“Your letter has interested me strangely. Please write to me again.”

To be honest, Dear Devere is too good to be a free-to-play novel. This is a romance mystery story, it's set in Scotland and told through a letter correspondence. And there is even voice acting (for the main characters)!

The plot begins when Angela Bard just wants to vent and writes a letter to nowhere. But suddenly someone replies to her — someone mysterious called Devere. Apparently he lives in a forest and it seems he has magic powers... wait, what? You follow their relationship, and my god, lots of things happen, I don't want to spoil anything. Even though the heroes meet some trouble along the way, the story is very wholesome.

There are no sprites of the characters, but it's definitely not a bad thing, and it actually suits the story in the best way possible. The novel is still visually pleasing — I've loved the designs of the letters Angela and Devere sent to each other.

I'll be definitely rereading this in the future! Sometimes you just need a short story with a sweet aftertaste, and Dear Devere is a perfect example of this kind.

Mega hits like Celeste or Undertale paint a much friendlier picture of the indie scene than what really exists. For every game that turns into a classic, there’s at least ten more that are just as good, but won’t sell more than a hundred copies. Then, for each of those, there are probably thousands that have some niche appeal, but won’t sell more than ten units. Even a free game like Dear Devere, which has a nice story, some fun artwork, and a price tag of zero dollars, has an all-time peak of three concurrent players. The team went to the effort of giving it quality voice acting and accessibility features like a dyslexic-friendly font, only to then release it for free, fully realizing their work probably wouldn’t be rewarded with becoming an indie darling. This is the first review of it on Backloggd, and it’s doubtlessly in the company of many other unknown greats that don’t have one at all. The point I want to make here isn’t that everyone should necessarily go out and play this one game, even if it is a nice short little romance that can be enjoyed in under an hour, it’s to try and be the sort of hero who seeks out these unknown games and lets the passion that went into them find ground with a new audience. It could be this game, it could be one I’ve never heard of, and even if you don't always love what you pick out, appreciating art that was created entirely for its own sake is always worthwhile.

Speaking of which, this is another game that was recommended to me on my dedicated list, by user AlexaLily, who is exactly the sort of hero I’m talking about. She’s always playing and reviewing games like these which deserve attention, and has been a supporter (enabler is perhaps the better word) of my reviews not just since day 1, but years before day 1, when I was just occasionally posting stuff in a pastebin from Twitter. It proves the point that one person showing a little appreciation can make an impact, whether that be for indie games or dumb little reviews.