A '90s PSX Life Sim I posted a song of on my music channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msjpAsvJ5XU

JP-only, but great if you like life sims!

You play as a boy staying at his cousin's(?) bakery on a floating island for the summer. Each day you'll deliver bread to townspeople. Occasionally you can trigger events to get to know some of the girls better. It's typical genre fare, but feels less stiff than your harvest moon - characters all run around on their daily cycles and you often have to chase people down. Events trigger seemingly out of nowhere. It's confusing but works.

I like the game's lore. It's a floating island, but if you explore the tunnels below the surface you'll see distant ruins in chasms below you - out of reach... Complete with forboding music, this makes for some surprising atmosphere. I wasn't able to discover the lore behind it - alongside some suspicious/shifty characters - but I assumed that was all intentional. There are violent creatures in the outskirts of town, you can literally Die... some characters are witches with spooky cavern labs. it felt refreshing to be as in the dark as I presumed the villagers were, about the history of their island.

Certainly we can say the same is true of many of the places we live in. My hometown used to store missiles during the cold war, before that it was a training airfield for WW2... and today it's just soccer fields.

There's points to criticize in DDP but overall it's memorable and ultimately that's all I really care about. As you meet new characters and learn terms, you can ask other characters about other people, or the terms. Of course, most characters go "??? I don't know???" but on occasion you get a detailed response and it sheds light on some social relations of the character. Could've used a design pass or two but I appreciate it nonetheless.

(JP-only but I hear there is a good fan translation!)

They (the company making the massively famous (in Japan) Sylvanian Family line of children's toys) made a GBC Moon Remix RPG-like for girls. I found about this by going to a random toy/game store in Shinjuku the other day. I ran into a friend visiting from Northern America, he pointed out the place's stock seemed to have renewed from a week ago.

He pointed out a giant stand that was filled with perfect condition GBA/GBC/Virtual Boy games: someone probably found an unopened shipping box sitting in some warehouse and sold it to this store. In it were various games - Telefang, Sanrio Timenet (all pokemon-likes), hamster-raising games... an interesting reminder of the diversity of that era. Lots of amazing (and mediocre lol) art and games.

But this one, Sylvanian Family caught my eye...

The art and setting make it charming enough: it's set in one of those "far off villages across countless mountains," kind of a idyllic, maybe Christian-y kind of fairy tale world. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some story behind whoever created this line of toys and branding: it has a strange innocence to it (https://www.google.com/search?q=sylvanian+family).

You have free reign each day to explore where you want, you're only limited by the need to be back home by 5 PM ... or else! You die!

Actually... the day is considered a "dream" and you just reload your previous save.

Each morning you're forced to greet your parents before leaving. Between that and the curfew there's something very childhood-y, strict, proper, about it.

But alongside that, as you explore more, find things, complete minigames... you'll level up, which gives you more stamina to explore for longer. (Hence the MOON comparison). I feel like you'll find yourself thinking about wherever it was you grew up, and how big it felt as a kid vs. now.

As you level up, time literally slows down. It's a neat way to make you feel like the character is somehow growing older and more experienced as you get more time to wander each day. Eventually you can make your way out to some mountains and get lost in a surprisingly stark-feeling system of caves that feels out of a pokemon or dragon quest dungeon. Of course, you'll always emerge safely out of the other side.

The level design has a nice variety: you mostly wander small mazes of trees or bushes looking for items to pick up, but they still feel distinct. The winding gardens of the city, the open meadows of the grassland, the confusing forests of the mountain. They're simple mazes but it works for the game.

Fast-travel holes emerge in the ground: I felt this kind of contradicted the power of the 'time slowing' leveling system.

Before the advent of crafting systems and these kinds of games being almost entirely about making small children develop compulsive-level collecting and building habits (see recent animal crossing or like, Fantasy Life), these kids adventure games were pretty tight experiences.

Sylvanian Families even has a furniture buying/placement system, but there are so few items and options that it feels more like a Harvest Moon-esque progression where you just get to occasionally change your home.

Funnily enough, the items you buy are literally real toys that kids could buy at the time. Those sly branding marketers! There's a cuteness to some of the items: a piano in which you can practice at and get better each day. A house upgrade which will surprise your dad who usually only ever tells you to not come back too late.

I'm reminded of 1998's Dokidoki Poyacchio (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msjpAsvJ5XU) which I somehow haven't logged here yet), or 2001's Uki-uki Carnival (I still have the only review here! Who do I have to pay to get this translated... https://www.backloggd.com/games/sakura-momoko-no-ukiuki-carnival/ ).

Ultimately Sylvanian Family doesn't reach the experimental highs of either of those games - but it's still a well-designed experience that stands on its own and establishes an enjoyable fantasy setting, and manages to do a lot with its stamina system, relatively sparse dialogue and events. Curious to see what the rest of the series holds.

Also the music bangs https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/sylvanian-families-otogi-no-kuni-no-pendant-1999-gbc/17%2520BGM%2520%252317.mp3

In terms of the intensity and depth of the emotional response it engendered in me, Seabed compares neatly with The House in Fata Morgana. It takes a completely different, much quieter and subtler path to get there, obviously. Fata Morgana gets there with the most hard hitting melodrama possible. Seabed gets there through countless quiet moments, all working in concert to slowly weave a spell over you without you even realizing.

As a text game dev, I deeply appreciate the presentation. The whole story is told through VA-less NVL-mode walls of text, borrowed royalty-free music, as few VN presentation tricks as humanly possible, and a combo of blurred photo and cheap blender backgrounds. The only major points of aesthetic interest are the beautiful character illustrations by hide38 (who also wrote the script).

And the story still hits like a truck. When you make your characters and their longings feel this real in the reader's heart, you don't need voice acting or a bunch of expensive one-off assets. Seabed does exactly what it needs to with the presentation to support the writing, then gets out of the way and lets the story speak for itself. I think that's really admirable, and speaks to a confidence that a lot of devs would benefit from.

If all this sounds back-handed, it shouldn't. Some of the most well-loved VNs in history are doujin games like Higurashi or Tsukihime, which used similar aesthetic shortcuts. I cherish many VNs with super-loved-on presentation. But my favorites will always be the ones that make me believe in their stories, and you get there first and foremost with strong writing.

Seabed is as affecting a story as any visual novel I've read. I don't have much to say beyond that that wouldn't spoil the shape of the story (hence why I spent three paragraphs soapboxing about VN direction). If you're up for the slowest of slow burns, and you appreciate VNs with grown-up theming that don't talk down to you, give this one a read.