It sure is a slot machine that pleases the part of my brain that likes to see numbers go up. A good time waster, but also just sorta ends because it's early access

Neat five minute horror game

Wowe, I really enjoyed this! Really cool atmosphere, and interesting world building

A sweet and sincere short visual novel where a couple make constallations while talking about their struggles and Asian culture - no save feature is a bit unfortunate though

Within the first hour, Alex Chen beats the shit out of a dude and then plays Creep by Radiohead, which is peak Life Is Strange

This game is like comfort food and very easy to play/look at - definitely some pacing issues though, with the first portion dragging and later chapters feeling rushed

A really nice artstyle, soundtrack and idea that is dragged down by wonky execution

I have only finished one playthrough but I enjoyed my time with this - it's a nice collection of very well written vignettes, even if the navigation and strategy is very slightly clunky

Seventh Lair is an April Fool's visual novel that takes the characters from House In Fata Morgana and places them into a new world with new backstories.

I normally don't care for parody/joke visual novels but I loved this, and it does include the usual sincere/heartbreaking Fata Morgana magic later on. Look past the somewhat rough presentation and fan game feel of everything, and you'll have a good time with great characters and a story that isn't as one dimensional as initially presented

A neat little bitsy came that hit close to home

As someone who reads a lot of short kinetic novels and is really into ones where it's two people having a conversation, JK sadly didn't click with me and I found it very tedious to get through. Despite a run time of roughly 30 minutes, it ended up feeling a lot longer because of its dragginess

Argh - I really wanted to see this through. The aesthetic is lovely, the concept is really neat, but I just found myself failing levels a lot and not knowing why or what the game was asking of me. Having to restart some of the bigger levels, or the ones where you would do a scene and then it'd expand into a second scene, just kind of wasn't fun and conflicted with the chill/relaxing vibe this game seems to aesthetically be going for

A really sweet and sincere short piece of interactive fiction about parental death

A tiny bit clunky to play but overall a touching experience

A cute short visual about body positivity

I'd give this game a solid 6 or 7 out of 10. MBN is a visual novel that seems very heavily inspired by Phoenix Wright, with detective work carried out via picross puzzles. You REALLY need to like both aspects to get something out of this - if you're in for the picross, you'll probably get bored during the long dialogue sections. If you're here the story, you'll probably get a bit tired by how often you're doing picross puzzles

Personally, I thought both were fun, but towards the end, I was pretty eager for the game to end since the picross got a little bit too hard for me and there was A LOT of it

The graphics are really nice, the CG scenes are especially lovely, but the sound effects are pretty repetitive - with a sort of jingle when characters make jokes, that eventually got a bit grating. There's also not many music tracks and I think the same one always plays during Picross which also got to me a little bit. Some variety on this front would've been appreciated

I also would've liked more overarching plot/character development, since the ending felt like it was over pretty fast

I play a lot of short (as in less than thirty minutes) narrative games and this is by far one of my favourites. A really cool atmosphere and interesting talking points, I liked it a lot