Echo is a visual novel with such impressive and rarely seen depth that delivers a truly touching and personal experience, one that reads like a heart-to-heart from the writer to the reader. It is a shame, therefore, that The Smoke Room feels antithetical to Echo, never seeking to go beyond the surface level and instead only acting as a shallow puddle far removed from what made Echo so beloved.
What stands as a prequel to a story playing on the diversion of the overabundance of romance VNs of its time, The Smoke Room instead takes a nosedive into the opposite direction and ditches any sort of narrative cohesion and purpose in order to provide an erotica of supposedly epic proportions. Just witnessed a murder? Why not try 69! Barely escaped a monster in the woods? What better time than a threesome!
Understandably, there is to be sex in a story based around a prostitute, but these scenes are never written to be anything more than a pleasuring reward for anyone who stuck around with a plot that uses many words to say nothing of interest. It speaks for itself that I have nothing to say about the "horror" in this VN; It's hard to be afraid of or have any reaction to anything when you know that nothing you read matters and thus you have no reason to be invested in the characters or world.
I tried to give TSR leeway over the years for being led by a different writer than Echo, but ultimately anything to be found in this VN only serves to push you forward to the erotica, and as a result I was pushed away from reading it any further and regretted what I had already read.
What stands as a prequel to a story playing on the diversion of the overabundance of romance VNs of its time, The Smoke Room instead takes a nosedive into the opposite direction and ditches any sort of narrative cohesion and purpose in order to provide an erotica of supposedly epic proportions. Just witnessed a murder? Why not try 69! Barely escaped a monster in the woods? What better time than a threesome!
Understandably, there is to be sex in a story based around a prostitute, but these scenes are never written to be anything more than a pleasuring reward for anyone who stuck around with a plot that uses many words to say nothing of interest. It speaks for itself that I have nothing to say about the "horror" in this VN; It's hard to be afraid of or have any reaction to anything when you know that nothing you read matters and thus you have no reason to be invested in the characters or world.
I tried to give TSR leeway over the years for being led by a different writer than Echo, but ultimately anything to be found in this VN only serves to push you forward to the erotica, and as a result I was pushed away from reading it any further and regretted what I had already read.
Nikolai Krol
Pretty gay, and pretty good! A lot more nuanced than I expected from it and a lot less concise than I wanted it to be. I really appreciate the dedication towards preserving the horror elements that precede this in Echo while still trying to tackle some of the more oppressive themes of homophobia that something set in this time period in this part of the country might have. I obviously don't have a lot of historical context for things were, I'm mostly just going off of what I know and what I feel, more than anything.
I'm excited to see this all the way through! I think it's well written and characterized, but unfortunately some of the routes drag on for a bit too long and one of them especially starts making turns towards the melodramatic. It's kinda disappointing with that route specifically because it's one that I think has the most potential, for sure. Regardless of that, my curiosity into The Smoke Room has been sated, and I will definitely revisit this when there's more substantial updates or when there's a full release, like my original plan was.
Love me some gay furries!
I'm excited to see this all the way through! I think it's well written and characterized, but unfortunately some of the routes drag on for a bit too long and one of them especially starts making turns towards the melodramatic. It's kinda disappointing with that route specifically because it's one that I think has the most potential, for sure. Regardless of that, my curiosity into The Smoke Room has been sated, and I will definitely revisit this when there's more substantial updates or when there's a full release, like my original plan was.
Love me some gay furries!
It's taking quite a while for this prequel to set up its mysteries, maybe even longer than the original Echo, but I'm excited to see where it goes.
this shit is ass
stoat
This review contains spoilers
Yao best comrade.
(This log is for Build 24 of the game, it's still not complete and hence why I'm not giving this a rating or marking it as complete; things are bound to change long after I've written this)
The Smoke Room has a lot of baggage going in, being a prequel to Echo, a VN I played recently that I hold in extremely high regard and care a lot about. I'll just say that if you're taking a look at this game, you really should play Echo beforehand as parts of The Smoke Room are clearly written with the expectation that you already know about the town's secrets and mysteries, as well as the family history of several characters from Echo. While I say that however, The Smoke Room at the moment feels like a wholly different product with very different goals and approach to its writing, and they're ones that I honestly have really mixed feelings on. I'll fully admit to being disappointed that for being a prequel expanding upon stuff only hinted at in Echo, I was expecting something at least as grim and sinister as that game was, if not more so when considering the move backwards in time to 1915. What I had praised Echo for, being willing to go against trope expectations for the genre (and the likely playerbase who would've even been interested in playing it: furries) and delve into serious subject matters with genuine honesty and care, is not really as present in The Smoke Room. The Smoke Room has its grim and scary moments, but they're few and far between and does give into its tropey conventions and expectations.
A part of it I should have seen coming when considering the protagonist here, Samuel Ayers, is immediately introduced as a male prostitute. It's a core part of his identity and background, and his job is something that's relevant across the entire game and all four routes; it's the reason why he either already knows or meets the four other main cast members. Sex is an important and constant matter across the entire game, which is such a drastic difference compared to Echo which purposefully played with those conventions and didn't quite give in as easily with simple wish fulfillment with its cast of characters. I'd like to think I'm not a prude and can appreciate good looking dudes (which TSR is admittedly full of if that's your cup of tea), but it wasn't the reason I loved Echo so much and frankly it was anything but that. All four routes don't just have one sex scene, but rather multiple and I honestly just began to start skimming through most of them at a certain point because I just wasn't interested. They feel like fan service for the sake of having it save for a select few which are at least either genuinely heartfelt, or are eyebrow raising on purpose for plot reasons. I wouldn't mind so many of them if the game had something to say or make a point of like Echo did, or at least fully gave in knowing what it was.
But The Smoke Room just in general feels like a story that doesn't exactly have a clear idea of where it's going or what it wants to do so far. It wants to be a prequel to Echo and all of the baggage and expectations that comes with, it wants to have actual romance with its main cast, it wants to have supernatural creepy elements, it wants to be murder mystery, it wants to be a political thriller; it wants to be so many things at once but just hasn't exactly found the right balance it needed to make it all work cohesively, not to mention the issues with tone trying to make all of those genres work together. Several moments in William's route has you witnessing some incredibly harrowing things, but then the next moment William's notebook has goofy doodles that completely deflate the moment along with unfitting cartoonish music that only raises more questions (why does the town sheriff both have the time to make these doodles, and why like the way they are if he's meant to be a serious professional?). So much of the supernatural horror stuff that made Echo so interesting are weirdly absent for most of the routes, save for very brief single scenes like in William or Murdoch's routes, but then Cliff's route has it prevalent across the entirety of his route (or at least what's available right now). What's the point of giving Samuel such a significant personal hurdle to get over, the fact that even though it was in self-defense, he murders somebody within the first 10-20 minutes of the game and haunts him across every route, if every route the characters immediately forgive him and the game just kind of shrugs it off and not really bring it up again?
It's difficult to really put down exactly what's so off about The Smoke Room for me. There's a lot that TSR does get right and drastically improves upon compared to its predecessor, notably with just general production quality across the board. The art is not only much more consistent in style, but higher in quality and with more unique CGs for specific scenes. The music feels a lot less free stock-y than Echo did, with some of the more somber and tense tracks being outstanding when they come up in-game. More of the dialogue choices in TSR, while we don't have exactly know of how many of them are actually going to change things later down the road, at least in the moment feel more meaningful because there's entire small scenes you can completely miss if you don't go back to at least check the other option(s). The very brief pockets of horror that TSR does have are fantastic and I can only hope more of them are coming as the routes begin to slowly reach their big breaking point. The main cast does have some endearing qualities beyond just looking pretty, and Cliff and Murdoch especially have personal histories that are incredibly intriguing in a way that makes me genuinely curious where the game's going to go with them. But as I say all of that, I still put down this build of The Smoke Room disappointed coming off of my time with Echo. I'm not giving up on this game and am excited to see where it goes from here, but I really hope that with the ridiculous amount of time the game has spent building up little details and plot elements, that it will actually do something with them.
The Smoke Room has a lot of baggage going in, being a prequel to Echo, a VN I played recently that I hold in extremely high regard and care a lot about. I'll just say that if you're taking a look at this game, you really should play Echo beforehand as parts of The Smoke Room are clearly written with the expectation that you already know about the town's secrets and mysteries, as well as the family history of several characters from Echo. While I say that however, The Smoke Room at the moment feels like a wholly different product with very different goals and approach to its writing, and they're ones that I honestly have really mixed feelings on. I'll fully admit to being disappointed that for being a prequel expanding upon stuff only hinted at in Echo, I was expecting something at least as grim and sinister as that game was, if not more so when considering the move backwards in time to 1915. What I had praised Echo for, being willing to go against trope expectations for the genre (and the likely playerbase who would've even been interested in playing it: furries) and delve into serious subject matters with genuine honesty and care, is not really as present in The Smoke Room. The Smoke Room has its grim and scary moments, but they're few and far between and does give into its tropey conventions and expectations.
A part of it I should have seen coming when considering the protagonist here, Samuel Ayers, is immediately introduced as a male prostitute. It's a core part of his identity and background, and his job is something that's relevant across the entire game and all four routes; it's the reason why he either already knows or meets the four other main cast members. Sex is an important and constant matter across the entire game, which is such a drastic difference compared to Echo which purposefully played with those conventions and didn't quite give in as easily with simple wish fulfillment with its cast of characters. I'd like to think I'm not a prude and can appreciate good looking dudes (which TSR is admittedly full of if that's your cup of tea), but it wasn't the reason I loved Echo so much and frankly it was anything but that. All four routes don't just have one sex scene, but rather multiple and I honestly just began to start skimming through most of them at a certain point because I just wasn't interested. They feel like fan service for the sake of having it save for a select few which are at least either genuinely heartfelt, or are eyebrow raising on purpose for plot reasons. I wouldn't mind so many of them if the game had something to say or make a point of like Echo did, or at least fully gave in knowing what it was.
But The Smoke Room just in general feels like a story that doesn't exactly have a clear idea of where it's going or what it wants to do so far. It wants to be a prequel to Echo and all of the baggage and expectations that comes with, it wants to have actual romance with its main cast, it wants to have supernatural creepy elements, it wants to be murder mystery, it wants to be a political thriller; it wants to be so many things at once but just hasn't exactly found the right balance it needed to make it all work cohesively, not to mention the issues with tone trying to make all of those genres work together. Several moments in William's route has you witnessing some incredibly harrowing things, but then the next moment William's notebook has goofy doodles that completely deflate the moment along with unfitting cartoonish music that only raises more questions (why does the town sheriff both have the time to make these doodles, and why like the way they are if he's meant to be a serious professional?). So much of the supernatural horror stuff that made Echo so interesting are weirdly absent for most of the routes, save for very brief single scenes like in William or Murdoch's routes, but then Cliff's route has it prevalent across the entirety of his route (or at least what's available right now). What's the point of giving Samuel such a significant personal hurdle to get over, the fact that even though it was in self-defense, he murders somebody within the first 10-20 minutes of the game and haunts him across every route, if every route the characters immediately forgive him and the game just kind of shrugs it off and not really bring it up again?
It's difficult to really put down exactly what's so off about The Smoke Room for me. There's a lot that TSR does get right and drastically improves upon compared to its predecessor, notably with just general production quality across the board. The art is not only much more consistent in style, but higher in quality and with more unique CGs for specific scenes. The music feels a lot less free stock-y than Echo did, with some of the more somber and tense tracks being outstanding when they come up in-game. More of the dialogue choices in TSR, while we don't have exactly know of how many of them are actually going to change things later down the road, at least in the moment feel more meaningful because there's entire small scenes you can completely miss if you don't go back to at least check the other option(s). The very brief pockets of horror that TSR does have are fantastic and I can only hope more of them are coming as the routes begin to slowly reach their big breaking point. The main cast does have some endearing qualities beyond just looking pretty, and Cliff and Murdoch especially have personal histories that are incredibly intriguing in a way that makes me genuinely curious where the game's going to go with them. But as I say all of that, I still put down this build of The Smoke Room disappointed coming off of my time with Echo. I'm not giving up on this game and am excited to see where it goes from here, but I really hope that with the ridiculous amount of time the game has spent building up little details and plot elements, that it will actually do something with them.