PainfulAC
A less than stellar entry in the Walking Dead Telltale series that has a few impactful emotional highs, but feels all over the place and like your choices don't matter. Characters felt like they flip-flopped a lot, and a major story decision at the end relies purely on Clem's three flashback scenes (that don't relate to the current moment).
2012
One of the first big "choices matter" visual novel with qte games, and Telltales big launch. Both when I first played it, and now, I think that this is a great, emotional game and has one of the best protagonists in the Telltale series. The fear and confusion of the dead rising and infecting is present here like nowhere else in the following sequels, and the choices do generally feel like they matter.
2023
Quiet, relaxing fishing game with a great upgrade cycle... as long as you are a huge baby like me and go to sleep instead of fishing at night where the horrors await.
A shortform story with some lewd meetings and sword fights. There's no save functionality, but runs only take 20-30 minutes in my experience.
2015
A fun mass transit game that I probably won't finish any time soon, as it lends itself to occasional meditative subway sessions at the kitchen table.
2016
A good quality game for mobile devices, but the randomness of stats and questionable upgrades you get (I played Reigns+ on apple arcade which may have updates from the original) let the game down. Also, I messed up tricking the devil and the game did not let me reset, so I was softlocked.
2021
A fun little capes and cowls visual novel, with several different romances and 12 different endings. Fully voice acted, which was a pleasant surprise! I thought it was a good time, and it handled satirically discussing superhero tropes without becoming too cynical about it.
2023
A swashbuckling romp as a lesbian spaniard that involves kicking and throwing a lot of the environment. A great time, aside from a few minor technical bugs
2020
A shallow, but fun, story about being a terrible dad and managing a kingdom full of annoying peasants.
A fun little text-based rpg that goes from birth to about 30 years old (or true death, if you mess up). I enjoyed going through the death throes of an alien empire with just enough similarities to medieval times to make it understandable. The history and especially the religious lore is quite in depth, although at times you get blind-sided by facts like there being blue-skinned people who are kind of like divine right elves.
Your family, title, and estate are equally as important as the other broad historical events happening. You can keep your family together and powerful, or try and gut Stephan for being an annoying little shit constantly and then lose your noble title. What fun!
The weakest part of the game was the limited voice acting, which didn't add much, and the minmax feeling for early stats, which led me to focus less on the childhood choices and more on stat maxing.
Your family, title, and estate are equally as important as the other broad historical events happening. You can keep your family together and powerful, or try and gut Stephan for being an annoying little shit constantly and then lose your noble title. What fun!
The weakest part of the game was the limited voice acting, which didn't add much, and the minmax feeling for early stats, which led me to focus less on the childhood choices and more on stat maxing.
An addictive deck builder superhero game, with some weak writing (though not unsimilar to Marvel's current work) and performance issues. They really could have optimized this game a bit more.
2013
A magically good time via a CYOA novel with rustic art and drawings provided throughout. Part 1 is mostly a linear tutorial to the three sequels, but is still a strong story with some good characters sprinkled in. The game gives you the ability to try out whatever goofy spell you want (why can I ZAP random civilians? To gleefully watch an npc disintegrate) for wanton chaos, while also letting you cure plagues and solve disputes. A personal favorite of mine is NIF, which basically is a powerful fart that solves a surprising amount of enemy encounters.
Part 2 opens up into a festering boil of a city, that truly has a broad range of paths and choices to pick from. After two runs through it, I think I still had various underground stories that I had missed (Tip: purchase a rope ladder). Slowly learning what has transpired in Khare and what happened to its leaders was a well done dripfeed of lore. It's a juicy city to explore, and frankly makes me feel lackluster in comparison when I think of cities I've created in D&D.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the sparse, but beautiful soundtrack in the game. There are several main themes composed by Laurence Chapman that evoke a nostalgic, heroic medieval time, and the inventory screen uses Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams - I've never lingered so long on an inventory screen just soaking it in. Aside from those, there are only a few authentic free sound snippets of violin playing and tribalistic singing that show up as you encounter settled areas.
Can't wait for the next two parts!
P.S. Flanker my beloved
Part 2 opens up into a festering boil of a city, that truly has a broad range of paths and choices to pick from. After two runs through it, I think I still had various underground stories that I had missed (Tip: purchase a rope ladder). Slowly learning what has transpired in Khare and what happened to its leaders was a well done dripfeed of lore. It's a juicy city to explore, and frankly makes me feel lackluster in comparison when I think of cities I've created in D&D.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the sparse, but beautiful soundtrack in the game. There are several main themes composed by Laurence Chapman that evoke a nostalgic, heroic medieval time, and the inventory screen uses Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams - I've never lingered so long on an inventory screen just soaking it in. Aside from those, there are only a few authentic free sound snippets of violin playing and tribalistic singing that show up as you encounter settled areas.
Can't wait for the next two parts!
P.S. Flanker my beloved
2021
A charming little crime game set in the 90s. God I'm old. The aesthetic is down pat, and the characters are pretty fun. I ran into one softlock in the game, and a few times the start menu wouldn't come up. Other than that, great time.
2017
There's not too much to say - it's solitaire with some RPG elements and a simple story added to it. The story is unfortunately pretty middling, and a couple of the character designs are... questionable. I like solitaire and shootin though.
A solid VN game entry by Dontnod that doesn't reach the heights of some of their more mainstream games.
The character art, backgrounds, and score are all beautifully designed and help the flow of the game (the characters at times reminded me of the Hotel Dusk style), but pacing feels off at times due to the inherent start-stop process of the flowchart (The Augural). I love other VNs like 999 and VLR that use flowcharts, but usually the sections are longer. At times, you click a node here and get a few lines delivered, before a short load back to the Augural.
The story itself has some impactful choices that make the narrative feel like it actually changed. You can't go an "evil" route as far as I could tell, but you can definitely land between ruthless rebel and balancing hippie. Every character in the plot is fairly memorable, and there is a broad swath of representation that doesn't feel jammed in (despite this, there are multiple Steam discussions complaining about "wokeness"). Even the Aspirations (the higher powers you frequently commune with) have variance - Power, for instance, is not an annoying autocrat, but more so a supportive dad figure.
The main issues with the game are the quantity of loading times, the slightly abrupt ending, and also the lack of QoL features for replaying and reloading. Even upon beating the game, there's no way to select a specific chapter and start from this point. This is something other VNs have been doing for years now! Hopefully that feature will be added in a patch from Dontnod, but for now it's annoying to not be able to go back further than the start of the current chapter.
The character art, backgrounds, and score are all beautifully designed and help the flow of the game (the characters at times reminded me of the Hotel Dusk style), but pacing feels off at times due to the inherent start-stop process of the flowchart (The Augural). I love other VNs like 999 and VLR that use flowcharts, but usually the sections are longer. At times, you click a node here and get a few lines delivered, before a short load back to the Augural.
The story itself has some impactful choices that make the narrative feel like it actually changed. You can't go an "evil" route as far as I could tell, but you can definitely land between ruthless rebel and balancing hippie. Every character in the plot is fairly memorable, and there is a broad swath of representation that doesn't feel jammed in (despite this, there are multiple Steam discussions complaining about "wokeness"). Even the Aspirations (the higher powers you frequently commune with) have variance - Power, for instance, is not an annoying autocrat, but more so a supportive dad figure.
The main issues with the game are the quantity of loading times, the slightly abrupt ending, and also the lack of QoL features for replaying and reloading. Even upon beating the game, there's no way to select a specific chapter and start from this point. This is something other VNs have been doing for years now! Hopefully that feature will be added in a patch from Dontnod, but for now it's annoying to not be able to go back further than the start of the current chapter.