A short browser visual novel about a couple reminiscing about breaking up. Originally starts with the idea that it’s a regular 10-questions magazine type of quiz, but then quickly turns into a more personal story.

Not the best way I’ve seen a sad story try and use a different method in telling itself, but Answer These 10 Questions wasn’t the worst either. It didn’t have a terrible message, it didn’t have a deep one either. Sometimes people don’t work out and it can be sad, lonely, and regretful. It was a short game that told a short story in a clever-ish way, and that’s pretty much what I expected going in as well. It delivered what it promised with not much more. 2.5 stars.

Yeah I just didn't get this at all. Feels too trapped by the quiz to do anything with the subject matter/narrative and this just really didn't click with what it was going for. Feels too brief and too held back to say anything actually impactful.

Dating sucks sometimes and sometimes ya fall in love with people who suck/make your life actively worse/are toxic as shit. Sometimes its best to just leave and do you instead of continuing to try pining for the attention of someone who clearly doesn't give the same energy back you give them.

Was bored and just reminded me of old wounds and I'm glad I'm not in that headspace anymore but this was incredibly nothing for me.

The aspect I most enjoy from Kotaro Uchikoshi's games like 999, VLR etc is that they are branching narrative VNs where starting to understand the very structure of the branching aspect of the story deepens your understanding of the mystery and enjoyment of the story as opposed to ruining it.

I remember Jon Ingold of Heaven's Vault fame saying in an interview that he did not make/write his games "for people who like those [story flowcharts]!" in reference to David Cage style diagrams which show exactly how to obtain the desired results and navigate the game exactly. On the one hand I get it, being transparent in your systems can risk ruining the mystique, letting the player see the man behind the curtain and even calls into question the dynamic between designer and player if you yourself are purposefully guiding the pace of the game so surgically. Heaven's Vault is entirely opaque in its branching and works beautifully in this respect and feels self contained when you end a playthrough.

On the other hand games like VLR invite the player, for good and for ill to jump between branches, getting new information from each run both as the player and diegetically as the "SHIFTER" who can jump between timelines. And I think this is just as valid an approach for an adventure game, though admittedly it does cause VLR to bite off more than it can chew narratively and ultimately most of its flaws.

The point is, peeling back the layers of how a game narrative works can sometimes ruin it, or it can deepen your enjoyment and insight into it as a piece of fiction. Answer these 10 questions is sort of in the middle. I think doing the quiz more than once and finding out they all work out to be essentially the same is trying to make a point that this relationship was obviously doomed from the beginning cause these two (though mainly the woman who administers the quiz) are very toxic and wrong for each other, as if you needed any more indication of this.

The reason Ive spent like 2/3rds of the review talking about uchikoshi and branching narratives is that I basically got nothing else out of this experience. Admittedly Ive never actually been in a serious relationship so maybe that's why but all I really got is that you should definitely leave relationships with people that actively make you miserable? Which I think I already knew Idk.

bitch youuuuuuu are a stranger. this broader aesthetic sense of making art thats like an overtly long talk therapy session with some two faced white woman is becoming maddening to me. i dont think its appropriate to belabor this because the "quiz" here is such a harmless & secondary example of it, and maybe is more self-aware than im pinning it, but also i had a pretty stark realization in here that i've heard this exact voice, story, talk, expression, diction, & conclusion more times than i ever thought possible. u kno both folks here probably said "power differential" 1 too many times in the relationship. forgive me but i gotta talk my shit for a minute: yall's own self-admitted lack of agency & disproptional reactivity dont bother yall?????? self-pitying shit is as much of a power play as anything else u woulda known that if you were up on ur nietzsche by now. might as well let ur fucking nuts hang & make art and say shit about what you would do if you had things your way instead of what would you woulda done were you the perfect lil tweebell them PhDs is tryna get you to be. like the final conclusion here is an overtly self-conscious epigraph about how being too self-conscious is bad. you bitches need an intervention!!! i may be a broke ass bitch ass nigga but trust that rapping along with pap when he goes "hunnid on me...these bitch ass broke ass niggas better not say nothing to me" prepares me to tackle life's problems more than anything coming from this lane. maybe im a sociopath and got a impaired sense of empathy & dont get it but also ian seen nary a post or analysis or even a interpretative lens that would reward deeper investigation of smthn that got this "autoethnography" or whatever stench on it. another big whiff from itch.io 4 me.

I really liked this.
Felt a little trapped by the format and "quiz" idea but was pretty emotional and hit close to home with some parts. As someone who has been in toxic/abusive relationships, it felt pretty emotionally honest but, like most emotionally honest pieces of media, it was a bit undeveloped and lacked some finality a more fleshed-out piece might have.
Should've had a content warning though as, clearly from other reviews of this game, it has had a negative mental impact on others and that should always be avoided if possible.