October 2025 report

Actually a very nice hidden object game! The story was enjoyable with a familiar feeling of well-known fairy tales. Both the puzzles and hidden object scenes were varied and of good quality. The backtracking isn't that apparent. There are in-game achievements and collectibles.
The bonus chapter is short and serves somehow as a sequel/prequel.

Also, you rescue a cute little lynx and keep it as your helpful companion - you can name it too!

Visual novel about a girl who gets to relive her last seven days to uncover the truth behind her death.

The game is set as a chamber drama with only four other characters, while one of them serves as narrator. During the seven days, we can visit our best friend, ex-boyfriend, or school doctor to learn more about our past. The choices we make influence our behaviour and through it the end we can get - good or evil. The true end opens after we acquire four items closely tied to our unfortunate future.

The art of characters and CGs is peculiar, strange-looking even, but at the same time, it has some appeal. The writing could be better, but as the story is pretty straightforward, it's not that problematic. Also, there are no happy endings. Japanese voices are a nice touch, although they are sometimes barely audible.
Even though it's an older visual novel and a little bit rough around the edges, I still enjoyed it - I may be biased as I played it maaaaaany years ago and have fond memories of it.

So, what to say and not to sound bitter… I came back to this game after almost 10 years - I put the game on hiatus in 2016. All I could remember about it was that it got rather hard… well, that was an understatement.

Road Not Taken is a roguelike puzzle game with charming visuals and frustratingly increasing difficulty. We play as a lone ranger rescuing lost children from a nearby forest after the end of every winter. The layout of the forest is randomly generated every year. The same goes for the number of children in need of rescue, the enemies, or puzzles. To successfully fulfill your duty, you need to bring home at least half of the missing children - especially helpful when the forest layout is extremely against you. The game ends when you survive for 15 years… then you die and start over as a new ranger.

There isn't much of a story to tell about… the whole game is concentrated on the children and how they bring joy and higher meaning to our lives… which is all true, but after a few hours of the same lines on this theme, it gets pretty boring. We can build a relationship with some of the villagers, and if everything goes right, i.e. we bring them what they like and don't court someone they don't like, we can even marry them. There is no real benefit in it though (except for an achievement) - they will live in your home and cry at your grave longer than others.
But getting friendly with everyone is a great way to gain items or knowledge about the forest, so go for it!

The gameplay in its core is quite simple - you need to navigate the "maze", find the children, and bring them to their parents (or the other way around). To progress, you need to open the rooms by bringing the required items to one pile - for example four trees, five stones, six moles… you do that by grabbing the item and throwing it where you want it - that's the ideal solution. There is a catch though - most of the items interact together (an axe thrown at a tree will create a log; two logs will create a fire; etc.), so you need to be extra careful what you lift up because you can't put it down! Some items can hurt you when you touch them, some animals can hurt you when getting close to them, some enemies will hunt you around the room and you can do nothing about them… with every year the amount of items in the room increases and as there are hundreds of combinations you can easily get into trouble by basically soft-locking yourself from progressing in the room.

The first five years are fun! Then the difficulty gets wild - the rooms are cluttered with items, sometimes there is basically no chance of moving without wasting half of your life energy on clearing the room, which is pointless, as you want to keep as much energy as you can because the next year you receive an addition of about 40% of the ending amount.

The game quickly turned from enjoyable to frustrating. There are too many item combinations that you are quickly overwhelmed by them. Collected items and buffs don't offer any serious advantage to make navigating the forest any easier. You can play the game on normal (which is apparently an easy mode) or on hard - considering how some of the rooms were almost unplayable on "easy", I can't even imagine what the hard difficulty looks like. Getting all of the achievements requires quite a lot of dedication and time.