Little Goody Two Shoes - it was a such a mixed bag as I already posted in one Discord group. Imagine you have to eat in a restaurant for a week. You have 4 courses and a dessert but you have to eat them all. Courses are small but well made, you enjoy them. Little by little it’s a dessert time which is huge sundae cup. You are so excited and… you find a hair in it. Oh well it happens. You carefully continue and… another hair. Then broken nail… You don’t believe it but remember - you have to eat it. Tomorrow is groundhog day - small and enjoyable main courses, and huge dessert with all funny ingredients. And it goes around and around for a whole week.

If my terrible metaphor is not enough, lets expain a bit further. Game takes place during exactly one week, and every day is segmented into 6 time periods. They mostly consist of doing minigames, go on a date with a love interest or just moving the story forward. In minigames you earn cash (more the better you do) which you can spend on items that replenish your health, stamina or sanity. Story is fine, some funny dialogue and overall cozy atmosphere. The problem is the last 6th segment of the day, Witching Hour, which introduces actual gameplay - some puzzles and enemies. That should be great, game so far was basically glorified visual novel, but it is so poorly implemented, so cumbersome, annoying and frustrating with trial and error gameplay. I was enjoing every day for the most of the time, but dreaded the moment when I’ll have to play final part, and it pissed me off every single time. Game would be so much better without those parts, if they just sticked to ‘mostly visual novel’. I even thought of leaving a negative review on Steam, but decided against it because other half of the game is good. It was ideal candidate for a mixed review if Valve ever give us an option for that in the future.
Achievements

The Last Case of John Morley - this was a very short detective game and not a particularly good one. From the start it is obvious that it’s an indie game with a very limited budget. Unimpressive looks, bad facial animations and voice acting. But all that isn’t that important, I wasn’t expecting Frogwares Sherlock Holmes game after all. What is important however is that vast majority of the game is incredibly dark. I understand that it is the tone of the game, you are visiting old dusty manor and asylum, but you don’t need to slumb RBG values to all zeroes. You don’t see absolutely anything until you basically touch the wall or object with your nose, it was terrible. You have a lamp during some part but it doesn’t help much. It feels very cheap. I even managed to stuck myself in one place after falling from the stairs so I had to reload.

The story itself was not that bad, nothing to write home about, but serviceable. There is not much puzzles, maybe 2 or 3 in the whole game which are different from the regular find the key for locked doors or lock combination in the documents. Whole game is on-rails, you move into new area, find a locked door, find a key at the very end and return to unlock door and proceed to new room. There is no exploration or even thinking what is next to do at any point. What I must commend is the ending itself which caught me by surprise, can’t say that I expected it.
Achievements