Unreal Life, a game about a girl named Hal who has lost her memories. She finds she can read an object's past by touch, through the help of a kind AI traffic light. She will then be sent to suffer through a gauntlet of the most obtuse, senseless, and slow RPGmaker style puzzles imaginable. All for a chance to meet her teacher, Miss Sakura, who is the singular link she has to her past.

Was it worth it? All those hours of slowly walking around aimlessly, trying to figure out what the game could possibly want from me? I suppose it was. The game has a very solidified style that it presents and it does it well. Visually, its perfectly crafted and beautiful to look at. The story it tells and the mystery that comes along with it was very interesting to me, and I appreciate how it tries to break the mold in several ways. For example, I really enjoyed how it presented Hal's memory flashbacks. They were confusing and violent and often unexpected, and I liked how they kept some vaugeness as to what exactly is happening until the very end. Stories like these where reality is clealry warped arent always best completely explained, as attempting to do so might just completely deflate any sense of electricty the plot has generated. I was worried this game was going to go down a stereotypical path (youre a serial killer!!! this whole world is fake and in your head!! Youre craAazy!!!!) but I'm more than pleased on the emphasis Unreal Life puts on the power of imagination and of yourself. The message the ending portrays and its resolution are a good one, and I'm glad to have read it.

However, this game is held back a lot by its gameplay. If you have a game that is mostly story oriented, any gameplay that occurs should work along with that and never obstruct the player too much. It would be a good thing, for example, to not add the most horseshit, time consuming puzzle you can think of and instead maybe just leave that out all together. I hate puzzles to begin with but I hate them even more now as they seem to love popping up in otherwise good games just to make them worse. The speed at which the character moves, the lack of direction or hints, and the general clunkiness of some of the puzzle mechanics introduced are all parts of the reason that these puzzles simply suck. The ones in the beginning half of the game arent so bad, but they always teetered on frustrating. While the later half of the game had me in tears trying to figure out just what I was doing wrong. Unreal Life would of benefitted greatly from some kind of hint system... considering you have a hyperintelligent AI with you, I dont think it'd be too unreasonable.

Overall, the story is very sweet and well thought out, except for the whole car crash thing which resolves in the same manner as a whoopie cushion deflates. Im pretty bummed this didnt have as big an impact as it could due to how frustrating it was to play, but I dont regret my time spent with it at all.

shoutout to the moss ball with the same name as me. Shes great. And round.

Nice little puzzle adventure game. Very atmospheric with some pretty visuals and pleasant music (though it goes a little too hard in the dramatic moments). The story is solid with some cute character interactions, interesting mystery buildup and a surprisingly uplifting true ending. Unfortunately I found Hal herself rather bland and the underlying themes of coping with loneliness and self-loathing to be pretty cliche. While the puzzles were fairly creative, they were often more time-consuming than difficult which could be pretty annoying. The game was pretty short overall though so it wasn't a big issue.

its ok! not changing my life or anything, some of the puzzles overstay their welcome and its sometimes too transparently oversentimental to get all that invested in (it has the funny talking skeleton thats become the mandated source of levity for sad indie games with jokes) but its gorgeous and comfy and has some of that good freeware angst to it without being a total downer. sometimes youre just in the mood for that!

e: kind of eh for how shallow it is in retrospect but i guess i was in the mood for it at the time?? like having a very specific craving for gas station food

This game is really special, and it's clear just how talented hako is. There's a really great and raw story here, and it's all compacted into a really sweet package.

The best way to describe this is a cross between a point-and-click adventure and an RPG. The primary gameplay loop is going to a new area, interacting with every object in that area, and then using the systems of the current area to unlock a way to the next area. But Unreal Life is so much more than just that simple description I gave. There's some really powerful writing here, and a really charming cast of characters. The world is coated in shades of blue, and the pixel art is really stunning. There's also a really solid soundtrack to go along with it.

This game is super heavy on dialogue, and the gameplay is pretty stripped back to walking and interacting. It's not for everyone, but for people who are looking for a solid story and an atmospheric world, this game nails it.

Honestly my only complaints with the game are more on the technical side. There were several longer dialogue scenes where the music would switch with each text box. It got pretty distracting, and really took away from the weight of these scenes. There was also a tendency in the longer dialogue scenes for the game to cut to black between textboxes and display a quick loading screen. I get that new things needed to be loaded in, but I wish it could have been more seamless, or loaded things in without fading to black.

If this sounds like it's up your alley, definitely give it a play. And if you need a little more convincing, there's a train conductor penguin who likes sleeping and smoking cigarettes. I don't know what else you could want out of a game.