The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Pre-message: Cara, I am not making fun of you. I’m trying to think about the nature of game design and how I take it for granted. Using two sticks is super hard.

Anyway, the point is, Cara came over this evening and attempted to play Portal 2 while I watched. As a very gamer type watching a non-gamer try to navigate Portal 2, it really makes me wonder about the method that games use to teach and the assumptions games make.

It’s interesting to me that Cara never seemed to really catch on that the game was feeding her how to beat it piece by piece. You learn one skill, then use it in conjunction with another skill in the next test chamber, and so on and so forth. She’d see each new situation and feel completely lost, even though there was only one additional element. Towards the end of the long play session, she was starting to get it a bit more, though. I saw her looking at the rooms and attempting to point out things she thought were features. “Is that one of those walls that pop out?” Things like that.
It kind of made me realize how much I automatically break down a game space like that into its component parts. There’s cover, there’s objective, there’s this, there’s that. I have to make myself step back to look at the game world as a world to explore, otherwise I’m immediately breaking it down into the points of interaction that are important to my goals. It never occurred to me how important that is. Maybe Cara would have done better in the original Portal, where things were much more clear about “these are the parts of the puzzle” than Portal 2, which is constantly showing you really cool environments and broken down locales in the early game. She approaches them like someone would approach an actual room that they walked into, instead of just an obstacle to solve. I wonder if there’s a way to make a game show you that’s the idea, more than Portal. I don’t really know.

Similarly, Cara had absolutely no concept of where her character was in the physical space without being in third person. Granted, Portal 2 is not great at showing you this, as you’re bouncing all around through portals, but even when she wasn’t doing intense shenanigans like that, she was fairly lost and unable to figure out where she had come from and where she was going.
It reminds me of an article I read part of or heard about or something like that? I think it was on Radio Lab. Anyway, there was a tribe of people with perfect navigation. They could navigate anywhere, even if they were taken somewhere blindfolded, with no issues. It turns out they had sort of a special sense where they could see a space they were in from the top down in their head, almost like a mini-map, wherever they were, and that sort of thing could be taught and passed down.
I feel like this is another thing video games have taught me, or at least something similar. I do tend to get lost the first time I go somewhere, but once I’ve been somewhere, I know how to find my way back and to that spot again using the same path. Thinking about it, that really must be an effect of the millions of hours of silly games I’ve played. It’s also a skill that basically every single game uses, and maybe takes for granted in its players.

Of course, there are other issues, like how difficult using a dual joystick controller is. (I’ve mentioned that before, and it does take practice for the uninitiated. I’m doing the best I can to give advice, but man, there’s nothing much one can say about it. It’s just about developing muscle memory.) She also was so focused on the game and trying to not suck at it that she spent all her time apologizing to me (not like I minded! I just wanted her to experience the game, because it’s fantastic, and I know she wants to get better at such controls.) that she sometimes missed all the AMAZING HUMOR in the game, which was a shame. I started kind of telling her to stop when people started talking. She also really liked Wheatly. So he’s universal!

Anyway, this is the results of my “study” which was actually just spending a nice evening with a friend. But, you know, also interesting in a study perspective. Or something.

Science.

Everyone on Talking Time and such could not shut up about Spiral Knights. Everyone seemed to be getting into this new free-to-play game that they were describing as a mix of an MMO and Zelda. I was really iffy, but after hearing that you plug in a controller to your PC, and it just works like a controller should, I was more willing to give the game a try, and made a free account.

The game is really fun, and a great way to waste half an hour.

The MMO part of the equation is really kind of PSO in style. You run through randomly-generated Zelda-like dungeons, only with more combat and less puzzles. Sometimes you’ll have to find keys, or hidden buttons to press in order to continue on, but it’s mostly combat scenarios and loot. You fight monsters of various attack alignments and difficulties, and then move on to the next random floor via an elevator. Each time you ride the elevator to a new floor of monsters and loot, it costs you 10 energy. Now, you only have 100 “normal” energy. This refills over time when you’re not playing the game, but it can’t stockpile more than 100, kind of like turns in KoL. You can, however, buy a different kind of energy with real money (or people can buy this energy from people wanting to trade it for in-game currency) that has no cap on how much you can hold. You can also use this micro-transaction energy to buy in-game perks, like having more weapon slots. I would be willing to do something like that (I’d love to have four weapon slots) but the problem is that you can only buy the privilege of having that slot for 30 days, not a permanent unlock. Will I be playing this game 30 days from now? Questionable, and the unlock is seriously only about a dollar of this for-pay currency, but I don’t like paying real money for in-game perks that aren’t permanent, so I’ll likely do without.

The game is really casual, but with some depth to it. I don’t know all the depth, really, but since your character does not level, your ability is completely based on your gear. Fighting with gear lets it gain “heat” which is basically gear experience, and you level up your weapons and armor as you go. You also collect various crafting materials, and one of the big parts of the game I haven’t really gotten into yet seems to involve acquiring recipes and materials to create the best weapons and armor in the game. There also seems to be a way you can manipulate what sorts of random dungeon stages come up by feeding elevators different types of crystals, but I don’t really understand it.
Luckily, I don’t have to get into it if I don’t want to. The game is great about partying you with randoms if you want every step of the way, and since the game is completely co-operative with no real way for one person to screw over a party (Loot is automatically rolled for randomly and distributed. Everyone gets any money or heat picked up. There’s no friendly fire, really. The only way someone could be an ass is by not playing, but it’s really easy to kick someone from your party, or just break from who you’re with, “go solo,” and continue.) it’s been a genuinely fun experience with the random people in the game. While there’s some strategy involved, it’s nothing more intense than a normal top-down Zelda game, so you can just hack away and not worry about having perfect timing or whatever. It’s solid, mindless fun, and since you can only play about two delves into the dungeon before you run out of energy for the day, it takes awhile to get old. I’ve been playing for a few days now and I’m not feeling like I’ve seen all the game has to offer yet.

If you like dungeon crawls, and have a gamepad on your PC, you really should give Spiral Knights a try. It’s free, doesn’t hassle you constantly to give them money, and is a really good time. If I was younger, I could see myself getting really, really into this. As is, I’ll probably only play it off and on for a few more weeks, but still, at the cost of free, it’s totally a worthwhile experience.

There are few one dollar iOS games I will not buy for a dollar with a recommendation. Lobst tweeted that NBA Jam was on sale over the Easter weekend, and so I immediately bought it. That is all it takes. iOS game makers, take note.

In any case, I’m not a sports fan or sports game fan, if you exclude golf games. I mean, I played NBA Jam back in the day. Didn’t everyone? And it was pretty fun, so I was willing to give the game another try for a dollar.

This new version is still fantastically fun. It’s ridiculous and unrealistic and that is exactly why it is enjoyable to play, even to people who don’t give a shit about sports like me. I mean, I assume a sports fan who likes crazy arcade action would like it. It has specific players, and sports teams, you know? So you can be your favorite. I just pick the team I feel is the silliest, but, you know, you could pick based on team allegiance. If you wanted. Or you can just pick the quick action option and the game will even pick the teams for you!

Even better, it controls extremely well. The virtual gamepad is fine. You can move around with no issue. What really works, though, are the virtual buttons. They smartly decided that the actions normally done with multiple simultaneous button presses would be done with slides. So if you want to turbo dunk, you hold down turbo, the just slide your finger up to the “shoot” button. To take a normal shot, you instead lift your finger and tap. This works flawlessly. It is a very smart adaptation to the interface and it plays very well.

The game doesn’t have all the features the console versions have, I don’t think. You can basically just play matches, and there is a very basic campaign mode where you take a team through beating every single team in the game. Still, for the sort of gaming you’d be having on an iPhone, that’s really all you need, and the base gameplay is intact and fun. It was totally worth a buck, and if you like Jam, this is a great version and worth your time.

Let me just describe a puzzle in Limbo to you right now. There is a rolling ladder, and a platform that is just out of reach of the rolling ladder. The ladder is on a little platform that is curved so when you move the ladder, it rolls back and forth until the momentum runs out. There is a switch you can pull to raise the platform enough to reach the platform you’re trying to go to, but it’s on the other side of the curved platform.
I glanced at this puzzle, and knew immediately how to solve it. Obviously I start the ladder rolling, flip the switch, jump onto the ladder, and let it roll to the other side so I can get to the platform. Simple.
I tried to do this for 10 minutes, failing again and again to get the timing right, before I said, “Fuck you, Limbo, I have better things to do than fight your stupid physics,” and sent it back to Gamefly.

I was really looking forward to the game. It got so much praise last year, and I do like puzzle platformers. There is plenty to potentially like about it. It certainly tries something interesting with its art style, and their completely wordless, just atmosphere storytelling style is done very well in places. However, the visuals get in the way of gameplay. Until I was told there were contrast settings, the art style made it impossible for me to see anything. Turning the brightness all the way up, it got a lot better, but it was still kind of iffy for no real reason. Similarly, the physics have that “indie game” feel where they function, but they obviously haven’t been playtested enough to be completely polished. You can do what you are needed to do with the controls, but not every time. That leads to many, many needless deaths and frustrations, and frankly, there’s nothing that can turn me off of a game more than when I know the solution in a puzzle-platformer, but can’t pull the moves off necessary to solve it.

If you enjoyed the game, awesome. However, it just really wasn’t for me, and I’m glad I rented the Limbo 3-Pack disc to try it instead of plunking down $15 on it. Indie game developers should keep doing their thing. I do what I can to support them when I can. But yeah, this… yeah. It’s just not an experience I really wanted to have.

An episode of You Don’t Know Jack is a precious thing. It’s funny. It’s entertaining. It’s interesting. The last thing I want to do is waste it by only experiencing it alone. Thus, I never play games of Jack on the 360 or otherwise without friends about. This, of course, limits my consumption considerably.

Because of this, in a way, I’m kind of glad that You Don’t Know Jack for iOS is a single-player affair. Finally, I can feel good about enjoying all the Jack I want without feeling like I’m ruining some theoretical future fun time with my friends on the couch. Sure, it would be better if it had some sort of multiplayer. For example, on the iPad only version, I don’t understand why two people couldn’t hold the sides of the iPad and buzz in by tapping on one side of the screen. And, sure, 20 episodes isn’t a huge amount of content, especially considering the ridiculous amount of game you can get on iOS for a buck nowadays. Still, it’s a blast, like Jack always is.

While iOS Jack uses all the same animations and question types (such as Who’s the Dummy? and Funky Trash) as the latest console and PC version of the game, the questions are all new. Cookie has recorded new jokes, dialog, and quips for every single episode, and thus every single one is a hilarious time. The demo calls the game “engorged with humor” and if you’ve ever played a Jack game before, you know that to be true. (Well, or you don’t like the game’s sense of humor, I guess, and already know you wouldn’t like this version.) The game plays just fine, of course. You’re simply tapping on answers instead of selecting them with a controller, and areas of the screen are denoted for situations like Dis or Dats. It’s not the sort of game you’re going to play without sitting down to commit to it, of course, because it just doesn’t work without being able to hear Cookie, but for a car ride, or just fucking around on your iDevice like I do, the game is fantastic.

I bought the HD version, which probably was a mistake. The leaderboards aren’t shared with the non-HD version, so I can’t compare scores with everyone else on Talking Time who’s playing, and let’s face it: Jack is just showing text, so it’s not really a better experience being slightly higher in definition. It also cost $2 more, but I don’t mind that, as Jellyvision deserves all my money forever, and I’m glad to pay them a bit extra. Still, if you’re going to get the game, grab the iPhone version. Not worth the premium if you aren’t out to support a favorite developer like I was.

I know Jellyvision is going to do this version of the game right. They’ll probably have paid and free episode updates, and I’m all for that. Hell, they already had a little “stealth” DLC update by having the demo have completely different questions than the full version. (So play the demo, if nothing else, dammit!) But basically, if you like trivia at all, buy this app. Then buy a second copy of the console reboot of the franchise. Then buy a copy on Steam. Do everything you can to get more Jack into the world. Because more Jack is a wonderful thing.

I guess this game came out. It’s called Portal 2 or something? People seem to think it’s a big deal.
That’s because it is, really. It’s fantastic.

I’ve beat the single player. I haven’t had a chance to dig into the multiplayer yet, but soon, I’m sure. Still, there’s no doubt about it: if you care about laughing, enjoying yourself, or video games as a medium, you need to play Portal 2 at some point. Maybe not now. Maybe when it drops in price. But you need to play the game on some platform at some point. Trust me on this.

I’m not going to discuss story or spoilers because, I dunno, I don’t need to. There are those things, but it’s mostly a vehicle for the humor in the game, which is top-notch. The game is constantly throwing funny dialog at you, and fresh dialog too. The horrible, run-into-the-ground memes from Portal are touched on in a way that indicates that they’re old school, stupid, and overused at this point. It’s cute, suitable, and way more effective than constant ref backs to those painfully overdone jokes would have been. This game is its own game, its own thing, and Valve still knows how to do humor in the best way, when they give it a try.

What really shines, to me, is the way that Valve is a master at setting up these puzzles. Everything feels extremely polished and well-designed, and you rarely feel at a loss for what to do and what you can do, even as things get extremely complicated. The game, much like it’s predecessor, is really, really great at teaching you the rules of the world organically so that it feels like you’re coming up with the tips and tricks yourself. They do this while still keeping everything feeling fresh. I never really felt like I was rehashing old territory ever in the game. Even the earlier “tutorials” that were teaching you about the basics of the game for people who didn’t play Portal were remixed from the original in interesting ways. It’s just almost a lesson in good game design. I can’t wait to listen to the commentary and see what they said about it. That probably will, straight up, be such a lesson.

I will admit, I got stuck twice, and sought help. Both times I was over-thinking the situation and missing a really easy maneuver that would solve my problems. I’m sure if I had taken a break, I could have solved it without help, though I appreciated being able to keep moving forward: the game is a fantastic ride.

Basically, Portal wasn’t a one-trick pony. This really is a full game worth your money. I’d be glad to have played just the single player, even without the lengthy co-op, honesty. But I’m also the sort who doesn’t worry much about length. (Plus I know the game is effectively twice as long, because I really want to hear the commentary and will run through it again for that.) Again, do what you think is right. Wait for a sale. Rent it for a weekend. Just put Portal 2 on your “to play” list, okay? Okay.

At this point, I’ve played an afternoon or so of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood multiplayer, and I just have to say, it was everything I hoped for.

A long time ago, I bought The Ship, because it sounded really cool. The idea of having one target you had to sneak around and kill sounded like a lot of fun, but in reality, it just didn’t work. Since the only people on the map were players, it was much safer just to kill everyone, even if they weren’t your target, in case they were gunning for you. There was no actual way to hide or be stealthy, because there was no way to mistake you for someone who wasn’t out to get you. It was a good idea, but a flawed execution.

Similar, Assassin’s Creed 2 did a lot of things right. You felt like a real badass when you stabbed someone, and you could really move about the world well, climbing over buildings and so on. However, needing to be stealthy always annoyed me. I’m just trying to get somewhere fast, why am I getting in trouble for running instead of moving at a snail’s pace? The game seemed to punish you for using the movement freedom it gave you by making you run about and avoid guards all the time. It annoyed me. What was the point of hiding from the stupid AI? Why is running a crime in Italy?

Brotherhood multiplayer is the best of both of these worlds. The way you have to stalk your targets works just how it should have in The Ship. The game world is populated with AI versions of all the players, who go about their daily lives. Thus, you really do have to check out each character, and see if they are acting “AI-like,” all while not blowing your cover as well. This gives you a reason to do all the cool things you can do in Assassin’s Creed. Blending in with crowds makes you go into AI routines, so you look like everyone else. Walking with a crowd makes you automatically follow the crowd in an AI-like way. You can scale buildings to give chase to your targets, or run away, but that is non-AI behavior, and is going to be noticed by other players who will react accordingly. Thus, it becomes less stupid that running tips people off to your presence.

Anyway, I love it. It’s a lot of fun. With Portal 2 waiting, I can see me never playing the single player of Brotherhood, and just playing more rounds of this from time to time when I need a break.

The main complaint I’ve heard about the multiplayer is how you can’t really do anything about who is hunting you. Personally, I think that works as it should. It dodges the “just kill everyone” thing that happens in The Ship. Attacking anyone, AI or player, who isn’t your target will turn out very badly for you. It keeps you focused on what the multiplayer is all about, which is stalking people. Yes, sometimes I found myself frustrated that my counter didn’t go off before I died, but for the most part, if I get killed, I just go “Ah, damn, should have paid more attention,” respawn, and keep going. Plus, I’ve unlocked the Smoke Bombs, and those totally let you fuck over pursuers that you see coming, but can’t stun. There are options.

Basically, the game forces you to play the game, which I don’t mind at all. Even if you’re bad at Brotherhood’s multiplayer, you’re still getting a worthwhile experience. Smart things, like having multiple people targeting players high on the leaderboard, and nearly nobody trying to kill lower ranking players, really helps make the game feel friendly if you aren’t doing well, and really intense, even if you’re playing a bunch of newbies who don’t know what they’re doing.

Anyway, it’s not perfect, but I am really, really impressed and wanting to play more. Even little touches, like the fact that your character moves about the city like an AI player until you tilt the stick when you respawn is just such a nice touch. I’m sure the experience will be even better in the inevitable Assassin’s Creed sequel, and I look forward to that too. But it’s just so refreshing to have a multiplayer versus mode that doesn’t feel like the same deathmatch bullshit over and over again. I love it.

I wonder where the luck/strategy threshold is for Essner.

So we played Acquire this evening, a game which has a strong random element to it. You draw tiles from a box that you can play on the board. Knowing what kind of connections you can make with tiles and guessing what various hotels your opponents are investing in are important to the game. When you know this, you’ll know what is going to buy out what, and thus what to invest in. Of course, you only know the moves possible from your hand. You don’t know what everyone else is drawing.

Essner seems to think this creates a game where there is no strategy to the moves and decisions you make, and someone just randomly wins. While luck does play a huge part, the idea that it’s only luck is verifiable as not true, which I think he would admit. It doesn’t change his gut reaction to the game, though, which is perfectly fair. A lot of the game can feel really random.

I just wonder where the line is for that kind of reaction, though. I mean, this is a guy who loves to play those coin push machines, and I feel like that’s almost completely random. Does he agree? Does he think there’s some small element of strategy in playing those games? I can’t speak for him, so I’m not sure. We play stuff like Magic, which has an obvious random element in card drawing, and other games with dice rolls and things of that nature, and he doesn’t really seem to think those are luck based, even though he always critically misses.

I don’t mean to pick on Essner. The other people I know who don’t like Acquire have the exact same feeling about it. I just wonder what it is about how the game goes that causes it to feel that way. Is it simply because you have to hedge your bets against many possible futures, and try to set up a situation where you can capitalize on most of them, as opposed to dealing with one threat in front of you?

This is what I am thinking about as I head to bed. What do you think of Acquire?

I’m all like, “Shit, I want to play more games on this expensive tablet I bought for games.” So I went looking for an excuse to buy a game. Hot Springs Story was on sale. Thus, I bought it.

As you might guess from the name, Hot Springs Story is another simulation game from the people who made the obscenely amazing Game Dev Story. Thus, when you look at the game, it looks pretty well exactly the same, and controls similarly, too. That’s a good thing, but it does force comparisons to the previous game, so I figure I’ll start there.

Game Dev Story is a much more fun premise to a western audience, I think. Running a Hot Springs Resort is fun enough, but not nearly as fun as creating your own ridiculously-named video games. With just a silly name on your games that you come up with, you really get to own your experience a bit more in Game Dev Story, and reliving the history of gaming, as consoles come out, is just a lot of fun.
That said, Game Dev Story was very static. Your office was your office. Hot Springs Story lets you build your facilities more like other sim games on PC. I don’t have a huge history with these games, but it reminds me of my short time with Roller Coaster Tycoon, where you are laying out facilities in a way to make customers walk past them, use them, and enjoy them. It feels like you are doing more in Hot Springs Story. I suppose that’s the main difference between the two games. Game Dev Story has a cooler premise and more ownership, while Hot Springs Story has meatier mechanics.

There are two main stats that every facility has in Hot Springs Story: Price and Popularity. Popularity rates how many people want to use your facilities, while Price rates how much money you get when they get used. Obviously, raising either raises your profits. Popularity can go up by placing other facilities near a place that work together. For example, putting a pachinko machine next to a hotel room is a bad idea, because it is very noisy and bothers your guests. However, putting a beautiful tree to give the room a better view, or a vending machine to have easy access to soda and snacks, makes the popularity of a hotel room go up. Price can go up by purchasing enhancement items. Buy some green tea to stock in your Vending Machine, and you can charge a premium for it, raising the price.

Similarly, your guests fall into many different categories, and want different things. Older customers like having easy access to a massage chair, while students enjoy access to a manga library to relax and read at. Every time a customer type is happy, they earn “XP.” Whenever a type of customer levels up, that type of customer is more likely to come and stay at your resort, and will bring more money to spend on extra activities, like eating at your restaurants. Some customer types must be unlocked by investing in local facilities outside of your resort. For example, if you want hikers to come and stay at your resort, you need to fund the city putting in a local hiking trail. (In a nice easter egg, you can even fund a local Game Development studio, and bring in programmers from Game Dev Story.) There are even VIP guests that you will have to impress to unlock new facilities. Impress the famous Beautician, for example, and she’ll let you open a branch of her famous Salon and Spa in your resort.

What I really think is the best part of the game, though, and gives it some legs, are the various tourism guides you can apply to. These work almost like special scenarios, and work to keep the game interesting after you’ve mastered how not to go bankrupt. Each guide prioritizes different things. For example, “Glamor Springs” caters to a female audience, so you have to adjust your resort to really please women in order to succeed there. Similarly, “Scenic Springs” wants only resorts with the best scenery, and you need to make sure your resort focuses on beauty more than function if you want to succeed there. In Game Dev Story, once you had the strategy, you had it: it was just a matter of grinding levels on your employees in order to succeed. These various guides give you alternate goals that give some replay value to the game, which is much appreciated.

While Game Dev Story is much more charming and draws you in more, Hot Springs Story really is a better game. It’s deeper, and has a level of replay value that Game Dev Story doesn’t. It’s a really fitting sequel to a great game. Game Dev Story may be the easy sell, but if you enjoy these sorts of business sim games, this is a really solid one, as far as I can tell. Give it a try.

A long time ago, I fell in love with a little game called Digital: A Love Story. Sure, it was a little cheesy, but it was creative, and it had its heart in the exact right place. Catching up on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, I found out the person who made it had created another little art game, called don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story, and Brer’s like “Oh yeah, should I have told you about that?” and I gave him a dirty look over the internet. Of course he should have. I immediately downloaded it and played it.

It’s solid, but didn’t blow me away (IGN.com) like Digital did.

One of the things that Digital really got me with was how everything about the game drew you into the setting. It really felt like I was actually at a computer in the old days, dialing into BBSes and such. It was really cool in that regard.
don’t take it personally, however, is trying to be a Japanese visual novel, and pulling that off. There’s already a level of removal there, since your character is not you, like it is in Digital. This means that the storytelling leans much more heavily on the writing. Now, I’m not going to say the writing is bad, because it isn’t. It’s pretty good. But there are moments where a character could have been more complete, or where a couple more editing passes could have made a sequence more eventful, and you’re more aware of it than you are in Digital because all you have is the text before you. This is especially apparent in the conclusion, which comes off seeming a bit heavy-handed. It’s a shame.

Still, the game does some really interesting things. The main conceit is that you are a teacher who, essentially, has access to all of the Facebook conversations, public and private, of all your students. As you’re having conversations and talking, little alerts will pop up in the corner, telling you new posts have been made. Looking at these will let you in on the secrets of these students’ lives, as well as what they’re thinking, as they’re updating while you talk to other people in the room. It’s an interesting way to keep one perspective, but also give us insight into the brains of the other characters. It’s also a really huge conceit: I didn’t believe for a second these students would use a service with a security hole like that. This is addressed to some extent in the final scene, but again, it’s a bit heavy-handed and I didn’t really like it.

As Rock, Paper, Shotgun pointed out, though, the game does an amazing job of simulating what it’s like to interact with people today. You’re constantly jumping from the conversation in game to the messages on the Facebook clone and back to the conversation and, on top of that, jumping to talking with people online as well while you play, if you’re like me. In that regard, the game is a bit engaging in that you really do simulate what you’re actually doing as you do it. Of course, the problem is that Mr. Rook, the character you play as, is a character very much out of your control, so that fact tends to tug you out just as these mechanics are tugging you in.

The game asks you to make some tough decisions, such as having a relationship with a student and how to give relationship advice to the many couples asking for help. The whole point is that you know more than you can say, because you can see their private chats, and it becomes up to you whether you use that knowledge or not. It’s an interesting idea, and the game has several branching paths, depending on what you chose. However, I just wasn’t interested enough to go back and replay to see them. What I chose felt right, as opposed to being decisions I should have made otherwise. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe all the decisions feel that way. I’m not sure. Still, it’s nice there are some branching paths.

Before I wrap up, I do have to mention the art. The art is… really weird. There are static images of the characters when they’re talking, but there are also occasionally a drawn scene thrown in to highlight action. These drawn scenes feel like they’re in the uncanny valley. They’re so close to the art style of the characters, but also just enough off that they seem incredibly creepy. I’m not sure if it was on purpose or what, but it was sort of unsettling.

If you hate the idea of a visual novel, this game will do absolutely nothing to make you like the genre. Still, if you liked Digital, you’ll probably enjoy it. It’s solidly built and I had a good time playing through it. It isn’t the next big art game, but it is totally worth your time. Give it a chance.