Niandra
2010
Every Japanese learning guide: Hanahira is the perfect visual novel for beginners :) It's probably the easiest to read!
Every other line of dialogue: ああああああ
Every other line of dialogue: ああああああ
2014
It's pretty fun but I got kinda depressed when I realized I did much better by just repeatedly moving in a clockwise rotation than I did thinking about each individual move lol
1992
Played through the Fan translation patch that came out recently: https://twitter.com/RetroTranslator/status/1765315202218954988
It was a neat experience! It's a bit of a mess but sometimes the most interesting games are. I complain about visual novels commonly being too slow paced but this kinda goes into the opposite direction LOL, with constant reveals that didn't properly sink in before the next one hit
For such an old game, I really loved the presentation - it's a shame that characters don't really get sprites, as it led to a bit of disconnect for me, but everything else looked pretty good! The simple sound effects also make for a decently creepy atmosphere, especially in the beginning
It was a neat experience! It's a bit of a mess but sometimes the most interesting games are. I complain about visual novels commonly being too slow paced but this kinda goes into the opposite direction LOL, with constant reveals that didn't properly sink in before the next one hit
For such an old game, I really loved the presentation - it's a shame that characters don't really get sprites, as it led to a bit of disconnect for me, but everything else looked pretty good! The simple sound effects also make for a decently creepy atmosphere, especially in the beginning
2021
I was really hoping to like this more than I did. I love the story concept, where you have this kid under pressure to live up to expectations and wanting to do something else. I love the visuals with all the details backgrounds and alien monsters. The voice acting is great as well!
But holy shit, the gameplay is so fucking boring - and I say this as someone who loves visual novels and walking sims
For a large portion of this game, all you do is press D to move yourself left while animated set pieces move in the background. Sometimes you press jump, sometimes you press shift to shred your guitar but that's all - you're not likely to mess this up. The other main gameplay mechanic is Simon Says, where an alien plays a sequence, and then you copy. I saw a lot of reviews say this part was too easy but I actually really really struggled with it, because I have memory issues.
I just wasn't having a good time, holding my D key down for - no exaggeration here - 15 to 20 minutes, only to play Simon Says. After going through some interesting story and dialogue, the game placed me in what looked to be another really long platforming section and I just...could not do it lol
But holy shit, the gameplay is so fucking boring - and I say this as someone who loves visual novels and walking sims
For a large portion of this game, all you do is press D to move yourself left while animated set pieces move in the background. Sometimes you press jump, sometimes you press shift to shred your guitar but that's all - you're not likely to mess this up. The other main gameplay mechanic is Simon Says, where an alien plays a sequence, and then you copy. I saw a lot of reviews say this part was too easy but I actually really really struggled with it, because I have memory issues.
I just wasn't having a good time, holding my D key down for - no exaggeration here - 15 to 20 minutes, only to play Simon Says. After going through some interesting story and dialogue, the game placed me in what looked to be another really long platforming section and I just...could not do it lol
2023
Very short and simple, in that it took me about 15 minutes to beat, but I'm happy to throw a few pounds at small indie games like this - great atmosphere with some neat decision making
2021
I have a big soft spot for low budget death game Visual Novels and honestly, while The Zodiac Trial is by no means perfect, it continuously keeps up a good pace that makes for an overall very enjoyable experience
I liked the characters overall a lot, they're definitely the stars here. Everyone gets their own route with four endings, and each route is pretty different to each other - it's geninuely quite impressive how much subtle variety you get here. Combine this with the constant fast pacing, and I was always invested in the story, always interested to see where it would go next or what choices would do. I love that I got to see all the characters take on different roles and how they would react to it. Ox and Snake were the standouts for me! I was very invested in both
It's not a deal breaker, but the art is a bit wonky. Some characters I think look great - Dragon, Rooster, Snake and Ox in particular - while other designs are somewhat dull, or have weird proportions that you take you out of things a little bit. Monkey I think is a good example of both of these things. The backgrounds are also just photos with filters on them, which I'm not gonna fault a low budget VN for, but it did occasionally make things hard to follow when characters were moving about a room or general area. There's also not a whole lot of CGIs so during big moments, you're usually left with a black screen or just the background, which can take you out of things a bit but again, I'm not gonna let it bother me in a low budget VN. The ones we do get generally look pretty good though! The soundtrack also isn't anything mindblowing, but it does the job and there's a couple of especially good tracks in there. Sound effects are quite lacking overall, though
My main criticisms for The Zodiac Trial would be:
1. There's a good handful of typos, some of them quite unfortunate, like mixing up the name of a victim and their killer. It's not a dealbreaker, but it is noticable.
2. This is a Visual Novel made in ren'py, which means the standard features of scrolling back through text is very fluid, but it does mean you don't get a flowchart (despite there being over 50 endings) or some kind of menu with information you've already learnt, meaning you can feel overwhelmed at times or forget things. For example, I struggled to keep track of the Bowens and Morris', who are important characters to the story but not actually present
3. Sometimes it felt like the protagonist whose perspective you witness the story from was miles ahead of me, pulling out complicated deductions from thin air that I hadn't even began to grasp. Now I will admit, I am kinda dumb so maybe it was on me, but I did often feel like I was just coming along for the ride, although this personally didn't bother me too much
I liked the characters overall a lot, they're definitely the stars here. Everyone gets their own route with four endings, and each route is pretty different to each other - it's geninuely quite impressive how much subtle variety you get here. Combine this with the constant fast pacing, and I was always invested in the story, always interested to see where it would go next or what choices would do. I love that I got to see all the characters take on different roles and how they would react to it. Ox and Snake were the standouts for me! I was very invested in both
It's not a deal breaker, but the art is a bit wonky. Some characters I think look great - Dragon, Rooster, Snake and Ox in particular - while other designs are somewhat dull, or have weird proportions that you take you out of things a little bit. Monkey I think is a good example of both of these things. The backgrounds are also just photos with filters on them, which I'm not gonna fault a low budget VN for, but it did occasionally make things hard to follow when characters were moving about a room or general area. There's also not a whole lot of CGIs so during big moments, you're usually left with a black screen or just the background, which can take you out of things a bit but again, I'm not gonna let it bother me in a low budget VN. The ones we do get generally look pretty good though! The soundtrack also isn't anything mindblowing, but it does the job and there's a couple of especially good tracks in there. Sound effects are quite lacking overall, though
My main criticisms for The Zodiac Trial would be:
1. There's a good handful of typos, some of them quite unfortunate, like mixing up the name of a victim and their killer. It's not a dealbreaker, but it is noticable.
2. This is a Visual Novel made in ren'py, which means the standard features of scrolling back through text is very fluid, but it does mean you don't get a flowchart (despite there being over 50 endings) or some kind of menu with information you've already learnt, meaning you can feel overwhelmed at times or forget things. For example, I struggled to keep track of the Bowens and Morris', who are important characters to the story but not actually present
3. Sometimes it felt like the protagonist whose perspective you witness the story from was miles ahead of me, pulling out complicated deductions from thin air that I hadn't even began to grasp. Now I will admit, I am kinda dumb so maybe it was on me, but I did often feel like I was just coming along for the ride, although this personally didn't bother me too much
A bit of a mixed bag - especially in the second half - but honestly, I had a really fun time with this and basically got what I wanted from it
Ryuki is my new skrunkly
Ryuki is my new skrunkly
This review contains spoilers
In a way, I wish I could give this a netural Steam rating instead of negative because there ARE many moments of brilliance reminicent of the first game scattered through out - but ultimately, I can't really think of a reason why this sequel exists, besides just wanting more of the same and if that's what you want, good on ya
If you haven't played the first game, there's no point in playing this, because it relies heavily on events from it, while also being a much worse story/game. If you HAVE played the first one and already understand most of the mystery, did you really think an ending that intentionally and powerfully played with themes of purgatory in delicate manner needed further conclusion?
There's also a lot of technical hiccups that made the experience much more frustrating than it needed to be, which absolutely soured my mood and left me harsher than I otherwise would be. Note - there are NEVER autosave points where you'd think they would be. Let's say the protagonists are in a house and have a confrontation with people. You go through a 5-10 minute sequence, there's some gameplay, lots of dialogue etc and it's eventually wrapped up. The other people leave and our protagonists have a moment where they decide where to go next and exclaim that they should start heading over there now. You would think that's a decent place to quit the game - but nope, I had to redo the entire previous sequence :( now imagine this happening again lol
That's also not counting the handful of sequences I had to redo because things bugged out - like characters no longer being able to move. When I restarted after that, a radio conversation I had just had with Olivia never played? I had Jacob get stuck running in place at one point. Radio conversations reset themselves sometimes. Characters would ask questions they'd already asked before or knew the answer to. Certain action prompts like climbing ropes occasionally feel sticky - once I was required to stand in a pixel perfection position to climb a rope and I was like ohhh my god no dont tell me the game has bugged AGAIN (and at least this one time it hadn't)
The story and characters are....kind of a complete mess? Not an entirely bad mess, I'll grant you that. Riley and Jacob can be quite enjoyable - although, the relationship between them isn't super balanced, as Jacob will be the one that speaks/rambles while Riley interjects a lot less. It makes a lot more sense if you think of Jacob as having ADHD, which he's quite hard coded as imo. But anyway, I noticed this has already been pretty decisive in the other reviews. There are other characters scattered about on the radio who range from enjoyable and interesting (Nick!) to not really anything to uhhh well I completely missed one of them apparently lol
The story unfortunately didn't click with me, mostly because the antagonists are either 1. just stuff from the first game, which I'll admit is still really cool but also nothing new and 2. these really really boring and dull hollow teenagers. I'm not surprised that 80% of players let Olivia stay behind because why the fuck wouldn't you lol? She's a nothing character and WANTS it. We really don't interact with her much over the course of the game and the moments she is nice are so shallow and quickly over that they leave no impact, meaning it's a disappointingly easy choice. When I realized where things were going, I stopped picking dialogue choices and just let Riley be silent to avoid Olivia changing her mind lol
I just sorta feel like I was being pulled along for the ride with the plot, probably not helped by the main structure being "okay we need you to go to these 3 places to put down things and doing that will probably fix everything!". I just would have liked a bit more motivation and personal investment in things, I guess
So at one point, Alex and characters from the first game show up and fair play, it's initially really cool!! but then Alex just kinda immediately cowards out of her initial menacing demenor and is suddenly on our side? And it's just really whiplashy and undermines the point of her being here, basically relegating her to fanservice support piece imo
I realize this is a Me Being Dumb thing but I also found navigating the island so fucking tedious. I got lost a few times and having to backtrack with mildly slow characters with mildly finnicky button prompts really took it out of me. Listen, Jacob spending 10 minutes talking about his favourite yoghurt or whatever might be boring as shit, but it beats the long stretches of empty silence I got while backtracking across the map lol
The thing with a game like this, I ended up googling "oxenfree 1 plot summary" about a quarter of the way in to refresh my memory on some things and upon reading it, I was like "oh man, the first game did have a really fucking cool mystery....I wish this game had that". When you, as a sequel, rely so heavy on the first product, you're inviting the audience to make comparisons, which is a dangerous game because it's very easy for them to end up wishing they were playing that instead. In fact, I think this might've ended up stronger with less ties to the original game, where it could stand more on its own merit
I did really wanted to enjoy this - the beginning is really strong!!! the spooky moments are awesome!!! the visuals/audio are generally great!! but in terms of cohersion, "mess" is the only word I have to describe it
If you haven't played the first game, there's no point in playing this, because it relies heavily on events from it, while also being a much worse story/game. If you HAVE played the first one and already understand most of the mystery, did you really think an ending that intentionally and powerfully played with themes of purgatory in delicate manner needed further conclusion?
There's also a lot of technical hiccups that made the experience much more frustrating than it needed to be, which absolutely soured my mood and left me harsher than I otherwise would be. Note - there are NEVER autosave points where you'd think they would be. Let's say the protagonists are in a house and have a confrontation with people. You go through a 5-10 minute sequence, there's some gameplay, lots of dialogue etc and it's eventually wrapped up. The other people leave and our protagonists have a moment where they decide where to go next and exclaim that they should start heading over there now. You would think that's a decent place to quit the game - but nope, I had to redo the entire previous sequence :( now imagine this happening again lol
That's also not counting the handful of sequences I had to redo because things bugged out - like characters no longer being able to move. When I restarted after that, a radio conversation I had just had with Olivia never played? I had Jacob get stuck running in place at one point. Radio conversations reset themselves sometimes. Characters would ask questions they'd already asked before or knew the answer to. Certain action prompts like climbing ropes occasionally feel sticky - once I was required to stand in a pixel perfection position to climb a rope and I was like ohhh my god no dont tell me the game has bugged AGAIN (and at least this one time it hadn't)
The story and characters are....kind of a complete mess? Not an entirely bad mess, I'll grant you that. Riley and Jacob can be quite enjoyable - although, the relationship between them isn't super balanced, as Jacob will be the one that speaks/rambles while Riley interjects a lot less. It makes a lot more sense if you think of Jacob as having ADHD, which he's quite hard coded as imo. But anyway, I noticed this has already been pretty decisive in the other reviews. There are other characters scattered about on the radio who range from enjoyable and interesting (Nick!) to not really anything to uhhh well I completely missed one of them apparently lol
The story unfortunately didn't click with me, mostly because the antagonists are either 1. just stuff from the first game, which I'll admit is still really cool but also nothing new and 2. these really really boring and dull hollow teenagers. I'm not surprised that 80% of players let Olivia stay behind because why the fuck wouldn't you lol? She's a nothing character and WANTS it. We really don't interact with her much over the course of the game and the moments she is nice are so shallow and quickly over that they leave no impact, meaning it's a disappointingly easy choice. When I realized where things were going, I stopped picking dialogue choices and just let Riley be silent to avoid Olivia changing her mind lol
I just sorta feel like I was being pulled along for the ride with the plot, probably not helped by the main structure being "okay we need you to go to these 3 places to put down things and doing that will probably fix everything!". I just would have liked a bit more motivation and personal investment in things, I guess
So at one point, Alex and characters from the first game show up and fair play, it's initially really cool!! but then Alex just kinda immediately cowards out of her initial menacing demenor and is suddenly on our side? And it's just really whiplashy and undermines the point of her being here, basically relegating her to fanservice support piece imo
I realize this is a Me Being Dumb thing but I also found navigating the island so fucking tedious. I got lost a few times and having to backtrack with mildly slow characters with mildly finnicky button prompts really took it out of me. Listen, Jacob spending 10 minutes talking about his favourite yoghurt or whatever might be boring as shit, but it beats the long stretches of empty silence I got while backtracking across the map lol
The thing with a game like this, I ended up googling "oxenfree 1 plot summary" about a quarter of the way in to refresh my memory on some things and upon reading it, I was like "oh man, the first game did have a really fucking cool mystery....I wish this game had that". When you, as a sequel, rely so heavy on the first product, you're inviting the audience to make comparisons, which is a dangerous game because it's very easy for them to end up wishing they were playing that instead. In fact, I think this might've ended up stronger with less ties to the original game, where it could stand more on its own merit
I did really wanted to enjoy this - the beginning is really strong!!! the spooky moments are awesome!!! the visuals/audio are generally great!! but in terms of cohersion, "mess" is the only word I have to describe it
2023
Not only does this Visual Novel try something very unique, but it completely succeeds in doing so - an incredible short experience that I was extremely impressed with
Let's get the negatives out of the way:
- game is incredibly poor at explaining objectives, and flat out doesn't tell you what to do. I think I might've thrown my first few family games because I didn't understand the car batteries. Even as someone who enjoys learning these types of games as I play and finding techs out for myself, it's a little too much imo....especially in a world where google is completely shit up with seo slurry articles lol
- the skill/progression system is horrid. You collect skill points that are shared between all characters, but levelling up slows down hard after you reach level 10. This means you'll initially start levelling up a character really fast and soon hit a wall, meaning if you need to play another character, they'll probably be underlevelled. This is also a pain because only one person can pick each character, so players leave lobbies a lot. That being said, respeccing is free which is nice but also means this choice of system is even more bizarre lol
- You can't do inventory/skill management while finding a match, but you can during the pre-game lobby, which has a maximum timer of five minutes. Because people can't do their skills while finding a match, they're going to do it now, meaning it's pretty slow to get into the game
- Victims are really overwhelming and there's no three hook state system like DBD. You can die REAL fast if you encouter the family so if you're playing with friends and struggling, you can spend most of the evening spectating instead of actually playing. Spectating in this game can still be pretty fun and tense but the novelty can wear off
Now, all that being said, push past an ungodly amount of liveservice horseshit and the core gameplay is honestly really fun - family especially - with a decent amount of depth and skill expression on both sides. The vibes are also great as well, with the game being geninuely kinda scary as a victim.
- game is incredibly poor at explaining objectives, and flat out doesn't tell you what to do. I think I might've thrown my first few family games because I didn't understand the car batteries. Even as someone who enjoys learning these types of games as I play and finding techs out for myself, it's a little too much imo....especially in a world where google is completely shit up with seo slurry articles lol
- the skill/progression system is horrid. You collect skill points that are shared between all characters, but levelling up slows down hard after you reach level 10. This means you'll initially start levelling up a character really fast and soon hit a wall, meaning if you need to play another character, they'll probably be underlevelled. This is also a pain because only one person can pick each character, so players leave lobbies a lot. That being said, respeccing is free which is nice but also means this choice of system is even more bizarre lol
- You can't do inventory/skill management while finding a match, but you can during the pre-game lobby, which has a maximum timer of five minutes. Because people can't do their skills while finding a match, they're going to do it now, meaning it's pretty slow to get into the game
- Victims are really overwhelming and there's no three hook state system like DBD. You can die REAL fast if you encouter the family so if you're playing with friends and struggling, you can spend most of the evening spectating instead of actually playing. Spectating in this game can still be pretty fun and tense but the novelty can wear off
Now, all that being said, push past an ungodly amount of liveservice horseshit and the core gameplay is honestly really fun - family especially - with a decent amount of depth and skill expression on both sides. The vibes are also great as well, with the game being geninuely kinda scary as a victim.
2022
Bit of a rough first game for the Playdate to "give" me considering the initial very rough difficulty, but it's quite addictive once you "get" it, although overall simple
I still wish it was quicker to restart after a fuck up though (since there'll be a lot) - the game gives you snarky "wow you're bad!" messages after you die, which is extremely bold and kinda begging for the player to just dump the game lol
I still wish it was quicker to restart after a fuck up though (since there'll be a lot) - the game gives you snarky "wow you're bad!" messages after you die, which is extremely bold and kinda begging for the player to just dump the game lol
Every year, I make a lil pumpkin for my old cat and get to enjoy the amazing work of others - it's a comforting little experience every time
Parody visual novels only ever know three jokes - meta humour, being presented with choices that can't actually be picked, and "hahaha you're playing a dating sim isn't that WACKY", but this game thinks they're the three most original ideas in the world, so my first impression was "wow this visual novel REALLY has its head up its own ass" and...I don't think I was wrong with that call whatsoever after finishing BUT...I honestly did quite enjoy it
The artstyle is nice, the achievement aspects are fun too and while this game isn't as original as it thinks it is, the execution is pretty strong
The artstyle is nice, the achievement aspects are fun too and while this game isn't as original as it thinks it is, the execution is pretty strong
I don't mind paying for and playing very short visual novels, ones that only last 5-10 minutes but I didn't really understand the point of this one. There's also a ton of typos (Extremely is spelt wrong every time, then is used instead of than repeatedly) which helps make the writing feel very stiff. The "dark and bloody twist" also feels very nothing/blink and you'll miss it
2022
A neat and heartfelt little game I'm glad I got to play - it would have been nice if there was an indication of which character specifically was speaking though since I got confused once or twice