My friends played this over stream and I thought that maybe I was just being a hater but no, they didn't like it either. It wasn't particularly funny, it wasn't particularly scary, the puzzles were barely puzzles, there were no real choices, and the story didn't really make sense?

I don't want to spoil anything too specific but the way this game handled the ideas of immortality and eldritch beings was sooo inconsistent. The "Truth" ending left everyone speechless in a bad way, it was such a random ass-pull to try to add depth to the game. Honestly it felt unfinished :\

Also, for a game where the entire selling point is "romance a monster" there was strangely little actual interaction with Rhok'Zan (or however her name was spelled). It was kind of hilarious how uninvolved she was in the actual story of the game, she was basically a plot device. She just kind of gives you a ritual, throws in some half-baked flirting, and then curls up in your bedroom and you can't talk to her again until it's time for the next ritual- and at some point in all this you two fall in love.

Also I know I'm gonna sound lame when I say this but it is really weird to me that this game takes place in a made up city called "Sacramen-Cho" and had a faux-Japanese aesthetic for no reason. I'm not saying it had to take place in a generic Americana suburb or whatever but it felt like the devs just thought surface level anime aesthetics were kawaii~ even though the game kinda didn't even really have all that much to do with anime or visual novel/dating sim tropes.

Amazing game, lots of other people have gone into detail about exactly why that is so I don't have to! One thing I will specifically praise though is the mystery crafting- I liked that there was a good balance of things I could guess through observation/deduction + things that had to be "revealed" to me. A lot of mysteries struggle to walk the line between obtuse and obvious but this nailed the balance.

And even though the main story gets wrapped up in a neat bow at the end, I liked that (this is too vague to be a spoiler really) the exact natures of a few of the phenomena/characters were left somewhat ambiguous. Another hallmark of a good mystery is knowing when to stop answering questions and leave it to the imagination!

This was a neat game! I've always been into paranormal stuff so I gave it a chance blind and it exceeded my expectations, great detective story that kept me going until the end. It's fairly linear but I did like that I was able to make it through the whole game without looking up any hints (except the "true ending" but the creators admitted that they let that be obtuse because they expected people to search a guide) and I was able to piece together a lot of the mystery myself while still getting blindsided at points. Nice character moments too.

Loved the intrigue of the different curse bearers and their conditions, it was such an interesting hook that felt like it could have carried a full series on its own. The urban legend aspect was actually really compelling in general, the origins of the curses and their associated tales were well-written.

Some of the "meta" stuff the game asks you to do is a bit... forced, but they don't shove it down your throat too much so I'll give it a pass. Mixed feelings on the way the secret ending reflects upon the events of the game but it's not bad or anything like that, similar feelings towards the red herrings.

The Mocking Bird stickers were cute as hell.

Been a minute since I played one of the Midnight Scenes games but the description of this one intrigued me so I picked it up, and it was a pleasant way to spend an hour.

This is more of a note for the series as a whole but the games go for a sort of "Twilight Zone" vibe and I think they nail the aesthetic but don't quite pack the same punch as the real article because the stories... don't really say anything. They're just kind of "hey wouldn't it be fucked up if-" type stories, which I actually enjoy because low-stakes spooky tales are fun every now and then! And this dev team is very good at making those.

But the penny dreadful approach fell flat on this entry in particular because "Safe Place" is, for most of its run time, a pretty cutting examination of the loneliness and self-destruction that arises from anxiety, so the rug pull felt kinda out of place. It fell into this weird middle ground tonally where it's kind of a character study of a young man with anxiety but also kind of a horror game about a man trapped in his room being tortured by shadow figures, and both aspects feel a bit strapped for space.

All that being said, for the hour and a half that it took me to play this game I did feel like I was sitting in this cold, sleepy small town, so I can't say that it wasn't effective in that regard. For all of the missed potential it was still a very creepy little tale that kept me clicking, and I'm gonna have to go check out some of the other Midnight Scenes I've missed.

Oh gosh, this one really hit me.

Sort of a soft-isekai type story where you (yes, you, the player) are invited into a magical world by a wizard to help him fix his sentient house, but it quickly becomes apparent that your stay in this world will involve quite a bit of legwork, fetch quests, and inventory object puzzles. Standard adventure game stuff but on the way... I don't know, I just fell in love with this world.

The Fortunate Isles were such a beautiful setting full of a diverse array of colorful characters, and it was such a treat to explore it all. It helps that detail is poured into every corner of the screen- there's so much to click on with volumes of text as a reward, and I wasted so much time just clicking on every single flower and mushroom in the game just to get their little stories.
In addition, all of the characters have a lot to say and will even be updated with new dialogue as the story progresses so you have a reason to keep coming back to them even after their quests have been fulfilled, which made me feel connected with even the humblest of NPCs. Many of the stories that they tell are quite touching.

But as you get to know the Isles it quickly becomes very obvious what their real problem is, and the game gets rather "political" in a cool way. There's no ambiguity to what the creators are trying to say here about the importance of community and collective action but... well, number one I agree with them, but number two, I think that they should be commended for how well their themes arise organically from the storyline. You aren't explicitly handed an "overthrow the capitalist oligarchy" quest, but as you follow the threads of what you need and see how everything connects together it just kind of makes sense.

Even when the characters were almost literally preaching to me about politics, philosophy, economics, revolution, even gender identity, it didn't /feel/ like they were preaching because it just felt like the people I had gotten to know were offering their takes on "current events" and sharing a bit of wisdom with me. Genuinely left this game feeling inspired and a bit more enlightened!

The brilliant thing about it is that, despite the epic quest you go on to uncover ancient secrets and overthrow tyrannical governments, ultimately it's all in service of fixing that house, which feels just as important as the other stuff. You can't fix the Underhome without saving the Isles because the problems with the Isles ARE the problem with the Underhome, just like all of the people of the isles are one with each other, just like the sea connects them. Just like it connects us :)

(The only negative thing that I have to say is that the songs on the soundtrack, while pretty, are very short, and since I spent a lot of time sitting in the same locations reading text I heard them loop a LOT and it got kind of annoying. It was easy to mute them via a clever little interface, but still.)

I think it's a neat idea and I had fun kicking around with it but the interface could have been made a bit more user friendly. It's also way too easy to just get locked into a loop, which kinda killed my buzz for exploring. I wound up using the map explore feature to access some of the harder to reach paths and the story was fun enough to make up for it.

Knowing that the comic itself was created for a physical medium kinda puts it in context- they were working with a limited amount of space, which explains why some of the routes feel so short and obtuse. Am interested in playing the other game that they made though so I'll chalk it up as a win.

A playable graphic novel (not a visual novel, that's different) that made for a really /intriguing/ game, which isn't a word I use for video games a lot but felt merited here.

What really makes this one stand out is how much care was put into the worldbuilding- I was so fascinated by what life was like on this little Jupiter space colony, especially how thoughtful and developed the theology was. The sumptuous art did a great job of realizing their vision (I'd wager the creators have definitely read the popular comic Kill Six Billion Demons) and it lead to some stunning vistas. Climbing a massive wind turbine to harvest alien plants, witnessing futuristic religious rites in a cultist temple, peering into a handcrafted universe made out of tea and seeing a sea of black holes... it felt like I was actually living these moments.

The story itself is really cool too, I'd hate to spoil it but there is a mystery at the center of it and once you clue in to what it is, it's a very gripping ride. Surprisingly understated too, managing to pull a story of a universal scale out of a narrative that's strictly personal to our two lead characters. I will say it does get a bit shakey towards the end (definitely some things I would have cut) but overall it was effective and hit the right emotional notes.

The universe building segments were a pleasant surprise, I could honestly see them fleshing that out into a full on short mini game because getting to combine elements and see what kind of speculative sci-fi universe came out of it was a lot of fun.

Took me about 4.5 hours to complete and while I did miss a few achievements, they were mostly minor cosmetic things so I did feel like I saw everything I needed to. Strong recommendation if you're into graphic novels or sci-fi literature, I think this one is a gem.

The art is what attracted me to this game and that was definitely the highlight but the game was pretty good too. Interesting blend of an idle game and an rpg, it seemed very simple at first but as it went on it developed a level of complexity I didn't expect and the final few encounters made me sweat.

Was taken a bit aback by how quickly I reached the credits though because the base storyline is very short for the price point ($30 on Steam). The post-game seems to be built around the idea of using a basic programming language to automate gameplay to grind out items and experience so I can tackle more difficult areas which is... not my idea of fun so I probably won't be doing that, but it seems neat and I did have fun with what I did play.

Weird game, which like, look I'm not a stranger to playing a weird game but there has to be a direction to the weirdness and this didn't have that. I don't think this game really knew what it was trying to say? They were just kind of rambling in search of a point. There were a lot of /signifiers/ that there were deeper themes but none of them actually ever connected together or lead to anything, they were just kind of elements that got repeated. Nothing actually happened, nothing was developed, you just kind of... found the objects and then it ended.

I wound up checking out the company's website just to see what else they'd done and apparently their main thing is "helping companies develop worlds," which didn't surprise me at all because this whole game felt like they had the idea of what this world was but lacked the actual writing/game development skills to communicate it in any meaningful way. What DID surprise me was that apparently one of the devs was actually in Puppeteers for America because (as someone who has trained with puppets) the puppet work in this was kinda atrocious.

Points for uniqueness though and the art of the hidden object portions was actually quite good- shoutout to Savanna Judd who did the illustrations, by far the MVP of this game. Just look at her portfolio instead of playing this: https://heartslob.com/

Shoutout to unconventional games about the trans experience with weird graphics, gotta be one of my favorite genders.

A cutting little story... I guess I'd call it a cautionary tale, in a way? The game was harsh but it rang true to events we see happen often in the queer community, which should be a place of beauty but is unfortunately sandbagged down with so much pain. The dissonance between the cutesy Y2K web chat aesthetic and the tragic events depicted worked well to highlight this, showing that deep pain and darkness can lurk beneath us even when we try to present a bright face to the world. We have to try to be stronger, even a little bit, every day.

"god... they're all just children. all of them out there. very lucky... very sheltered children... they don't know how bad things could get."

A very "intelligently" designed game, for better and for worse!

It's interesting because at first glance you'd think that the game would be like a sandbox (it literally takes place in one) where you can use the many tools at your disposal to come up with all kinds of solutions to the puzzles, but in actuality pretty much every puzzle has such a tight design that deviating even slightly from the intended solution will result in failure. BUT the solutions themselves are very clever in how they use the mechanics/environments and it's impressive how much mileage the game gets out of relatively simple physics. Almost too clever at times actually- there is 0% chance I would have come up with some of the things the game was expecting me to do without a guide- but I felt very smart whenever I did manage to figure something out for myself!

Was surprised by how nothing the story was though... like I wasn't expecting it to be life changing or anything like that but it somehow managed to fumble the little that was there. Also the humor was VERY dated, like, some of these references were deep cuts. But the game was way more about the mechanics than anything else though, so, whatever! It handled well and that was the important thing.

Love this artist and have been following this project for a while now and I think the final game is... cute!

It has a great look and sound to it, the creator really understood the aesthetic that they were going for and they nailed it. Every world was unique and creative, paying homage to classic stage design archetypes while still offering fresh twists and neat storylines. The game's overall plot was very simple but I think that was a positive because it suited the childish nature of it all.

My favorite level was the first forest level, which felt the most charming and well-put together, but my favorite character was definitely the giant ship, which I thought that was such a clever idea. The presentation of the frozen palace was impressive too but sadly the world itself was my least favorite to play, and I don't want to spoil the final area but there were some baffling design choices in it that made it incredibly difficult to navigate at times.

In this vein, the collect-a-thon aspects were hit or miss- I like the idea that every world could be completed without needing the upgrades, but sometimes this meant that the solutions wound up being a bit overly complicated. Like they're the kind of solutions that a game dev who's thinking about the game holistically would jump to, but a player just playing it wouldn't. In particular I think of one puzzle that involved carrying an item unique to the second world to the fourth world rather than just like... putting an instance of that item in the fourth world to begin with.

That said, the puzzles that relied more on observing the world around me and probing it for secrets were fun! I wasn't interested in getting 100% but it was always a blast to uncover some new nook or cranny, and the hint system was helpful.

A lot of the other reviews mention the movement being off and sadly I have to agree- it's far clunkier than it thinks it is, which is a problem because the only way to build up speed is with momentum that you're rarely going to find since you have to keep awkwardly stopping. The biggest issue for me was the weird height of the default jump, which was rarely enough to get over even the shortest ledges in the game so I spent a LOT of time fumbling around trying to get one of the other jumps options to work. It's not a dealbreaker but it felt like the ratio of skill floor to skill ceiling was weird.

I will specifically mention the final boss though, which sadly kinda sucked. Like I got the idea of what they were going for but actually playing it felt awful- an excellent example of the "your punishment for failing is now you have to play this again" phenomenon that plagues gaming.

I feel like I spent a lot of time ragging on this game but honestly I did like it, it's just easier to point out the flaws than the positives. Even though there were some hiccups with the presentation I think it did exactly what it set out to do, which was be the cute little N64 throwback platformer of your dreams.

It's fun! Fun fun fun! It's like, I don't even feel the need to really say anything about it because it speaks for itself. Look at that art, hear that music, feel how it is to play; it's all delightful.

Kinda wish there were more side missions though- there are a few times in the game where you can help some of the robots, but these instances were very few and far between. The game is a lot about the power of friendship and wanting to make a change, so it would have been nice to have more opportunities to show compassion to the robots (who the game makes very clear are being heavily abused by the company) in between, um... smashing them.

The thing that impresses me most about this game is that every single element of it works in service of the message, which like, duh, that's how games are supposed to work, but this is the first time I've ever felt really aware of it. The gameplay and how it's structured sucked me into the world until I felt like WAS a small farmer living in this post collapse world... and once I was there, I understood what they were trying to tell me.

The actual farming simulator is bare bones, only a handful of crops to choose from and outside of planting/watering them there's not much to tending them, but it's not the most fun part of the game. It's the player's /job/, not their life. Ostensibly you're working to save up money for an elevator ticket to the moon, a place your character has a connection to I won't spoil, but they earn the money really quickly and could probably leave the town in like under a year. They won't though.

The real fun of the game comes from poking around town and getting to know the locals, who are a very well-developed cast of characters. The cutscenes involving them are unlocked simply by being in the right place at the right time- though you can give them items as well, but I'm unclear if this actually has any impact on your relationship with them (and I kind of prefer the ambiguity). These scenes are just ordinary situations like sitting on the porch sharing a drink with someone, but they're written with such charm and sincerity that they wind up being riveting to witness.

(I think I realized that they had me when I accidentally gave away an item worth 10,000 credits to an NPC and felt /happy/ about it because the two lines of dialogue he gave me meant more than the money would have.)

In particular, Before The Green Moon has one of the best written romances I've seen in any videogame... like there is genuine HEAT between these characters at times. I don't want to spoil anything but there was a scene where I just got to click to slowly walk towards someone and it somehow made me wanna melt inside. I would grow a million different vegetables just to make Elvis smile.

The amount of time you have to do things is just tight enough to force you to make choices- multiple times in the game I wound up being late for or even missing certain events I was looking forwards to because I had sunk too much time into my harvest. But this just made me value everything more because I really felt like I had earned it whenever I found the time to relax and explore.

Speaking of exploring, I loved the world of this game. The setting is like... post-apocalyptic, but in a soft way. The worldbuilding is subtle (mainly fleshed out through context clues in conversations with NPCs) but the game doesn't hide how hard your character's life was before this or what a sad state the rest of the world is in- but as you walk through your dilapidated little outpost and over exposed pipes and ruined buildings and see the way their edges have softened and grasses have begun to reclaim them for nature, it's hard not to feel like maybe the world is okay after all.

The art is scrumptious- it's far from realistic but it has a clear style and it does more to suck you into the world and make it feel truly otherworldly than more traditionally "good" graphics would. The world is awash with soft tones of greens, browns, and greys, which are easy on the eyes and contribute to the relaxed, rustic feel of the world, and the soundtrack is lovely as well.

It's a town where you could easily make a life for yourself, and that's what I did! After ten or so hours of playing I had made friends and settled into a routine that I was carrying out day after day. I had a loving partner, I knew what exactly I had to do every day, and it was peaceful.

But here's the thing: eventually, I ran out of things to do. I exhausted every cut scene, bought every item, and I was just be farming endless crops to collect tons of money I couldn't do anything with. At a certain point I had even stopped farming entirely and just spent my day running between various areas to try to make something happen, and I had to accept that buying the ticket to the moon and getting on the elevator was the only way to unlock new dialogues and cutscenes. And really, isn't that the point?

You'll never be able to see the full potential of the game, of the world, unless you're willing to make the decision to leave it. The characters have words for you that you'll never get to hear unless they're accompanied by a "goodbye." The ending /is/ a part of the story, and you can't deny it forever.

Or maybe you can! I'm marking the game as complete but I didn't technically beat the game because I didn't have the guts to get on the elevator... yet. I probably will at some point, but I like that it's my decision when to do so. Just let me be at peace for a little bit longer before I have to move on with life.

Also, just a hot tip for anyone who hasn't played the game, I know there are a bunch of references to baseball throughout the game but the developers said in an interview that it's all for a cut storyline so don't bother with it.