Progress report: July/August ‘19 (a.k.a. Motivation Loss?)

New furniture is not going to be a thing this week… sigh. I sure love when people just do something unexpected like that without telling you. This week also somehow felt like I’ve lost motivation to play games. I was trying my hardest to play another game or two to have more to talk about for this week’s post, but I ended up only focusing a certain game I want to finish for this month’s theme. Luckily, this week I’m gonna be home alone, so I hope I’m gonna get a lot done. Not to mention I haven’t played a single HOG in a month! That’s blasphemy! (But you can still look at my ABC challenges here: General, Hidden Object Games, Point and Clicks, Visual Novels)

Here are this week’s kills:

• Jake's Love Story
  

  2.8 hours playtime

  12 of 12 achievements

• Pony Island
  

  5.1 hours playtime

  20 of 20 achievements

• Pursuing Susie
  

  1.2 hours playtime

  1816 of 1816 ach.

• Three Digits
  

  1.4 hours playtime

  14 of 14 achievements

• Whispering Willows
  

  4.5 hours playtime

  20 of 20 achievements

Jake’s Love Story - First creation of a national of mine, fairly new to the VN scene - Mikolaj Spychal, Jake’s Love Story is a very plain VN about two guys and two girls who become friends in their first year of high school and, as life goes on, have to go their separate ways after graduation. Over the course of those three years, you have to help Jake get closer to either Emma or Alice… or neither of them, if you don’t feel like dating. The art has a very textbook feel to it, but I like it that way. I appreciate that all the characters have at least one change of clothes - except Jake, for some reason. The music, as well as sound effects, compliment every event well. There isn’t anything else to note about this VN, except that I gave up on collecting all the CGs due to the only difference in them being Emma’s hairstyle and Alice’s glasses or lack thereof.

Pony Island - This is not a game about ponies. Insert your soul to continue. You’re an unnamed individual, tasked by Satan himself to play his creation. Will you obey? The very first time I tried playing this one, I completely disregarded the opening instructions to realize not too far into the game that I had made a mistake. Then I picked it up much later, using a proper mouse this time around and got really far, up until the level with Jesus in Act III. Seeing this month’s theme, I decided to take it on one last time… and I did even better than I thought I would! I was going to leave this as beaten and possibly never look at it again… but then I managed to not kill Jesus in exchange for the last ticket. Let’s just say that it was worth it.

Pursuing Susie - Man, I seriously don’t know what’s up with the people who make these VNs and their weird infatuation in regards to unhealthy lesbian lust. Pursuing Susie is Exactly What It Says On The Tin™ - one day, two girls in an open relationship make a new friend, Susie, and become incredibly attracted to her within moments; however, she keeps rejecting their advances, so they ultimately resort to drugging her and restraining her in a bedroom, which in time makes her relax and allow for a night full of furious lovemaking… and that’s how the VN ends. It’s pretty much on par with Hanae Novels’ creations, really. At least I got this one in a trade, as opposed to buying a cheap bundle.

Three Digits - The game’s in the name - your task is to pick random numbers from the ones presented in each level and mark them either green or red in a way that both the green sum and the red sum will match up. I, however, am not big on math, so when I noticed a full answer list, I decided to go with it and ended up finishing the game in a little over an hour.

Whispering Willows - It’s an incredibly lucky coincidence that I managed to hold off on completing this game until the new monthly theme came around - and since its state on my list matched the requirements, I decided to get back to it. (I previously abandoned it because I got stuck; turns out it didn’t take much to get “unstuck”, as it often seems to happen in games I play.) Whispering Willows puts you in control of Elena Elkhorn, a teenage girl looking for her dad at a mansion belonging to Wortham Willows, his employer. During her quest, Elena faces many strange and scary occurences; however, she is prepared to take them on. She possesses an amulet which allows her soul to separate itself from her body at will, which makes for a good mechanic. When taking control of Elena’s soul, you’ll be able to converse with ghosts haunting the mansion, squeeze through tight spaces and possess objects to move them. Gameplay is enjoyable for the most part; the game uses notes you can collect during the course of the game to tell its story, although it’s not as brutal as in Belladonna, where reading notes took more time than doing anything else in the game. Most puzzles are easy enough to be solved on the first try, except for the garden maze, where you will most likely die quite a few times before you’re done with it. The game’s horror aspect is based on spiritualism, which I found only semi-interesting. And last, but not least, I really like the art style! It’s highly reminiscent of your typical cartoon TV show and I wouldn’t mind watching such an adaptation of this game!

I know for a fact that quite a few assassins enjoy talking about other, non-Steam backlogs of theirs. Would any assassin reading my posts be interested if I did that too? (It would mostly concern VNs, as I don’t play lots of games outside Steam… or do much else, for that matter.) I’d like some feedback on that. See you next week!