June 2023 Progress Report

Gather stray birds in an empty, ruined desert to form a flock and become its leader. With combined efforts, break strange contraptions and release the peculiar, magical gold dust inside to become human. Rescuing allies from their cages along the way, open doors and lead everyone to the Tower that sits in the eye in the raging storm in the hope to fly away and escape the tempest.

3-5 hours to complete, Vane is a beautiful game with no text, five chapters, two endings, architecture reminiscent of NaissancE, and an interesting storyline. The first level is a large, seemingly endless desert where you learn the flight controls and start to gather your flock to proceed to the next level and become human, with level area size becoming smaller as you proceed throughout the game. Flight controls were fine for me and easy to use once I got used to them, but unfortunately, Vane has a terrible camera system which many users are understandably frustrated with that has greatly affected its ratings. I sincerely wish more time was spent polishing the camera, as while it makes some fantastic screenshots, it’s not very fun to play super zoomed into your character sometimes. Regardless, I had a lovely time playing and I’ll likely play it again later, if the issue above was fixed, Vane would easily be rated as Overwhelmingly Positive.

Returning after a four-year absence away from a small mountain village in pursuit of a higher education in Tokyo, Kazuma comes back to his four childhood friends, Aoi, Nazuna, Tsubaki and Sumire. Excited to have him back, they all announce their romantic intentions and make plans to spend some time together. However, an incident occurs during an indecent game of hide-and-seek reveals that all four of your lovers are actually animals who have gained human form and are striving towards godhood. The god of the land is upset that a mere human knows their secrets, and should Kazuma not do good deeds, he will turn into a toad the morning after the next festival. With four pretty girls assisting you with your troubles, what could go wrong?

2-4 hours, Wild Romance is a harem VN with one, singular choice you can make that does not affect the ending. While the story is naturally thin and lacking for this… genre, the game isn’t actually as terrible as I anticipated. Despite situations where most things somehow devolved into intimacy, there is full voice acting, the art is beautiful, and the character designs + personalities for Aoi, Nazuna, Tsubaki and Sumire are cute and if you like this sort of thing, it’s an ok VN.

Some cons I will note is the abysmal looping background music. It’s not even thirty seconds long and you can automatically tell where the loop starts and ends, which means this game can be a bit painful to read. This becomes even worse once you realize the menu options are lacking and you can’t even turn it off. Additionally, sometimes character sprites physically get in the way of text. While this doesn’t make reading difficult, it’s a tad bit annoying this wasn’t fixed before release. Get during a sale if you must.

Two girls on opposites sides fighting for peace in a war that has lasted for centuries. Earth has been devastated, the surface is no longer livable, being either barren or flooded; the surviving population lives on floating capitals on the water’s surface or cities in the sky. The battle for survival is between the US-lead CFN, Russia-lead UCN, and terrorist organization Children of Fallen Nations. Fight both sides of this war and try to find peace- if it’s even possible anyway.

6-11 hours, Project Nimbus is a fully voiced high-speed ariel mech combat game with an incredible range of freedom and motion. You have three story modes, Campaign which has 26 missions and is your main storyline, Survival is an endless wave mode with 15 battle mechs and a lot of unexpected creativity, and Warfront gives you general missions such as base defense, base assault, interception, acquisition, and assassination missions with significantly more battle mechs to play with, I literally didn’t bother to count them. In addition to the number of mechs, there are a lot of weapons to play around with. Various types of missiles, battle drones, energy blades, energy beams, drills, and bullets with the gigantic maps and quick response times lets you do quick maneuvers to dodge incoming barrages. Chase, kite, dodge, and fly in any direction for your leisure. I genuinely had a fantastic time despite not being familiar with this type of mech based ariel gameplay.

Unfortunately, while the combat shines brilliantly the storyline, Campaign mode, is very firmly in its shadow. Some of the main storyline missions are similar and nonsensical. A couple times during the story, the world is in danger of being obliterated because your allies built something stupid dangerous, pointed it towards earth, and then watched it get hacked by a six-year-old and you happen to be the only battle frame in the area that can stop it. There were a lot of things going on in the end of the game I wish I could have said “wait, hold up, what is that, why does it exist, and what is genuinely going on here that lead to this unlikely situation.”

Despite its shortcoming, Project Nimbus is worth playing anyway because the combat was so genuinely fun. With multiple battle frames with different weapons and the huge variety of enemies, the combat never felt boring with how fast-paced it felt. Incoming missiles sending last second warnings and dodging those while sending your own barrage of ♥♥♥♥-off weapons to whatever enemy was unfortunate enough to get in your crosshair was hugely entertaining. If you play, expect to lose hours into Project Nimbus while barely feeling any time pass at all.

Marina is a girl who sets out on a journey to find Maravilla Island on the request of her grandfather for two reasons. First, to document the island and prove its mystical inhabitants exist, and second, to return something he took from Maravilla Island long, long ago. Armed with a camera and your grandfathers journal, photograph all the mysterious island natives, the beautiful biomes you find, and maybe some snapshots of that weirdly big deer that’s following you around.

2-3 hours to complete with 4 chapters, Maravilla island is a really cute and chill walking photography sim. A bit linear, it’s more like a guided tour rather than an open world. Graphically, it’s a bit mediocre due to the lack of any real textures, but due to the amount of work put into the environment objects barely show as a flat and uninteresting. A lot of screenshots came out looking pretty fantastic! My favorite biome is the bioluminescent area with the desert coming to a close second, without spoiling, it’s pretty clear Maravilla Island is a labor of love and a lot of work was put into the small things to make a bigger picture. There is a chapter selection if you want to backtrack, and a couple extra’s when you finish the game.