, but there are a lot of choices where you can choose for Stair to avoid or ignore Bee. I don’t know if these choices end up affecting the outcome, or if there are “bad ends” where Stair and Bee never get together. There are also some timed pauses, which I usually find annoying, but here, I feel like they worked in conveying the uncertainty and nervousness experienced by the characters. There is sound and music; the sound consists mostly of keyboard and mouse sounds, while music plays during the roleplay segments. The sound effects and some of the graphics changed as technology advanced from 2001 to 2010. This was a cool effect but I got a burst of anxiety when I heard the skype sound.
Not necessarily a major spoiler, but: (Spoiler - click to show)Another big similarity with Secret Little Haven is that the protagonist is a trans girl, with an abusive parent, who gradually discovers her identity over the course of the story. It was fairly obvious from the start that the plot was going in this direction, but I still enjoyed the buildup. We don’t see as much of the protagonist’s life and background in this game, but there’s a lot we can infer from her conversations. By contrast, we don't know as much about Bee. She just seems so incredibly nice with an incredibly loving and nice father; it almost seems unreal when contrasted with Stair.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the story. I was on Neopets during the game's timeline but never got into the community. Now I wish I had...
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2 people found the following review helpful:
Two teenagers trying to connect through an old digital game, October 5, 2020So I tested this game for the competition.
Like Accelerate earlier, this choice-based game has a lot of visual and audio detail.
When I first tested it, I was struck by the cute neopets-esque game graphics that it contains. But playing the full version, I was blown away by the voice acting. Great audio quality, believable voice, better than most podcasts I’ve listened to. Very impressive, and helps make the animations more cinematic.
I had a bit of trouble with my eagerness causing me to scroll quickly, while many of the animations reload the page. But that was minor.
The story is a long-term (as in 10 year) relationship with a friend on Neopets. You both experience marginalization by your classmates and you struggle with your relationship with your parents. There are hints throughout the game, but it’s later revealed that a major theme of this game is .
The writing is sharp and on-point; the chat feels real to me, and the pacing is good. Bez has put a lot of work into improving games and pushing boundaries over the last few years and it’s really paid off.
Check the content warnings for the game ahead of time.
+Polish: The animations could be smoother, but that's a small thing when the voice and art are so good.
+Interactivity: I've played it several different ways and it feels fairly responsive.
+Descriptiveness: I feel like I'm there when I read it.
+Emotional impact: Definitely feel it. On my 'be mean to stairs but not so much the game ends early' run I felt sick in my stomach when being mean.
+Would I play again? I've played it three times, so yeah.
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