Amitte

Progress report: October ‘23 (a.k.a. It Was Blood!)

…get it? Because it’s Spooktober? Ha, yeah, I know I’m funny.

This year’s Spooktober was particularly bland, as I didn’t get to any of the longer horror games that have been sitting in my backlog (Like my next Corpse Party game! Criminal, for a fan such as I!), and thus don’t consider myself sufficiently spooked. That being said, I’d like to think I played a wide enough assortment of smaller horror or Halloween-adjacent titles… so let’s jump bite in! that was a vampire joke

100 hidden rams - It was… okay, I guess.

Ann - Rong Rong is one of those creators I couldn’t tell you how I initially discovered (might have been his Danganronpa in a Nutshell animation, as unfortunate as that is), but when I learned he was releasing an RPGMaker horror game, an homage to the likes of Ib, Mad Father and The Witch’s House, I knew I had to play it. (I ended up playing it over two years after its release… but still.) Now that I’m done with it, my opinion’s mixed. The pixel art is gorgeous, the animated cutscenes are a nice touch and the music is good (though some tracks are louder than others, which was distracting), but the story is rather lacking. Many negative reviews are saying it’s blatantly ripping off Ib (which I can’t confirm or deny, as I’ve last watched a playthrough years and years ago), but I also noticed the influence of Corpse Party (all the way down to the soundbite that plays when a spirit appears). I want to say that that in itself isn’t really bad (well, maybe the degree to which it was “inspired” by Ib sounds bad), but the story definitely isn’t this game’s strongest suit. Coupled with the task of descending from the highest floor, which quickly reveals itself to be formulaic, I can see why people disliked this game. On the other hand, though, I can’t help but wonder how high the expectations are for such a short, free game (and the first one from its developer). I will say, though, that the spotty reliability of the autosave system annoyed me as well, especially on my way to the true ending. Why are you autosaving at the branch that leads to a different ending?! I’ve seen that one already!

Annie and the Art Gallery - As much as I was hoping to disagree with the negative reviews… this game really is a lot like Ann. There’s likely something profound to be said here about what is or isn’t merely an inspiration and how the influence of the previous work(s) dilutes the new ones so much so that they struggle to find their own voice… but I don’t think I’m qualified enough to be the one who says it, so I’ll just focus on talking about this game! You play as Annie, a girl who finally got a ticket to see the new art exhibit. There, she meets Brendan, the author of most, if not all, art being exhibited. He invites her to the back of the gallery… and that’s where it all kicks off. Trust me, you’ll be as taken aback as just about everyone else to learn, unprompted, that Annie has fire powers of unknown origin. While making your way through the secret corridors of the gallery, you’ll see the narrative get flipped on its head, though I can’t say I cared much for that part of the story (meaning I pretty much checked out halfway through the game). The writing could use some work - Annie reacts by saying “What the heck?” too often, which gets even worse considering the latest patch note has claimed to have “significantly reduced the amount of swearing”. The art is cute; with its thick outlines and general roundness, it’s hard to describe it as anything else than that. It’s also why I like the easter egg of paintings of characters from other games that have inspired this one; it’s essentially the dev doing fanart for all those games. After you beat the game, there’s a “hard mode” available, providing some more backstory… and that’s the reason I’ve still only beaten this game. Finding all the collectibles is one thing, that’s annoying enough all on its own, but… I just kept failing to dodge a bloody piece of paper that zooms around a certain room and kills you if you touch it (yes, really) and I wasn’t willing to bother at the moment. To sum it up, it’s a good game to play if you’ve already played all the RPGMaker greats (and Ann). I bet the extended backstory isn’t even freaking worth it.

Blameless - It only took me four years to stop being scared of the mere threat of a jumpscare! I spent almost half an hour trying to play this, then chickening out, because ooo, so spooky (lol). This is a story about a freelance architect who takes on a project and gets knocked out on its grounds. Who was the man in charge of the project? Why did he knock the main character out? Is there anything really being built? Well… the game ends before any kind of story can be established, but hey, I can finally say I played it!

Disturbed - I kept putting playing this one off for years now, but since it’s tagged as Horror, I figured I might as well play it for Spooktober and, well… the spookiest thing is how little story there is. You play as a nameless farmer, living in a world clearly tormented by some kind of plague, who finally decides to take action. Most of your choices are going to end in death, which I didn’t mind; on the contrary, that was the most entertaining part of it all. Then, there are two different ways in which you can truly finish your adventure. I’ll say, I wasn’t really into the actual story, so I just used a guide to get those two endings (and the last death one).

Ghost in the Pool - The first truly creepy VN of my Spooktober, Ghost in the Pool is a story of a certain high school in China, plagued by the rumor of one of its students having drowned in its indoor pool after using it at night during the holidays. Our heroine, Yaru, doesn’t really seem to believe it… or maybe she can’t let herself believe, depending on your choices. Either way, swimming is her one joy in life, so she wants to make sure she’s ready for her next competition. Is there any truth to the rumor? And if so, what is it like? That’s for you to discover! I liked the comic art style and the detail with which the many things that were “off” were portrayed, as well as the soundtrack, even though at times it was too sparse for my liking. The “gamification” of this story, which is officially stated to have been released as a comic already, however, is very apparent. The only thing the scene exploration gimmick gives the player is a bunch of flavor text, which may have been a nice touch for players who already know the comic, but if so, why not just translate the comic? The game also runs on an engine I don’t recognize, which means that despite having some QoL stuff that other (cough made in Unity cough) modern VNs don’t have, such as a backlog and a flowchart, it’s not as comfortable to play as it would have been, had it been made using an engine built for VNs.

Home - I’ll be honest: this is the third platform I bought this game for, and with its three different endings (each of which requires playing the game in full, mind you), I would have completed this game, what, nine times now? It’s a little much, so when I noticed that someone’s made a guide on how to edit your save file to place yourself right before the ending, I got right on it… except I still didn’t get one of the achievements that requires a trigger which happens earlier in the story, so now I’m kinda stuck, because I don’t want to play this game anymore, but I don’t know how to edit the variables to find myself right before that trigger (trust me, I tried). The game’s just not worth all this trouble.

Incredible Dracula: Chasing Love Collector’s Edition - I started this on a whim years ago (not even on October! how dare I?!), and thought to finally sit down and play it in full. I haven’t played a clear-the-road game in a while, so some of these complaints might be unreasonable. First, the setup to the story kinda stinks. “Dracula just wanted to date a hot vampire countess, but a fat, ugly princess started chasing him instead!” That’s the kind of joke people would have laughed at twenty years ago. Thankfully, that fades into the background quickly enough, as pretty much every new level, there’s a different character asking Dracula for a favor and he’s always just as, if not more annoyed than before to have to go through with it if he wants to continue with his adventure. I played on Casual/Relaxed difficulty, as I always do, and I’m glad to have been late to this game, as apparently, achievements were locked on that difficulty for some time after the initial launch. As for the gameplay… I think the queueing is better than in other games? While some put the cap at three or five actions, here you can technically queue as many actions as you want, as long as the path to them isn’t blocked. Your minions walk and work rather slowly, and maybe it’s just my luck, but most times I used the time-limited booster, I felt it lasted for a rather short time (and thus didn’t let me get much done). Eventually, permanent speed boosts are unlocked… but you can only have one or the other on at any given time. Why? Why do I have to keep swapping the moment the minions start doing something else? There’s plenty of space on the screen! Same thing with the boosts that yield an additional piece of wood/stone after removing wood/stone obstacles. With all the switching you have to do on the fly, I’m convinced this game is a nightmare on any of the higher difficulties. One of the chargeable boosts that eventually unlocks is a single-use automatic level up for all buildings, which is super useful, as the requirements for upgrading buildings to level 3 get ridiculous, but I felt it unlocked too late. Even when doing my best to use all boosters to my advantage and not leave much empty air between actions, I guess I wouldn’t be good enough for this game on higher difficulties, as right before ending many of the later levels, I was stuck waiting to collect enough of a resource (cough tools cough) needed to unlock the final thing. I would think that’s one thing you don’t want to experience in this type of game, because it absolutely kills the momentum and doesn’t make you feel like you’ve upgraded at all, but oh well. Last, but not least, gold. At some point, you get the ability to synthesize stone into gold (especially useful if there’s no bank in a level). This was a nice way to get a bunch of gold quickly, but… the achievement for collecting 5k units of gold is still locked… I completed the bonus adventure and it’s still locked… I could have sworn I changed all the stone into gold near the end of most, if not all levels since I got the ability to do it, how much more can I be missing? As it turns out, I had to sit in a level for about an hour and a half (just about as much time as it would take me to complete five new levels earlier) to get enough gold for it to unlock. I couldn’t give you the exact amount, ‘cause eventually I got bored enough to play the level until completion, but it must have been about a thousand units, if not more. Call me lazy… but I think that’s crazy.

Interactive Horror Stories - A collection of seven short horror stories from a single author, though I’m honestly not sure it needed the video game treatment. There is no real reason these wouldn’t work as a blog post one could jump back and forth on, until “Ouija”, where you get to interact with an ouija board for a bit; thing is, that’s the very last story, and unless you were reading them out of order, you might not even get to it if you’re a particularly fussy reader. Other than that, the game has sparse visuals and sound effects, as well as no BGM. The stories themselves are unable to instill any kind of genuine fear because they overexplain the mundane and underexplain the supernatural. With some more practice, and a better translation, perhaps the author will improve. Another important thing to mention is the lack of content warnings; writing quality aside, there is no way to be prepared for what’s to come. (My personal worst offender is in After Funeral - the ghost of your beloved son makes contact with you, asking for you to resurrect him, but if you don’t cooperate… he says he’s going to rape your passed wife? The same one who passed while giving birth to him? Presumably, he reacts like that, because your lack of trust makes him turn evil in the blink of an eye, but still, it’s tone-deaf, disgusting and absolutely uncalled for.) There’s also Evil Beneath the Ground, a story featuring maybe the worst fictional vampire I’ve ever witnessed. (Why does he have to behave like a serial killer?! Vampires have a bunch of cool powers they can use to their advantage!) But yeah, I consider myself lucky enough that I don’t have any trauma per se, but I am all for turning people away from works that could make them remember their own trauma.

Itchy Scratchy - Well… I managed to play it three times in the span of three minutes, so that’s something. It may be worth mentioning that despite being described as a “shock” title on its store page, this game doesn’t contain any jumpscares or realistic violence. The dev sets you up for disappointment, saying the duration of the game “will leave you dissatisfied”, so… yeah, it’s hard to say anything else about it.

Let’s Split Up - I decided to play this one because it had the Horror tag on VNDB. Well, turns out it doesn’t play that big of a role in the whole game, but since only one person had rated it before and cared to give it some tags, there wasn’t anyone to say otherwise. Still, this might be one of the better games I’ve played this month. In Let’s Split Up, you play as Iris, who is currently on her way to a beach vacation with her boyfriend Brad, her best friend Gemma, and Gemma’s boyfriend, Chris. After driving up a mountain, their car breaks down and suddenly, they’re stuck in Luna Mountain - a mysterious, seemingly abandoned town… or is it? The main characters decide to do the one thing you should never do in a situation they’re in - split up! - and that’s where the story really starts. The game is advertised to have a whopping 24 endings, which may seem daunting at first, but after reaching my first ending, I realized it’s really not that many. Why, you might ask? It’s because Let’s Split Up doesn’t take anything seriously. It’s a delightfully tropey romp, where your choices change the story on the fly. Did you have fun spending time with Chris instead of Brad? Watch out, Brad might say the same about him and Gemma. Did you abandon Gemma and Chris on the run from a mysterious shadowy figure? Don’t worry, they’ll turn it around on you. Think you found a nice place to stay until you can figure out why your car is broken? Think again! Or don’t, since the house magically keeps giving you everything you need to survive. These are just a few of the wacky scenarios you can put these four in. I can’t lie, I loved every bit of it. Let’s Split Up may not have shaken the world of gaming (or even just VNs), but it did what it set out to do amazingly. To top it off, it’s got some good music and an art style that really stands out - something that would probably remind most people of a kid’s drawings, yet so detailed and consistent (the characters’ crazy faces are something else). I realize that the comparison to “child” drawings sounds like a jab rather than a compliment, but I do mean it to be a positive; it’s stood out to me because of that ever since I got it, and it likely will continue to do so years later. Oh, and there’s also a handy guide that comes with the game! I could have saved myself from trying to make one if I had remembered that. The two small things that happened while I played this could probably be easily fixed, if the devs cared to do so: first, do not launch this game at full volume. It is ear-splittingly loud by default, for reasons unknown. Nobody is talking about it in the discussions though, so I can’t say whether that’s just my problem or not. Second, for some reason this game contains no rollback to title screen, so after you get an ending, you’re forced to close the game and launch it again to play more, so expect to annoy that one friend with constant pop-ups about how you just can’t stop playing this one game, for some reason! So, if you know what you’re getting into… dare I say it’s a… hidden gem?

My Friend is a Raven - This game could not have been less user-friendly if it tried. The moment I launched it, it was running at only a few frames per second, which is never a good sign. Setting the graphics to Low yielded twenty-something FPS, but then the game crashed a minute or two later. After a few more tries, I gave up. Then, I figured I might as well try running it on another PC, and although the performance problem was the same, sans the crashing, that is why I am now able to say I completed this game. The story? A mysterious, plague mask-donning man wishes to converse with his raven friend, one last time. Depending on how much you explore before walking out onto the balcony, their encounter can play out in four different ways. There is one review, which may seem out of left field, especially considering that the author does not elaborate further past their initial analysis, but having made a similarly outlandish comparison in my Japanese literature class, I can’t help but see where it came from. As for the developer, they made Choo-Choo Charles, so in terms of horror games, I guess they’re off to bigger and better (?) pastures. It seems I’ve wishlisted their other two free games, though, so who knows…?

PARADISE CLEANING -Sister x Slaves- - Denizens of BLAEO, rejoice, for I have finished the PARADISE CLEANING franchise! This one is, uh… to be honest, I tuned out while playing it. I like the artistic choice of making the characters’ eyelashes a bundle of messy lines. Other than that, it’s just a supplement to another machine-translated VN from the same studio (they’re not even bothered enough to change the main menu image after the game actually releases). And now, yet another game is set to come out in “English”, so time will tell if this is really, truly over… [Edit: It’s not.]

PROJECT: Halloween - A VN-style monologue of an AI created to ensure that everybody enjoys Halloween (Poland could sure loosen up about it). Despite being a game jam creation, it’s fully voiced (and even includes an ending song!), which is rare for indie VNs as it is. My problem, especially considering how recently I realized its importance to me personally, is the character’s generic hairstyle. You showed a bunch of concept art in the credits, half of those hairstyles would have been much more memorable!

Serena - It’s really hard for me to have any kind of opinion on this game that isn’t influenced by the technical side of things. This game doesn’t feature any kind of settings screen or any other menu, so the moment you launch it, you’re thrown right into the story… which would be okay, if the game knew to adapt to the device it’s being played on. Instead, you might lose all your progress at any time by pressing Esc (‘cause no one told you that’s what it’d do!) or get stuck at one point, because the game can’t account for your screen resolution? Then, digging around the forums will bring you to a topic or two where the dev himself is explaining to players how to make the game launch in windowed mode (by modifying a text file), in hopes that works. Well, it didn’t work for me. I’m just glad I had another laptop to try this out on - it worked there. Now, I can finally say I played it. Can’t say it was worth all that trouble, though. (Unless, maybe, you like PushingUpRoses - she voices the titular Serena!)

Suspicious Downpour - A 48-hour game jam creation that promises “a short comedy horror experience” and sure enough, it delivers. Don’t expect to bust your gut laughing, though. (This sounds mean - I didn’t dislike it!)

TELEFORUM - A neat little analog horror (I’m hip with the trends, I swear!) that I managed to get to relatively early (Like, a week after release! That’s early enough, right?) and… well, I didn’t expect it to be a visual novel. For once, maybe I’m not terribly mad that it wasn’t created in a dedicated engine, because it looks great and plays smoothly, no complaints to be had. The real problem is that my first playthrough took about 25 minutes, and I couldn’t believe that’s how short the game was. So I played it again, because there had got to have been more to this, and to some extent, there was! O-kay… I’ve exhausted most choices, played the game twice, but still only have half of the achievements… so I pushed through the third time, and at that point, I was only really getting flavor text. After that, I peeked at a guide and as it turned out, I was only missing some miscellaneous stuff here and there. One of the achievements is awarded for playing the game for 2 hours, with a description that - stop me if I sound crazy - makes a classy jab at Steam’s return policy, and it is most likely this achievement that will cap off your journey through this game, as it would have mine, had I not made a mistake while going for the one annoying achievement that I missed along the way. All in all, I loved the setup, but I’m sad to say nothing really comes out of it - after half an hour of investigative work, the game just… ends. It’s as if the devs were told “go girl, give us nothing!” and took it as a challenge. It’s about as terrifying as The Blair Witch Project, if viewed nowadays.

The Fan - The Fan is… not an FMV, first of all, so if anyone told you that: I am sorry, you were lied to. It’s more of a point-and-click, I suppose; one about “The Fan”, a serial killer who has recently kidnapped another victim. What’s more intriguing is that you’re not placed in the shoes of the victim, but the killer. To me, the game ended just as it seemed to be picking up; in the first two chapters, you’re tasked with collecting significant items from the victim’s house, then her fiancee’s house, and then, just when you think something deeply fetishistic and utterly repulsive is going to happen… the game just ends. That being said, the set design is repulsive and gruesome enough by itself, which becomes insulting upon realization that most of it is just that - set dressing, environmental storytelling devoid of a story one couldn’t deduce from the premise alone. While close-up shots of many of the random items that serve no real purpose are less than ideal, the few shots of the victim being actively abused look rather realistic, to the point that I’m glad for the credits, lest we’d think this was a game-ified account of a true hostage situation. That being said, I still find it worrisome that this game was able to launch thanks to Steam Greenlight…

The Grandfather - The world is full of stories that employ metaphors so obvious anyone could understand them. Less so, stories that employ less obvious ones, which, in turn, encourage consumers to analyze the text and share their thoughts with others. Then, there’s just stories that are absolute nonsense, lacking even the tiniest sliver of entertainment or even engagement. To me, The Grandfather is one of those stories. Maybe the real story is not “that deep” or anything, but because it is obfuscated by a crude art style and obtuse puzzles, I was not on board. Additionally, I find it insulting that there’s a “DLC” containing just the story copied from the game (not even an explanation of anything) and the still images from the game (“wallpapers”; yeah, right). This game became free for a reason.

Witch College - The one thing that motivated me to play this now, instead of who-knows-when, was the promise of a witch girl (and a Halloween school dance, I guess). Both of these things turned out to be neatly hidden behind the most generic, anime-influenced story possible about a nice guy who’s the only relevant male character, as all the women love him for little to no reason. (Did I mention he’s nice?) The whole mystery of “who’s the witch?” is basically nonexistent; the game desperately tries to convince you it’s one of the girls, so it’s that much more obvious it’s actually the other one. The sex scenes in this 30 minute long VN come out of nowhere and feel more like the devs are checking off a box than anything else; they’re not even worth sliding your pants down for. The only reason I spent almost 2 hours on this game was that after getting both endings in the main game and reading both bonus stories (the main character had to bone all the women in the game, trust me), I was led to believe there should be something more, considering that the CG gallery still had a page and a half that were left blank. Because there are no guides for this game anywhere, I choose to assume that it’s a programming mistake nobody bothered to fix. Speaking of which, these devs get a “poo-poo” rating from me for using a less-standardized engine (and therefore, bad). Fix the CG gallery! Fix the random freezing! Fix the unskippable credits! Who am I kidding? They’ve long since moved on from this.

And now, I shall be moving on from this. See you next month! :)

6 months ago 2 comments
devonrv

The Fan is… not an FMV

FMV just means Full Motion Video; no game can “be” an FMV because FMV isn’t a video game genre. In other words, it’s accurate for that game to have the FMV tag because it’s a point-and-click adventure with full-motion video. What did you think it meant? Quick-time events?

6 months ago
Amitte

Uh, what? It’s literally the furthest thing it could be from an FMV while looking like it could be one. It’s neither reminiscent of the old ones, such as Bad Mojo, Harvester or Phantasmagoria, nor is it similar to anything modern, such as Wales Interactive’s games. While all those games have, at the very least, enough FMV cutscenes to deserve the tag, The Fan just has a few short photo slideshows in the midst of all the point-and-clicking it takes to progress the story.

6 months ago