A branching-path narrative horror RPG set in Vienna, Austria. Guide the Unnamed through the worst night of their life: Harass your neighbours. Debate with birds. Smoke to survive.
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Turn-based combat is god awful and the game knows it since it always reminds you it's better to leave so I don't even know why it's in here. The story has very ham-fisted themes with one-dimensional characters. Also, has randomly awful voice acting in some scenes?
Uno de mis juegos favoritos. Es increíble y no para de sorprender. Mensaje muy guay
awesome game, its focus on an intimate but oppressive setting and excellent atmosphere, plus some really cool mechanics make for a great game.
This review contains spoilers
First off: I made this game. This is not a review. It's more like an informal postmortem, or a self-critique with hindsight. If you want something more insightful and detailed, check elsewhere, I've made three posts of much more organised thoughts there.
Here, I'll just try and be as brief as I can: "An Outcry", like my first, never-released novel, was, in a lot of respects, a failure. It showed me the way to do a lot of things, either by throwing me head-first into the deep end, or by allowing me to learn from mistakes of others and myself.
It also taught me this: As a narrative designer, I am specialised in very specific things, and should not drift out of those territories without a seat belt on, or without expecting to severely crash.
This game was step one to a crispy kind of burn-out I'd never before experienced. I'm still reeling from that! Turns out wearing nearly every hat at least partially on a game-team will kill you a firey death!
Further, you will do an extremely spotty job of it in the process, too - there's some design-errors and failures to account for contingencies in this game that I shake my head at nowadays, but really, it was the best I could've done, then.
The refusal mechanic in dialogue is great (and I'm unhappy I can never use it again, now!! Gah!!), but there absolutely exists the oft-observed possibility of people not getting it, and the game not sufficiently meeting those folks halfway.
Smoking to save being possible anywhere in the game was also a terrible idea. There's a reason RE has ink ribbons as a finite resource and typewriters stationary in safe rooms. Professional and sufficient playtesting would have revealed that, but we didn't really have any - so this is how that'll stay.
Lastly- GOD. RPG Maker 2003 sucks for commercial games. If I'd had known that I would have as much time as I ended up actually having, I could've straight-up made this game in a more up-to-date engine instead. ...Well- Next time, then?
All of these issues will, of course, be addressed in the sequel.
Oh. Did I write that out loud?
Hehehe...
Here, I'll just try and be as brief as I can: "An Outcry", like my first, never-released novel, was, in a lot of respects, a failure. It showed me the way to do a lot of things, either by throwing me head-first into the deep end, or by allowing me to learn from mistakes of others and myself.
It also taught me this: As a narrative designer, I am specialised in very specific things, and should not drift out of those territories without a seat belt on, or without expecting to severely crash.
This game was step one to a crispy kind of burn-out I'd never before experienced. I'm still reeling from that! Turns out wearing nearly every hat at least partially on a game-team will kill you a firey death!
Further, you will do an extremely spotty job of it in the process, too - there's some design-errors and failures to account for contingencies in this game that I shake my head at nowadays, but really, it was the best I could've done, then.
The refusal mechanic in dialogue is great (and I'm unhappy I can never use it again, now!! Gah!!), but there absolutely exists the oft-observed possibility of people not getting it, and the game not sufficiently meeting those folks halfway.
Smoking to save being possible anywhere in the game was also a terrible idea. There's a reason RE has ink ribbons as a finite resource and typewriters stationary in safe rooms. Professional and sufficient playtesting would have revealed that, but we didn't really have any - so this is how that'll stay.
Lastly- GOD. RPG Maker 2003 sucks for commercial games. If I'd had known that I would have as much time as I ended up actually having, I could've straight-up made this game in a more up-to-date engine instead. ...Well- Next time, then?
All of these issues will, of course, be addressed in the sequel.
Oh. Did I write that out loud?
Hehehe...
Really enjoyed it for the most part, a sad but harsh true tale about living in the cusp of fascism. The writing is strong and despite being set in 2010s Austria, I feel familiarity with classic latinamerican literature I read in my youth. I had trouble with the more poetic and obscure language, but given that english is not my mother tongue, I don't feel qualified to comment on that further. The art was wonderful and I liked the gameplay's ties to the narrative.
As of right now I can't wrap my head around the more meta elements, particularly endings S and R, I mostly find them confusing and underbaked.
But at the end of the day I recommend this game, it's unique and worth your time if anything about it seems interesting.
As of right now I can't wrap my head around the more meta elements, particularly endings S and R, I mostly find them confusing and underbaked.
But at the end of the day I recommend this game, it's unique and worth your time if anything about it seems interesting.
one of the most unique and emotional games i've ever played in my life. i don't really want to get into it here but if you've never tried this before please do and with as little info as possible