Dude… if you're gonna make a game about finding differences between images of landmarks that actually exist, you can use real photos of them.
Your game doesn't need to be made entirely with AI to count as slop.

A small flash game where you're in a master-slave relationship with your girlfriend. Though I'm not into BDSM, this was serviceable.
Despite offering an option to change her eye color, she always has blue eyes in her portrait and it's the only option that always resets in the customization menu.

A blend of point-and-click and RPG, Dark Fear seeks to recapture the magic of classic adventure games.
While for the most part an enjoyable experience - the story isn't anything groundbreaking; the fighting easy, yet satisfying - I found it bogged down by the need to hunt and/or fish to earn money for new equipment. Still, seeing as it only took me 4 hours to complete (and it could take even less if you're pixel-perfect during fights), I managed to get through it in one sitting.
It's an old SG win for me (one I wasn't too hot about, initially) and now, I wish I had played it earlier.

I think my play time for this one may not track correctly due to my internet connection nope-ing out…
Anyway, in this one, you're tasked with investigating the mystery of the Philosopher's Stone and the community built around its power, which your professor had been researching before he went missing.
One way Dark Heritage: Guardians of Hope definitely sets itself apart from the rest of Artifex Mundi's catalogue is the use of FMV sprites (as opposed to the usual 2D animated artwork), as well as some live action cutscenes. Hilarity ensues as none of the characters look what they sound like (or sound what they look like, whichever you prefer) and do not successfully convey much emotion in their faces (most of them are supposed to be traumatized by past events.) One of my pet peeves when it comes to HOGs is clicking into the same scene as before only to realize that the items I previously removed from it are back again and this game falls victim to it as well.
That being said, I think it made up for it well enough with its bonus chapter, which lets you explore part of the map, now rejuvenated after defeating the villain.

I first picked Deadly Premonition up right after completing D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die back in 2021… and never went anywhere with it. (If I had to guess, something broke on me and I wasn't interested in fixing it.)
When I picked it back up last October, I learned that you don't actually need all the graphical patches and other fixes that have been long prepackaged for download on the forums for the game to run fine… well, for the most part, anyway. After tinkering with various compatibility modes, backing up a dozen saves and experiencing multiple crashes, I can confidently say that Deadly Premonition is the best game you've never played ('cause you probably didn't care to get back into it after it started crashing, just like I did back then.)
If you've read anything about DP, you don't need me to tell you, but it borrows from Twin Peaks so heavily, it's like the homework meme. (I've never seen Twin Peaks, so this particular recommendation works in reverse for me.)
In hindsight, the solution to the mystery at hand seems rather obvious (though maybe that's because I was willing to spoil myself in favor of following a guide to avoid missing out on collectibles or side quests), but still, no spoilers here. And speaking of side quests, there are 50 (!) of them to find and complete all around Greenvale, which is a treat, as you get to spend a lot of time mingling with all the quirky residents.
Perhaps looking at a guide will betray this, but the reason most side quests are only available up to episode 3, chapter 18 is because that's when the investigation really picks up, to the point that it's pretty much on rails; I didn't think of that and because I didn't trust the game to save properly at… well, any point so deep into the story, I just kept going and hoo, boy, that ended up being one long play session. But it was all worth it!
It feels weird to be done with it now, after all the blueballing from watching multiple unfinished playthroughs before picking it up for myself. And also, because it's made its way into my favorites, this write-up is destined not to make sense.
Just keep in mind that SWERY has nothing to do with the PC port. And that there's an annoying amount of spelling mistakes and missing words throughout the script.
I've seen a lot of complaints about the sequel, but ever since I managed to get it on a deep sale, I've been growing more and more curious.
…until October, then?

This game tried to innovate by not launching properly for me on the first try. (lol)
I like the… well… doodle-like art style. The celebratory music was really nice, too.

Bought this one just before the dev removed it… and you know what? I get it. They don't think the writing measures up anymore and they've changed their characters somewhat since the game has first released. Their art style looks messy, though I assume that's not due to lack of skill.
The backgrounds are all photographs with a halftone filter over them, which makes them hard on the eyes. The UI, as far as I'm aware, is the TyranoScript default and the soundtrack, though sparse, consists fully of royalty-free tracks.
The story… much is up in the air, I think. For close to an hour, you follow Perry, a self-harmer NEET who struggles with painful memories of his mother and her death. It's unclear how long he has been traumatized or unemployed and whether or not his trauma is the sole cause for his shut-in lifestyle. To say I didn't relate to him at all would be a lie, but for the most part, I don't share his experience and the metaphor used here - people becoming flesh creatures with no distinguishable features - was, to me, mostly obtuse.
Even though this game can now be officially declared abandoned, I can't help but be a stickler for consistency and/or tidiness, and so I think that the script could use an edit. Quite a few lines spill out of the text box and in Perry's case, "ahaha" and "lol" are used to indicate laughter interchangeably.
Even if a character uses a lot of slang or some alternate form of speech, I think they should be written consistently.

Why, oh, why would I ever play a game in which I have to control a cockroach? I don't know! But I did!
In a post-apocalyptic world, the two cockroaches, Jim and Bud, find a single blooming flower. To get to it, they go down to the bomb shelter (part of which they've started calling their home), fully intent on traversing its depths. As they meet other denizens, hijinks ensue. The big gimmick here is Jim's ability to walk on walls and ceilings, with the perspective shifting to accommodate for it. This is utilized a fair deal, so I've seen a fair amount of players say they've gotten seriously nauseous from it; if you're prone to nausea, you might want to watch out for that. Despite the game not having any dialogue (which, if you know me, you know I hate), I'm pleased to say I got through most of it without any hints.
Now I just have to get the leftover miscellaneous achievements for playing the game again, playing it in November, playing without saving or loading…

It's exactly what's being advertised on the Steam store; nothing more, nothing less. Short and straight to the point.

Just a story of a seemingly regular guy living in Russia who finds himself increasingly bothered by his downstairs neighbors watching TV very loudly.
Based on your choices, he can die, be declared insane or simply escape by moving back home to Finland.
Easily one of (if not the) stupidest horror games in my library; it's your usual Russian flavor of doomerism with a bonus shoddy minigame to make sure some players won't refund it. It's since been removed from the store - good riddance.

The 39 Steps is the first digital adaptation of the John Buchan novel, originally published in 1915.
In it, we follow Richard Hannay, who has just arrived in London after having made a satisfying amount of money as a mining engineer in Africa. Finding his life in England uneventful, he's just about ready to leave the country for good, when one of his neighbors, Franklin Scudder, knocks on his door in a panic. Hannay could not have known then how busy his life was about to become.
This particular adaptation spreads the story over 19 short chapters (I hadn't heard of the original novel before, and so am unclear as to whether or not this directly emulates the original structure), which makes it easy to read at your own pace and pop in and out of the game, should you want to do so. The painterly art style of the visuals is definitely nice to look at, although I wish the characters hadn't been portrayed as transparent sillhouettes. Considering the existence of the extras, which feature collectible cards with proper designs, the choice to not include them within the story seems inexplicable. As a voice acting enthusiast, I am also disappointed to say that only the dialogues are voiced. That being said, I found the acting itself consistently good.
What most intrigued me about this particular game is its attempt to innovate on the VN formula (the fact that it refuses to call itself a VN aside) by introducing a new control scheme. Drawing a clockwise circle with the mouse advances the text, while drawing one counter-clockwise returns to a previous textbox. Browsing the Steam forums will reveal that a surprising amount of people found this confusing (some, I would say, to the point of absurd), even broken, but I had not once had trouble with it, so I think it's safe to assume whatever may have been the issue has long since been fixed. Drawing with the mouse is also sparingly used as a way to make actions such as opening a door or flicking through a notebook interactive, which I can't be bothered to complain about; if you've played a Telltale game or a HOG, it's the same kind of effort.
As for my thoughts on the story… despite being a "man-on-the-run" narrative, I have to say I didn't find it all that thrilling. Personal tastes aside, I am fully intent on blaming this on its age. (It is, after all, 110 years old.)
That being said, considering it ranked below Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging in The Big Read back in 2003, I don't feel terribly bad about it.

Title means it was meant to be played in March. Literally nothing insightful to say about this one. The meows sound weird to me.

See A Few Days With Violette.

This one was decently challenging. Still, an understandably hard sell due to its fetish content.

A cute little 3D puzzle game where you get to unscramble city dioramas. Relaxing rather than challenging, as all you need to do is put all the pieces in predetermined positions, which you can check up on whenever you want. Pieces in correct positions lock in, saving the player from a potential headache, especially on later levels. If you're looking for something with more emphasis on creativity, this may not be the game for you, but I enjoyed it for what it was. I tried to do some memorizing myself, but the levels quickly grew in size, making it too much trial-and-error without help. After nine or so levels, I started using the Steam guide (only bringing up the in-game hint would have been too much work, but I still needed to do it on top of checking the guide) and I'm glad I did, since what initially seemed like a two hour game ended up taking five!

I knew I'd have to play this one soon when I noticed it's being advertised as a story inspired by Nancy Meyers' movies; I just watched Something's Gotta Give for the first time last month and found it decently enjoyable. Pardon my lack of familiarity with her other movies (I'm looking forward to rectifying that in the near future), but the similarities between Love in the Glen and Something's Gotta Give are only found in the "elite" and "stylish" setting, Dr Seiji Mimura looking like Dr Julian Mercer (as much as the art style allows, I suppose) and the age gap between the main character, Zoe and her new assistant, Michael, giving her pause (if only for a split second.)
I let myself have a bit of hope for this one precisely due to this comparison, but really, it's all standard Sapphire Dragon Productions proceedings.
Everything is small talk, which means no character gets any substantial development, but you're better off not wishing for development anyway because things always happen unusually fast. No character has their own distinct voice; they all say "cool" or "awesome" if they don't have anything else to contribute to their conversation partner, as if just changing the subject would imply they left them hanging. Still, there are some things that come out of nowhere, like Michael's confession about his preference for "cougars" (unprofessional at best, harassment at worst) or even the fact that, if you don't pursue him, he always ends up dead from a drunk driving accident. Speaking of romantic pursuit, if you don't feel like the game gives Zoe's initial relationship time to breathe, you definitely will not find any of the available paths to be satisfying, either. Everything just happens because the devs decided it's a romance, so it must.
Even though reading Sapphire Dragon Productions' VNs always reminds me why I'm not a writer in my own right, I have to ask… if you watched Something's Gotta Give and still can't figure out how to write a character at least half as charming as Dr Julian Mercer… what are we doing here?
Oh, and I guess there's also a dumb little match-3 minigame that simulates working. I can't even be mad about it, it practically plays itself half the time. I was more confused by the fact that too much skipping dimmed all the backgrounds, for some reason.
Only one more game from Sapphire Dragon Productions left to go in my backlog.

An old gift from my dear friend Saku; so old, in fact, that it has since been removed from the store and republished (I don't know whether anything has been changed in the republished version or not, as I own the original one.)
This is the story of You - no, not you as in you, the player - You, the thirty-year-old, perpetually sleep-deprived workaholic with a penchant for caffeine. It's not a Japanese name, either; he really is named "You", like the pronoun, and no one really questions it over the course of the game. It's an interesting enough premise, but as I've come to realize, sooner rather than later, it serves no real purpose. If you're European, male, in your thirties, a workaholic, a caffeine lover and often find yourself sleep-deprived, perhaps you'll find it easy to see yourself within You; of the qualities I listed, only one applies to me, and so if naming the main character You was supposed to be a point of confusion, to make me feel as if our identities are blending together… suffice it to say, it didn't work at all.
You's story is short, a mere three work days before his well-deserved vacation, but the truth about his life is spread across fourteen (!) different endings. Well, "the truth" is a stretch… he's sleep-deprived due to being a lucid dreamer, which would explain some of the inconsistencies within the story. He's also said to have some sort of a chronic illness, which is implied to be the reason for his miserable and stressed-out way of being. In one of the endings, it's revealed to have been misdiagnosed as physical, when it is actually mental, with the distress regarding You's condition being its main cause, which I found satisfactory, though I would have appreciated another ending where it remains physical and light is shed on what it is… but maybe that's just because I wanted to relate more.
Visually, My Name is You is very nice, emulating the look of an old silent movie (though I fail to see how that relates to the story.) The game is fully voiced in both Russian and English. I can't speak for the Russian voiceover, but the English VA has a pleasant voice and modulates his voice well enough to act out each and every character.
In the end, to me, the story of You remains confusing and unfinished… but the dev's later works have gotten more praise, so I'm looking forward to checking them out in the future.

Exactly What It Says On The Tin™️; after a drunken night out, you wake up in a stranger's bed and have to figure out the right way to proceed. By simply looking around her bedroom, you can figure out just enough to make her like you or too much for her to let you stay any longer than you already have. It's just one of those little games where referencing any particular event would be spoiling the fun. I don't know why, but the environmental storytelling does it for me in this game. I also love the rotoscoped animation (even if it does make skipping through previously seen text sluggish.) Looking forward to trying the dev's second game sometime in the future.

Travel to 1978, Italy and step into the shoes of Lella, a woman who one day decides to leave Rome and drive down the roads of the famous Via Aurelia. In this narrative adventure/driving game mashup, every playthrough lasts about 15-25 minutes and with sixteen different endings, there's a lot to see.
…but really, now. After my initial playthrough lasting, let's say, 25 minutes, each next one would be significantly shorter because I've already seen most of it. Heck, some playthroughs would last less than 10 minutes. To add insult to injury, if you get any new achievements at the end of a run, you have to quit the game altogether for the unlocks to trigger.
Eventually, it's not so much about the choices you make while talking as it is about your driving skills when it comes to unlocking the last few achievements. 15 minutes might not sound like a long time, but it's a painfully long amount of time to spend on a run that might not even come out right because you didn't drive the car fast enough. I'm nope-ing out for now because all that's left to do is stuff that can be failed way too easily.
(EDIT: I have now unlocked all of the achievements. Patience is key; feel free to ignore all the dialogue prompts and never let go of Space/Enter. Still wish dialogue choices were more important.)
I see the vision and the soundtrack slaps, but at the end of the day, I can't vouch for Wheels of Aurelia.

Yet another one of these. Rather melancholic BGM in this one, though apparently you can change it. There's also a brightness slider, which is nice. Achievement pop-ups block the remaining cat counter… which is not nice.

An updated NaNoRenO submission, Layover Lovers is almost Exactly What It Says On The Tin™️; two people meet for the first time and fall in love in just a few hours during a layover at an airport. It's a cute idea, but as it turns out, not compelling enough to play out twice in a row. Neither character has an interesting personality and the writing is painfully bland as well. My eyes ended up glazing over really fast.
The only takeaways from this one are that I wish I could be as kind as Dan, when Lucia notes how helpful it was that he stuck around for as long as necessary and that I would appreciate my own love interest stopping me from throwing away all my plans just to be with them.
That's supposed to be the bittersweet aspect of this story, but really, so far I've noticed I end up sacrificing everything I am if I think I've fallen in love.

A bit of an oldschool-style point-and-click accompanied by a colorful, psychedelic art style, Love Alone Death tells the… horribly mangled (somewhat ironically) story of four girls: Beth, Annette, Lilith and Dana. In some sort of a post-apocalyptic scenario where the world is practically devoid of people, you (as Beth) meet Annette, Lilith and Dana at some kind of a mall. After patching Annette up, you all take a rest, which leads to you learning that the girls live out their worst nightmares while sleeping. You have to help them wake up (either by solving the problem or killing the girl). Lastly, you all go to Dana's house, after she invites you to eat soup together. Here, you get the last chance to try and appeal to the girls (or not) before the soup is cooked and after you sit down to eat… well, that's when your level of affection with the girls comes into play, ultimately deciding your fate.
There are five different endings to arrive at here, which is a little much considering that the requirements for three of them are near identical. The art style is amazing, but perhaps a tad ill-fitted for a game - some interactable objects blend in with the backgrounds, possibly leaving players confused as for what to do next. Still, the worst offender is the writing. The story is surely meant to be cryptic, but on top of that, the awkward English translation is hard to read, making the game far more obtuse to players who aren't experiencing it in its original language. As much as I hated doing it, I ended up speeding through this game. On the bright side, the ending songs are surprisingly nice.

Up until now, I may have been the most zealous Sonic fan out there that hasn't actually engaged with any installment of the franchise. My friend Saku decided to fix that by challenging me to play a Sonic game this month, so I tricked her into playing The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog alongside me.
Being what I can only assume is a fully authorized fangame, it's nothing like any of the other games you've seen so far from the franchise, but that doesn't stop it from being an enjoyable experience throughout. Given its popularity, everything I want to say has likely already been said, so I'll only note that everything about its presentation is wonderful, from the art style, through the soundtrack, all the way down to the characterization. I haven't played a VN this good for years (but considering I'm sort of a bad game connoisseur, this checks out.)
The only faults I can find with this one are the inability to advance text with the Enter key and the lack of a backlog; these are presumably side effects of the game being made with an engine not designed purely for VN creation.
Looking forward to playing a mainline Sonic game one of these days!

Originally made for the "Unexpected Outcomes" game jam, WeightWare is a collection of minigames involving fat fetishism/feederism. Once again, not my kind of thing, but the minigames were decently challenging. There's only one more free game from this dev left to play… hopefully I'll still be able to escape the allegations after I do.

Abstract scenarios and complicated vocabulary does not a good game make. A shame, because this one looked great in the screenshots.
And what do you know, it's also been made using generative AI! That explains why the voice acting sounds so dodgy… complete with the couch's voice resembling the narrator of The Stanley Parable, Kevan Brighting himself.
A sad state of affairs. Avoid this one.

Also known simply as Dreamscapes 2, this is the sequel to a game I played a whopping four years ago. Laura can now wield some kind of power, which is why she's wearing a black cloak, all mysterious-like. You have to help her childhood friend-turned-husband, Tim, win the fight against Sandman, who is now penetrating his psyche and unleashing his worst nightmares onto him. It still looks ugly, the voice acting is still terrible, but at least it was short. Oh, and it doesn't have any Steam achievements, which made it even shorter and easier to blast through in one sitting.

This is, uhhh… not my kind of thing at all, but what can I say? "Can't pass up a free rhythm game", I suppose?

I said I'd be on the lookout for more of Kristi Jimenez's work and this one caught my attention right away. According to the author's note, Fling with a Tiefling was a byproduct of her fixation on Baldur's Gate 3, which explains it all.
You're Nox (name changeable), an adventurer lost in thought on the night before your last stop on the journey. You're promptly joined by Karrus, a Tiefling from your party whom you've been attracted to for some time now. After a short conversation about your feelings, you can choose how to confess to Karrus and how you'd like to spend your night with him.
I appreciate the "ace-friendly" ending, but even as an ace myself, I would have loved to see something more in the sexy ending.

They sure were hidden… in the winter… kind of.

A short point-and-click with a surrealist art style, reminiscent in presentation of Flash point-and-clicks made in the early aughts. The artist claims to have spent all her money making this game and getting it onto Steam, so I'd instinctively advertise the DLC for anyone interested… sadly, there's only one price point and it's a little much in my opinion. Oh well.

If you've played one of these games, you've played them all. Truth be told, I don't know what still keeps me coming back to them.
And with this one, I have to sit around and wait for the dev to maybe fix the stupid "play for 3 hours" achievement.

This one's an enjoyable casual experience where you swim around cleaning an ocean after a big bad company made a mess and packed up.
I like the art style; it reminds me of A Short Hike, but the name of the style itself escapes me.
I wish there wasn't a limit to your oxygen level, as that sucks all the fun out of the game. Even if I put down an oxygen ring, I kept getting lost in new areas and couldn't find it until after I ventured out a few times. Fast travel unlocking for an area only after you clean it doesn't make sense to me either.
I managed to beat the game before the end of the month, but I've still yet to discover all the loddle evolutions because I didn't feel like there was enough incentive to play with the loddles at any point.

A small demo for what we may or may not expect from the full game, Mirth Island.
You can talk to a single NPC and play a rhythm game with three songs and two difficulty levels available.
You can't, however, press three keys down at once during the rhythm game. Oh well.

Methinks Mizi isn't getting sprayed with water often enough.
This is like those levels in A Little to the Left where the cat makes a mess and you have to clean it up. At least here - thank god - the cat isn't actively messing with your progress. It's hardly a new concept, just with a (somewhat) new coat of paint, but still a good game to play if you're looking for something short (about an hour.)
Oh, and you'd think the owners would have learned not to buy so many ceramics if they don't intend to train their cat. Welp.

So this went free at some point for no apparent reason… yay, I guess?

A solid Muse Dash-style fangame for a streamer with ~30k subs on YouTube, featuring over 30 of her outfits and 18 community-adjacent songs. The soundtrack is a mix of slow and dynamic instrumental tracks, fan remixes and rap with menhera-type lyrics, all of which provide a steady rise in difficulty.
However, all of that was ultimately overshadowed by the existence of the "Top Bloke" achievement, which requires you to reach the top spot on the leaderboard for any song. It is, as of now, unobtainable, despite what the 24% unlock rate might suggest.
Why, you ask? Because someone named 'pppp' is at the top of the leaderboard for each and every song.
But who is 'pppp'? Oh, you know, I randomly opened one of the streamer's most recent VODs and they were right there, at the top of the chat window, from the very first seconds. So yeah, it's safe to assume they're a fan. That by itself wouldn't have been so bad, I don't have anything against the streamer herself… but check this out.
A day after the game (or at least its current version) released - yes, a single day after - a player courteously asked for the achievement to be removed, mentioning that the way it's programmed places you at a disadvantage if you start playing the game later.
What was the first response to their request? Simply "LOL". Who did it come from? One Dewkyshewt, who is also consistently near the top of the leaderboard.
In fact, if you check Dewkyshewt and pppp's stats for this game, you'll notice they both unlocked the Top Bloke achievement on April 30th, 2024 (the day of the release).
While I was having a good time gradually earning S ranks and perfecting the songs, I could also smell this bullshit coming from a mile away, so I started taking screenshots of my scores and leaderboard standings, just in case. They prove everything I just said.
(There was meant to be a link to a spot I dumped them in, but I wasn't expecting Imgur not to cooperate. If you know a site that'll let me upload and share them easily, let me know.)
If there is a way to get more points - a secret difficulty level, higher note speed, specific outfit/background/enemy combinations - it is not being telegraphed anywhere in any way. (Heck, I tried fiddling around with note speed and enemy outlines as a last resort and there was no change in my final score.) I have S ranked all of the available songs and played through about two-thirds of them perfectly, and yet I still haven't reached the very top of the leaderboard for any of them.
As it stands, I have to assume that you need to either be willing to cheat or be a close friend of the devs to unlock the achievement, and I don't care much for either. It's just embarrassing that people still think this is a funny thing to do.

A calm little game where for 15 days, you can check in and meet a new idol, then compose an offering for them.
You really can't go wrong with something as simple as this; check the negative reviews if you don't believe me. I just wish I hadn't forgotten about it so hard that it technically took me almost two years to complete.

Two guys who don't know each other happened to have no more clean clothes to wear at the same time, so they go to a laundromat late at night. There's not an employee in sight and only one washing machine is in order… it's looking to be a slow one. But if that's not enough, at some point the power goes out, which locks the front door. Now you have to help them find a way out.
The gameplay is reminiscent of the old "escape the room"-type browser games - move between screens and interact with hotspots to find usable items and try to progress. The translation was okay, nothing of note there. I like pixel art and thought the BGM was pretty cool; this is doubly cool considering the whole game is a solo project.
If I had to change anything, I'd probably get rid of the Nintendo-style speaking sounds. I've got nothing against them usually, but I was zoning out while playing this one and they didn't help.
There is also an achievement for finding small, decorative stars around the place, which is entirely missable if you're not one for meticulously combing through each and every screen, because there's no visual indication for where any of them are.
This is supposedly related to another game from the same dev, which remains untranslated for reasons unknown. According to them, you can play the games in either order, but I would say that after my nearly 40 minutes with BLUE NIGHT LAUNDROMAT, I did not feel attached to the characters nor did I think there was any reasonable explanation for everything that happened. No strong feelings about it either way. I might play that other game one day, though.

BLUE NIGHT LAUNDROMAT is Playable on Steam Deck. Use the touchscreen, R2 or R3 to advance text and L2 to hide textbox/UI. Right touchpad is active.

Enter Paris, where Y/N lives and works as a journalist. They also have a roommate, Roselle, who is currently studying to become a vet. Right away, it's implied that Roselle is depressed - she does her best to stay on top of her studies, but she never leaves the house and her sleeping schedule seems to be irregular. As Y/N, you can almost always suggest something to get her out of her slump when talking to her and I found it relatable that Y/N never pushes anything after she declines.
Y/N's daily schedule consists of going to work in the evening (they work night shifts exclusively, for some reason), swinging by their favorite bakery in the morning, then taking a walk in the park in the afternoon. Each of these scenarios leads them to encounter a different stray cat.
Roselle loves cats, so Y/N comes up with the idea of taking photos to cheer her up and your job is to help them make a good first impression on the cat. The second time they come across each cat, they have to name it - it's Roselle's way, or so I understand. Naturally, I was amused by nobody caring that I gave all the cats the dumbest names ever.
If they do a good enough job by the third encounter, Y/N (and by extension, Roselle) may get to keep the cat. The amount of cats they end up fostering influences the ending you'll get to see. If you got to keep no, one or two cats, Roselle will suggest that she's on her way out of the slump (these endings are pretty much the same, they just seem marginally better the more cats you get), but if you took in all of them, you'll get the one and only ending where Roselle no longer looks disheveled and isn't wearing her pajamas anymore, announces that she passed her finals and goes out with Y/N to celebrate. And then, you come across yet another stray cat, which she suggests should be named Cateau.
Yeah, so… this was made in Unity, which means it would have to try really had not to make me hate it. It doesn't have any options which would be readily available in a VN engine - no quick saving/loading, no text skipping, no backlog, no rollback… There is a "skip" button, but it only forces the current textbox to appear. If you press it again after that, it just goes to the next textbox as if you've just clicked to advance text. There's also a "rewind" button, but instead of rolling back, it goes back to the start of the scene you're on? Okay??
At least the artwork is great - the character sprites, the backgrounds, the UI, it all looked great.
Oh, and shoutout to this amazing review that somehow missed the fact that the writing is gender-neutral on purpose.

Cateau is Playable on Steam Deck, because the mouse cursor shows up and you have to open up the keyboard manually. Use the touchscreen, A, R2 or R3 to advance text. Right touchpad is active.

You and your friend Judy go out to a Halloween party together, but she's acting a bit weird. After a while, you walk out of the venue, she gives you a seemingly normal necklace, and then… you wake up trapped in an unfamiliar place, having to face the fact that Judy is not who you thought she was. As it turns out, she's merely a servant to Mara, the woman who's working on creating her perfect world.
The character and UI art is great, the music gets a plus for being original rather than royalty-free (though I personally found it distracting), it's nice that you can choose to play as a guy or a girl (but only the guy flirts with Judy at the start, what's up with that?), but in the end, I just didn't like it.
From the moment you wake up in a cage, you have to stroke Mara's ego and depending on how well you do that, you'll get one of the available endings. Problem is, I didn't find much value in all that. I somehow managed not to understand (or retain, I'm writing this one very late) any of the info that was dumped and I found the official walkthrough counterintuitive, grouping requirements for some endings together in a way that made me think I should be making the wrong set of choices and I ended up losing a good bit of time on that. I don't want to spoil anything (or rather, I can't), but if any of it catches your eye, I won't dissuade you from playing.

Goblet of Mercy is Playable on Steam Deck. Use the touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text, Y to hide textbox, B or Menu to open save menu, L1, L2 or View to rollback.

I've already played this one back in November 2023 on a Game Boy emulator and thus didn't care to jot down my thoughts about it, but since it is available on Steam, I figured I might as well play it again someday. It's a deeply personal game, so it feels wrong to judge it too harshly, but personally, I need more context to understand stories like these. There are a few points where the story jumps from one train of thought to another and I'm not exactly sure how they connect. Some things are left hanging as the dev deems them to be boring and not worth exploring, because the game may not get released otherwise.
The title catches one's eye, yes, but the fact that so many people seem to be finding it "funny" says a lot about how many Gamers™️ there still are.
I've been dipping my toes into retro games ever so slightly and I'm glad to see there's still so much love for them that people choose to make games meant to be played on the Game Boy; I'm sure I would be even more excited about it if I were old enough for the Game Boy to be nostalgic to me.
This one looks great, but unfortunately, it's just not for my brain to "enjoy".

He Fucked the Girl Out of Me is Verified on Steam Deck, matching my experience as of 23/12/24. Use B to advance text and the D-pad to move.

After the end of WWI, Errol has returned home, ready to enjoy his new peaceful life. Too bad for him though, he drank himself stupid and got hit by a train so hard he died. Heaven and Hell both tried taking him on their respective terms, but he wouldn't go either way. He's still a virgin, after all! He didn't go and survive all of WWI just to get hit by a train and die maidenless right after!
Fast forward to the next century, he's now known as The Horny Ghost of Apartment 69. He's also the reason why said apartment isn't seeing much use, as every new tenant who doesn't meet his standards (read: isn't a hot, bangable girl) is presumably getting spooked into moving out. Errol's quest to lose his virginity picks up some steam when the apartment is cheap enough for a certain Vivienne to move in.
The story is kind of a funny concept, with the lecherousness being mostly on the okay side as far as my personal tastes go. Still, I feel like Errol's war veteran backstory is too heavy to be brushed off as "just the setup" (the juxtaposition of the war veteran and the sex pest is nothing but emotional whiplash) and too serious to be the setup in the first place (even if there ever has been a war veteran who thinks they've survived because they daydreamed about all the sex they'd get to have after war ends, they should probably keep it to themselves.)
The art is delightfully cartoonish, exactly what I would expect from a small porn game such as this (Errol having classic meme faces in multiple scenes definitely deserves a mention.) The devs seem to take pride in not using generative AI and they're absolutely right to do so. There's even a short animated scene!
The only thing that fails is the sound (or rather, the lack of it.) The available tracks are generic royalty-free music, which is par for the course, but most of the game plays out in complete silence, which is a shame.
I also wasn't a fan of the fourth wall break that implied the devs would like you to give them money for more sexual content. I know I'd like to see all the sex that was said to have happened, but this game doesn't even have a paid version! Talk about weird.
Errol's story has sort of an ambiguous ending, so I wonder if he'll come back in future games.

Interview with the Horny Ghost is Playable on Steam Deck because the mouse cursor shows up on screen. Use the touchscreen, L1, R2 or R3 to advance text, A to hide textbox, R1 to rollback. Right touchpad is active.

A kinetic novel set in ye olde times, Juniper's Knot tells the story of a demoness, sealed away in the ruins of a mansion and the boy who comes across her on his way home. It's been a while since she's had anyone to talk to, so she gladly engages him and convinces him to stay with her longer.
But what are her true intentions? And will the boy get back home in the end?
This is one of those games that's nostalgic in a weird way - I've been meaning to play it since 2016, if not earlier, so I've never quite forgotten about its existence. Was it good enough for me to have thought about it for so long? Eh… it was okay.
The writing is unusual; both characters are from a nondescript point in the past and thus their speech fits the times. I did like that the boy had to explain some of the ways in which the world had advanced since the demoness had gotten sealed, and in turn, the demoness gave him the "back in my times…!" talk. The painterly art style is nice, the UI is sleek and minimalistic and the BGM is great.
The trend I've seen across the VNs I've been reading recently is that the music seems to be consistently given the least attention. Juniper's Knot avoids becoming part of this trend by having an original OST and knowing when to use it. The story is entirely about these two characters and whenever there's a transitional period in their conversation, there's silence. But when something to focus on is said, a new track will start playing. It may not be a big thing, but I found that pretty neat.

Juniper's Knot is Playable on Steam Deck. Use the touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text, Y to hide textbox, Menu to bring up save menu. L1, L2 and View also seem to do something, but I'm unclear as to what, exactly. They seem to have rolled me back to the very start of the game, so you might want to hold off on pressing any of them if you haven't saved your progress.

On a harsh Winter night, Chester, a 47-year-old surveyor, gets sent out by his boss to inspect a property that's missing from the registry. He drives all the way out to where it's supposed to be and sure enough, it's a mystery how a castle that big is not on the registry. But that's not all - as it goes with spooky castles and mansions, the front door opens on its own and from there it doesn't take long for Chester to meet the owners and realize - they're vampires!
For a VN that took just a little over two hours to read, this one really had me hooked. As far as this challenge goes, it might only have come second to Reborn a Zombie!. It's not often you get to play as a middle-aged man, and especially not one quite like Chester. Add to that not one but two vampires, both of whom can take a romantic interest in him, as well as relatable backstories for each of them and you've got a surprisingly good story on your hands. I'll definitely be on the lookout for other VNs from Kristi Jimenez.

Panicked and Surrounded by Hot Vampires is Playable on Steam Deck, with the disclaimer for some kind of inconsequential compatibility warning popping up on launch. I didn't get one, so I think it's safe to say this game could use a change of status. Use the touchscreen, A, R2 or R3 to advance text, L2 or Menu to bring up save menu, R1 to rollback, View to skip, left stick left to bring up accessibility options, left stick down to take screenshot.

Forget what I said about any of the other games, this one lets you ZOOM. (And you're gonna need it, too.)
I played both the original map from last year and the one that just released today (as of writing this). The new map got crazy intricate in comparison!

You've just gotten word from your boss that school will be in all week long from now on. Understandably frustrated, you rush to get to your job on time… and end up hitting a stray cat on your way there. The vet checkup reveals that the cat has the power to heal itself, and that's only the beginning…
This was clearly a solo dev's fun idea for a game that would also serve as a memory of their own cat (the in-game sprite is even designed after her). It was an hour-long romp through increasingly wacky turn-based encounters, simple yet effective. If I had to point out something I didn't like, it would be the random profanity. I feel every story should use swearing rather sparingly, even if some people have a bigger tendency to swear than others. On the positive side, while the music and SFX are royalty-free, the art assets were provided by people on Fiverr; thought that's important to mention in the advent of AI-generated art.

Fatal Paws is Playable on Steam Deck due to some text being hard to read. (I'm not visually impaired in any way, but this is the first case where the text really was tiny.) Use touchscreen, A, L1, R2 or R3 to advance text, L2 to hide textbox and R1 to bring up backlog. Right touchpad is active.

A tiny side-scrolling game about a family of possums celebrating the day they go into Winter hibernation. It's a short adventure that is mostly child-friendly (save for one distasteful attempt at a joke), with a cute art style, though it does suffer a bit from the devs being ESL. If you've got twenty minutes to spare, check it out.

"Hunter Hearts is from the book the creator is writing at the moment. The game on the other hand is completely different compared to the book. (…) This is part 1 of 3 (could be changed in the future) of the story of Hunt, where Hunt gets to witness his side of the story."
Please, don't change anything. Just let this stay a self-published book. Hell, this should be rotting in the depths of some fanfiction site that no self-respecting fan visits due to its abysmal design.
Hunter Hearts is one big mess of harem anime tropes set in a world that makes no sense (English speaking characters with English names living in modern day Japan, studying Dutch in college… and the year is 2119, for some reason), written by an ESL author who can hardly command the language in a way that is pleasant to read. Also, no developments matter at any point, because no matter what you choose, the story stays largely the same (to the point that I thought I had accidentally toggled "skip all text"; after you're done with your initial playthrough, the game does not give a damn that you're checking out different choices - it will skip past the few brand new lines). There's no consistency when it comes to censoring profanities ("cock"/"dick" is censored, but "hoe" isn't), all of which come out of left field. There's a sex scene in one of the "routes" and it's written as if the author has never read a single piece of erotic fiction of any quality and is also a child. But perhaps most insulting is the lack of subtlety when it comes to introducing difficult subjects. One of the characters suddenly announces she is terminally ill and no matter what you do from that point on, she will die at the end of the game. In most endings, another character will also commit suicide. Neither of these ever feel like the shocking events that they would be in any real person's life, giving pause to the characters as well as the reader; instead, it's as if they're seen simply as "story beats" that need to be hit. The suicide is perfectly egregious in that manner, where the game will end with something to the effect of "It's my time… bye, everybody…" and then fade right back to the main menu.
And on the note of a lack of a credit roll… the UI is a basic Ren'Py template, the character sprites were made using Mannequin (half of them suffer from "same face syndrome", not sure if that's more on the dev or the software), the BGM is one and the same piano track, all the way through (I love /s when bad games try to drive me crazy by doing that) and the backgrounds are the most compelling part of the whole thing… but then my friend quickly pointed out that one of them is straight up taken from - you guessed it - a successful harem anime. Also, the actual "credit" the dev gives for the backgrounds is something like "these backgrounds aren't mine, so all the credit to those guys"… pay them in exposure, why don't cha? Ugh.

Hunter Hearts is Verified on Steam Deck, matching my experience as of 08/12/24. Use the touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text, Y to hide textbox, L1, L2 or View to rollback, R1 to undo rollback, Menu to bring up save menu.

In an alternate, dystopian universe, a birth crisis is upon us. It's been looming over humanity for long enough that people have started getting comfortable with the thought of dying as soon as food supplies start running out. But there is also a kind of a fad: monotypes, virtual pets that are supposed to… entertain your human children or outright substitute them if you don't have any, I'm not quite sure anymore. The newest invention in the product line, however, is Momo - the real "virtual" monotype, one you can for sure love like you would a human child.
The unnamed protagonist of this story, in spite of not caring for monotypes, cannot escape their fate - their boss has gotten on great terms with representatives of the company that makes monotypes, so now everyone at their company is going to get their own brand new pet. Weirdly enough, in spite of Momo looking like a cat head, they're never established to have fur or behave like a cat would in any way, but I digress.
Momos are set to live for seven days only and during that time, you can choose to feed them something, play with them, watch TV with them… to my understanding, the show you choose to watch first will influence their dream and how their body evolves. After that, Momo will read their label and get an existential crisis from learning they're only meant to live for a week… and that's when the horror part comes in. Only the third (or the fourth in my case, as I've gotten the "secret" ending on my first playthrough) Momo will avoid this fate, instead going to "the bunker" and convincing the protagonist to follow. This is where it gets needlessly complicated instead of delivering a satisfying conclusion: "the bunker" keeps coming up in every loop, yet not only is it not an actual bunker, it's just a horde of Momos congregating in a certain spot and coming together to build up the one big Momo near the ocean. When the protagonist catches up, they're allowed to ask a bunch of questions about the lore of the story… and then the game just ends. The visual aesthetic of the game is great and the idea of a virtual pet rebelling against its owner as a horror premise doesn't seem too tired, at least not for me. This game, however, was largely incomprehensible. It was supposed to be something about how complex and layered love is as a feeling? Okay? I'm just busy thinking about how cool it would be to have my own Momo, even though I feel like a story like this would normally aim to make me not want that.

Momotype is Verified on Steam Deck, matching my experience as of 13/12/2024. Use R2 or Menu for options, R1 to rollback, A, R2, R3 or the touchscreen to advance text, View to skip, left stick left for accessibility options, left stick down to take screenshot. Right touchpad is active.

In On Call, you're an unnamed doctor working a three day rotation at the Merritt General Hospital. During this time, you have five patients to take care of, each with a different condition. Your job is to talk to the patients and their relatives to help them get the best treatment possible, all while keeping your stress level in check. If I recall correctly, there are two scripted opportunities to bring your stress level down outside of conversations, but you can also take a rest three times per day, so even if it doesn't do much, it's not hard not to overwork yourself. From what I've discovered, three of your patients can die, although one of them does not get an obituary, for some reason. You can end up with three different outcomes: quitting right after finishing your rounds (I got this ending after choosing what I perceived to be the least intrusive or negative options all around), just going home, ready to have some time off, or strongly implied to commit suicide by jumping out of a window, if your stress level gets maxed out at any point. One aspect of the gameplay are patient charts, all of which get updated twice (or should get updated, at least). The dates were off sometimes, especially when it came to the obituaries, which are dated near the end of February, while the rotation takes part at the start of August. This either wasn't checked for logic or made sense in the devs' heads, but was never properly communicated to the player. Since there aren't any achievements, guides or hints in or outside of the game, I figured that after almost 90 minutes, I've probably seen just about everything. To me, the game felt accurate enough to reality, but at the same time, I think I'd like to see an actual doctor react to and fact-check it.

On Call is Playable on Steam Deck. Use the touchscreen, A, R2 or R3 to advance text, R1 to rollback, L2 or Menu to bring up the save menu, View to skip, left stick left to open accessibility options, left stick down to take screenshots. Right touchpad is active.

It's just like all the other games, except you're coloring by letters instead of numbers and the images are meant to look as if they were cross-stitched. This one also hasn't beaten Coloring Pixels on how smoothly it runs for me.

Three college friends - Strelitzia, Lycoris and Oleander - team up to create a child android for a school project. At first, their bickering might seem ordinary, but when their creation (named Nano by default) is to wake up for the first time, the cracks start to show. As it turns out, their friendship has been strained by the loss of Lilium. Now that Nano is a part of their life, it's up to the guys to move past it or keep blaming each other for what happened back then.
Robot Daycare was originally released as a NaNoRenO submission back in 2019, but got a significant visual update in 2021. The character art has a chibi-like feel to it, which I really like. Naming all the human characters after flowers sure was a choice, though. I can't tell if it was supposed to carry any meaning; I tried looking up the flower language for each of them and there wasn't anything worth mentioning for any of them. There are two very distinct endings and while the good one is adorable, I really liked the fact that the bad one was nauseating to read… but it's also good that there is an option to tone it down, if that's not something you're up for.

Robot Daycare is Verified on Steam Deck, which matches my experience as of 07/12/24. Use touchscreen or A to advance text, X to bring up settings menu, Y to bring up backlog, B to toggle auto mode, View to rollback, Menu to bring up save menu, R1 to skip (hold), R2 to skip (toggle).

This was just like all those other sexy anime girl puzzle games I've played before, except not exactly. The way the menu is programmed (bit worse than all those other ones) and the abundance of colors within the possible matches quickly betrays that this was made by someone entirely different. I still don't know how on earth they get all this art to look near-identical, though.

This is Exactly What It Says On The Tin™️. You get to stare at Sakuya as she's laying down and from there, you have a few options to choose from at all times. "Talk" prompts her to say one of maybe fifty things available, "Kiss" lets you kiss her, "Sleep" has you two pretend to fall asleep for a second, "Change background" lets you switch between three available backgrounds and "Change music" lets you switch between two available BGMs.
Half of the things Sakuya can talk about are references to characters and major events of Touhou, which went completely over my head as I don't know the Touhou lore, but that's on me. If I had to define the other half, it's generic cute girl/confidence boosting things or attempts at humor that don't quite land.
I don't know that this game is "bad", it's just not very entertaining or novel. Sleeping with fictional characters isn't a new concept, so this game could easily have a few more options to add to its longevity, such as voice acting (preferably from someone who sounds like she does in the anime), more background and music options (heck, even white noise and other sounds to fall asleep to) and perhaps most importantly, a nap timer, so that players would actually put time into this game if they want to.
That being said, though, I feel like the devs are more into the idea of interacting with Sakuya in different scenarios than focusing on the sleep aspect (this is far from their first game about her); as short as the script is, there were too many spelling errors.
I mentioned more music options as a way of improving the game, because for some reason, only two tracks are available and neither of them sound like "sleeping with your dream girlfriend" to me. It should be easy enough to look for more suitable royalty-free music to include, it might just take more time. It would definitely be worth it, though.

Sleeping with Sakuya Izayoi is Playable on Steam Deck. Use touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text, View, L1 or L2 to rollback, R1 to undo rollback and Y to hide textbox.

This… was not bad. I'm not exactly sure what to say, maybe it didn't grip me like the dev expects it would, because it's not a particularly novel concept. If anything, it just makes me curious about The Purgatoryverse, as mentioned last time I played a supplement title, which is by all means the desired outcome. Maybe I will check it out one of these days.

The Painting is Playable on Steam Deck. Use the touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text, R1 to rollback, left stick down to take screenshot. Right touchpad is active.

Let's say I get the gist when it comes to GreenDam - it's infamous for being government-mandated censorship software, which internet users were having none of, and that's how the Green Dam Girl was born. In this story, the main character is a poor uni student on the lookout for a job. After scanning the QR code on a suspicious job advert, he gets an interview with the people behind it and is informed that the job was meant for him (only he still had a phone old enough to scan this particular QR code). Next day, he blindly signs a contract for becoming GreenDam's tester and receives a box with the GreenDam android inside. As expected of GreenDam, she evaporates all of MC's porn and breaks his computer the very first day she's there. From then on, a few… days? weeks? months? go by as they warm up to each other. At some point, GreenDam falls for the main character despite her makers taking care to remove love from her programming… and then she dies… because of course?
I'm not going to pretend like I knew what to find funny, especially because the translation isn't all that great. Every wrong choice leads to a bad end, each as abrupt and nonsensical as the next, but one in particular caught my attention: during the initial job interview, if you tell GreenDam's developers that you like cute boys (as opposed to cute girls), instead of the GreenDam delivery, some guy just comes to MC's apartment and references Yaranaika, then MC mentions being restrained and/or unable to move, so… that's a funny gay sexual assault joke (not). GreenDam herself looks to be around 13-15, while MC having freshly enrolled in uni would be 18 or 19, which seems to have given English readers the ick, but there really isn't anything here that crosses the line of your typical eroge. Rather, it's a case of the girl being GreenDam and therefore assuming all men are lecherous (she's a tsundere, because of course she is).
As for the technical qualities: GreenDam is fully voiced (well, minus whatever she says in the bad ends) and her sprite is animated with Live2D. There's also a solid selection of royalty-free BGM that sounded familiar, though I wouldn't be able to place where I heard them before. I do have to mention, however, that one of the achievements is bugged in the new version; a fix suggested in the discussions is unlocking it in the old version. If you decide to play on the Deck, keep in mind that the old version is not translated. I tried checking out the settings in the old version, as I usually would, and I must have toggled the fullscreen option, 'cause the game stopped showing up on screen entirely. All in all, I think you'll get the most out of this one if you know Chinese and account for how old the game is (the original version released all the way back in 2013).

There is No GreenDam is Playable on Steam Deck. Before a proper launch, it shows a setup window. Use the touchscreen, L1, R2 or R3 to advance text, L2 to hide textbox, R1 to open backlog. Right touchpad is active.

I decided to add this to my library when I saw it's a cute and free Christmas-themed point-and-click. As it turns out, the only truth is that it's free. The art style may be cute, but this game is not meant for children. Instead, it's some kind of "edgy" story about "saving Christmas" that entails driving a reindeer to suicide and killing multiple tree ornaments. I would almost praise the translation for retaining and/or adapting the jokes in the script, but it's lame puns all the way down. The conclusion doesn't even make any sense. Only play this if you're of age and aware that it takes 10 minutes and leads nowhere (knowledge of French may help). That being said, I do not recommend this to anyone.

This one caught my eye a long time ago. A VN about becoming an idol? And it's free? Sign me up!
Well… I should have known what was in store when I opened it up and there wasn't even any BGM in the main menu.
Alice is working as an intern for a broadcaster that's about to launch their new talent show. It's a tried and true trope - one of the contestants fails to show up and when the producer spots Alice, it's go time. Lucky for her, the first episode is but an introduction, so nobody gets eliminated yet.
Right after that, the producers help Alice and her new rivals - Mary, Cherry and Taylor - move into a huge mansion complex for the duration of the show. Mary is rich and seemingly stuck-up, Cherry is a cute airhead and Taylor seems like she doesn't give a shit about anything, though she's always equipped with a good comeback if anyone were to point it out to her. After moving in, you get a day (a metaphor for the whole week) to go somewhere and possibly spend time with whoever's there at the same time. After that's done, the next week's episode airs, rinse and repeat until the show ends.
The problem is in how disjointed everything feels right from the start. My very first choice was to hang out with Taylor and the narration seemed to imply that Alice did nothing for most of the day just so she could go to Taylor's room in the evening. For a second I thought that because this option is last in line, maybe I skipped out on all the other things I could have done, making most of the day go to waste. Nope! Next time, some of the choices carried over, but I couldn't explain why if I tried. There's also only four weeks until the show is over, so whatever character development could be happening between the episodes just doesn't get enough time.
As for the show, the three middle episodes are themed, with the themes being Summer, Winter and Darkness, in this exact order. (One of these things is not like the other!)
This is where I continue my observations about music (or lack thereof); I could be wrong, but it felt like for the first hour, I was just listening to the same BGM. Bland and inoffensive, sure, but this is supposed to be a story about idols!
…yet nobody cared to change it up even for the show performances.
The lame but entertaining option would be to use an instrumental to some popular idol song, 'cause then at least you'd surprise the people who know and love it; the cooler but paid option would be to get some tracks from Nash Music Library, as they've got some great idol-like bops. But alas, random stock BGM instead.
And the writing… oh boy, the writing. Everyone keeps reiterating how often "show, don't tell" spells out disaster for so many pieces of media that fail to adhere to this simple piece of advice and Alice in Stardom is no different. During every performance, without fail, you get to read paragraphs upon paragraphs about how much the characters have changed, their progress, how amazing they are, how they must feel, how they've captivated the audience… it's almost as if the writer was contracted to provide textbook examples of waffling.
Mindblowingly enough, this could hold some weight if you got to see any of that work, change or feeling for yourself… but the game absolutely lacks any kind of middle part. No matter what you choose to do to hang out, you don't get to see any CGs or hear any particular musical cues to indicate training or any kind of feelings or emotions welling up.
And to the point of CGs, there's only maybe three of them in total and they're all of Alice performing… she doesn't even look consistent between them. They're introduced to the scene with specific camera effects, which I guess were supposed to look flashy or exciting, but keeping in mind that you're listening to the same basic piece of BGM and reading about her love for her fans, they're just annoying.
After Alice wins the show (because of course she does, she's the main character!), you get a scene where she and her new lover (?!) warm up to each other. All that middle that was already missing? Now you should also know that it was meant to make the game yuri.
This is especially ridiculous, because in no interactions with any of the characters that I got to read was there anything romantic (and if it was meant to be, then sorry, it was all written so poorly I did not perceive it as such). I don't remember hanging out with Mary even once in my first playthrough, and yet I got her scene at the end? America, explain!
I tried putting in some additional time to see how much optional stuff I could see in the hangouts, and just when I got to one with Cherry that seemed like it would lead me to get her final scene, the game threw an error because it couldn't find one of her sprites. In a flash of brilliance, instead of simply rolling back and changing my choice, I closed the game and called it quits right then and there.
This game is in dire need of varied character designs (Alice, Cherry and Taylor are all blonde, with Alice and Cherry both having blue eyes), BGM (literally the most important thing in any story about idols!) and an actual story (hangouts with CGs! vocal training that sounds like what it is! any kind of respectful flirting!), but at the same time, it came out 5 years ago and the devs have long since moved on, so I don't suppose it's trying to attract any kind of attention anymore.

Alice in Stardom is Verified on Steam Deck, which matches my experience as of 25/11/2024. Touchscreen, A, R2, R3 to advance text, R1 to rollback, L2 or Menu to bring up save menu; B to bring up accessibility options, View to skip text. Right touchpad is also active.

At first glance, this game's presentation is reminiscent of The Witness, which made me wonder if I should play it in the first place. Now that I've completed it, I'm glad I decided to pick it up.
It's 1890 and you're Lady Arabella Greene, a botanist residing at the titular Botany Manor in England. You have just been given a chance to publish your own herbarium, so you get to work right away.
Botany Manor is a formulaic yet consistently exciting combination of a walking simulator and puzzle game; in each chapter, you'll be uncovering a set of locations in and around the manor, finding new seeds and gathering clues about how to grow them, and after you do, you'll be able to move on to the next one seamlessly. Besides the clues, just about each and every room will have some sort of environmental storytelling - notes and letters about Arabella's attempts to study botany being (mostly) ridiculed by men and (mostly) supported by women. I found the puzzling aspect delightfully simple in that even before you show your work (fill in a whole set of clues correctly), you can very clearly see it for yourself; I truly can't remember ever getting that sense of satisfaction from a puzzle game so consistently. (I only really "skipped" through one puzzle, because I couldn't connect the dots right on my own, and it felt like trying out random solutions would take too much time.)
Speaking of consistency, I remained amused by all the different things necessary for each and every plant to bloom successfully; some of those plants seem outright fantastical, but I'm too afraid to say anything more in case I sound like an idiot. The way new areas open up with the start of each new chapter makes you want to keep going, too; entering every other area for the first time triggers the background music to swell…
If I had to talk about something I didn't like, I'd choose what seems to be a universal complaint amongst players: the lack of a menu for the clues to carry over in. While countless other games that feature interactable letters, articles, notes etc. will save them to a separate menu for future use (or tracking, at least), Botany Manor doesn't do that. Instead, it only saves info about what kind of clue it is (e.g. "Article on luminescence", "Elizabeth's letter") and the place you found it in, so if you need to take another look at a certain clue, you're going to have to run back to the room it's in instead of just being able to flip open a separate notebook. Still, this experience was wonderful; that's about the only thing holding it off from having been perfect.

Imagine playing the last scene of Doki Doki Literature Club!… but that's all there is to it. No story leading up to it, no emotional attachment, no weight. That's HeartWare. All you can get out of this is having a 2D girl you don't know a single thing about talk at you about how badly she wants to be real. The implications of what she says are weird too; why has she seen Rick and Morty, but not a single anime? How come she loves the Phoenix Wright series, but hasn't played Portal? She also references DDLC and Monika, because of course she does. At a certain point, the game accesses info about what device you're playing on, and even though I used the Deck, it said I'm on a PC; can the game not recognize the Deck or is the Deck not considered anything else than a portable computer? It also returned my current time as "20 PM", so it clearly can't account for 24-hour clocks. It's been 7 years since DDLC first came out, so I wish the dev of HeartWare a Happy Read-Another-VN-Please.

HeartWare is Verified on Steam Deck, which matches my experience as of 21/11/2024. Touchscreen or A to advance text, Menu or B (I forgot which…) should bring up the save menu. Right touchpad is active. All standard Ren'Py options are also available at the bottom of the screen.

Lilith may be a demon, but her power level is considerably lower than those of her peers. Opening this game entails being open to the idea of selling your soul to her. There's just one problem… she's lost the memo on how much your soul is worth. To find out anew, she decides to ask you twenty questions ("like the kids' game") from the forms she found in her documents instead. After that's done, you get a certificate proving your soul's worth, which you can print out and boast about to people in real life.
For the record, my soul turned out to be worth as much as a gym membership, so about $77.
After announcing the result, Lilith does ask if you find the compensation worthy enough to exchange your soul for, and even though it's not that much money or even remotely useful to me personally, I liked Lilith enough that I couldn't say no to the transaction.
In spite of its simplicity (and perhaps because it's programmed to be played only once per device by default), this game was charming for what it was. Based on what Lilith says near the end, I hope there will be another game featuring her at some point in the future.

Lilith wants to buy your soul is Verified on Steam Deck, which matches my experience as of 28/11/2024. Touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text, R1 to rollback, View to skip, L2 or Menu to quit.

Los' mom just signed them up for a course designed to help boost self-esteem and confidence. They're convinced they feel comfortable being on their own and aren't willing to let people in due to past disappointments. The course period goes by in a flash and all they've retained is their interest in one of the other attendees, Hazel. Will they find the courage to talk to her before parting for good?
Thanks to this one, I can now officially say that I've played a VN made in Godot. While it's not a long game, I can only assume that this is about as far as the functionality of the engine goes when it comes to creating VNs, making it more akin to Unity than Ren'Py. The art is adorable and the BGM, albeit sparse, doesn't feel all that repetitive. I'm unclear on whether or not it would be possible to build in a regular skip function, but if not, the devs have found a way around this limitation.

Lost Connections is Playable on Steam Deck. Touchscreen, A, R2 or R3 to advance text, Menu to bring up the menu. Right touchpad is also active. A backlog is supposed to be available, but none of the inputs I tried seemed to bring it up.

Originally released in 2012 and now available on Steam, Loving Life is an autobiographical story written by Zhenghua ("Z") Yang, the founder of Serenity Forge, about his near-death experience back in 2008.
One day after class, he felt really tired and in spite of thinking about studying for the midterm next day, he went to sleep at 11 PM, which was unusual for him at the time. At 1 AM, he woke up to his nose bleeding. After taking some time to try (and fail) to stop it, Z decided to go to sleep, wake up whenever it was time to change the tissue, then go back to sleep again.
As one might imagine, that was not a good night's sleep and only around 3 PM, one of Z's friends decided to take him to the college medical center. The nosebleed had stopped only then, 14 hours after it first started (for the record, you should be worried if your nose is bleeding for more than 20 minutes, which I would not have known otherwise). His blood test results are worrying, but he's told to come in next morning. After a considerably better night, Z wakes up and records himself talking about his situation right before going in for the checkup.
At the doctor's office, he's told to go to the hospital immediately, so he does just that. Turns out his results are even worse than the college doctor thought, but Z's not even done answering all the questions before he gets another nosebleed and loses consciousness.
His condition is so bad, in fact, that a nurse comes by and gives him a will to sign. This causes him to ponder whether or not his life was good and how it contributed to the world, if it did at all, among other things.
This is where the story fades out into then-current times, with Z fully recovered and back in college, only with a different major this time around. Interestingly enough, he claims he really got better only after he stopped the experimentative treatments he was offered. At the very end, you get to watch the clip he recorded before going to his second checkup.
It's tough to judge this story, on account of it being based in reality; there's not really a place to discuss it being "better" or "more exciting". I would have really liked to read about Z's recovery from a state considered fatal by medical professionals, as I don't think it's as easy as "loving life and having it love you back". Then again, if that was too confusing or technical, I understand that it might not have made for good reading. The part that's meant to make you feel inspired to make changes in your own life is not too long or overly preachy, although the optics of Z saying that playing video games didn't make a positive impact on his life when he's since become the CEO of his own video game developing and publishing company are… hm.

Loving Life is Playable on Steam Deck, likely only because tapping the touchscreen makes a mouse cursor show up. Touchscreen, A, R2 or R3 to advance text and L2 or Menu to bring up the menu.

In a world where the human race is on the decline due to becoming prey for monsters and demons, Max and Celeste live together as roommates in a village where nobody really likes them.
During the day, Max is training himself in combat, aiming to one day measure up to all the other villagers, while Celeste is one of the few magic users in the village (and a damn good one at that), so she spends her time studying in the library. Every few days, they also have regular class together.
However, Max keeps getting bullied in combat training and Celeste feels her exceptional magic skills are being ignored in lieu of her teacher's seniority. Whenever they regroup after their individual studies, the mood is sour, with Celeste talking about her desire to destroy the whole village and not have to put up with that treatment anymore.
At night, Max starts having spicy dreams about Celeste, but they make him feel wrong since he's had feelings for Celeste for a long time now.
Will these dreams get more daring or stop entirely? And will Max and Celeste find a way to gain the villagers' respect, or will they end up bringing the whole village down?
I found this one… just mediocre. I've played a few VNs with character designs from the same artist and so far, I liked none of them, so I suppose it tracks. Their style is very clean, however, to the point that it's hard to believe these characters are what the writing claims they are. You're telling me pretty privilege doesn't exist in that village?
I did like the inclusion of more rare technical options, such as the choice of input prompts or the option to save on quit (as seen in Humanity Must Perish, from the same dev).

Max Massacre is Verified on Steam Deck, matching my experience as of 27/11/2024. Touchscreen, A, L2 (?) or R2 to advance text, B or Menu to bring up the save menu, L1 or View to rollback, R1 to undo rollback (not to be confused with advancing text), Y to hide textbox.

A seemingly simple puzzle game about putting together various flowers, which gets pretty hard as time goes on. It's absolutely beautiful and I can't believe Steam has kept it secret from me until now.

The unnamed (according to the store description, his name is supposed to be Harold, but it doesn't seem to function as the default) protagonist has never had any friends, so his parents helped him enroll at a college designed specifically for people like him. Before he can even get to the opening assembly, he meets three rather eccentric girls: Scout, Vivian and Anima. (Why does only one of them have an actual name? Your guess is as good as mine.)
At the assembly, it is explained that based on a simple questionnaire they're about to fill out and the way they behave throughout the first day of class, people are going to be paired up to share dorm rooms. The questionnaire includes a few questions that are simple yet don't seem to relate to each other at all; for example, I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that you can answer the gender question with "female" or "other" despite knowing that MC is male and it actively influences which girl's route you'll get on. If your answers don't match up with the girls and you say too much weird stuff on your first day, MC will be paired up with a guy he remembers from high school and it's assumed that they don't end up bonding at all, so you get a bad end.
Otherwise, the plot between the routes is identical; it's more the case of the girl of choice fitting into it. Comedy scene at the cafeteria here, working on a school project there and before you realize, the game is over. If you don't bond with the girl at all, you also get a bad end; those are completely unprompted and too much for what the rest of the game is like.
No shade towards Vivian and Anima; compelling as their backstories are, Scout was easily my favorite. At first, she looked like the mature one, of sorts, but soon enough, it turned out that she's actually very gullible, obsessed with ghost hunting and a comically big eater. Her ghost hunting obsession in particular feels very neurodivergent-coded and I wish I could hug her.
As for the technical side of things: the UI is mostly basic, although the text being aligned to the middle was a nice touch… whenever the dev didn't forget to do it, that is. There were a bit more grammar mistakes than I'd expect to see from someone who I can only assume is a native English speaker. The sprite art looks rather basic, but I learned afterwards it's because it was royalty-free and therefore not commissioned for this game specifically. I really liked the photographic backgrounds in this one and I don't know why. Royalty-free character art and photographic backgrounds instead of background art mean there's no CGs in the game, which is a shame.
However, one thing that School for the Friendless did right - unlike most VNs I've played this month - is the BGM variety. Despite the game taking only about 3 hours to fully complete, almost every time the scene changes, a different track comes on, so even if I've already been through the same even on another route, it made me feel like something completely new was going to happen. I wonder if the dev has a particular interest in music or simply found looking for all those tracks enjoyable.
I've seen the negative reviews for this game saying that the humor is cringy and bad, but surprisingly enough, I liked it. I'm not a fan of being a pervert for the sake of it (which made Vivian rather unlikeable in my eyes), but as long as the guy doesn't blindly go along with all the lewd jokes or advances that a girl is making, I find it much more bearable. That, and in spite of the sense of humor clearly taking inspiration from anime, this game isn't trying to pretend like it's set in Japan, which is extremely cringy if done poorly. By all accounts, it was a mediocre game that wasn't nearly as bad as people think, in my opinion. I'll forget it soon enough, but I don't feel like I wasted my time playing it.

School for the Friendless is Playable on Steam Deck. Touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text, R1 to rollback, L1 to undo rollback, L2 or Menu to bring up save menu, View to skip, left stick left to open accessibility options, left stick down to take screenshots. Right touchpad active; right stick also acts as a mouse.

Quite a peculiar prologue to Siren's Call: Escape Velocity, Sunflower Pie is a nightmare about Oliver's bleak family situation. Considering that the premise of Siren's Call: Escape Velocity is "escaping Florida", I'd say Sunflower Pie felt like a good enough setup that made me want to learn more. That being said, it's hard to say anything more about this… maybe except the fact that the very obviously anime-styled sprites under the object heads looked a bit funny. I don't think I find object heads all that scary unless the objects themselves are meant to appear grotesque. The moment the nightmare transforms into reality is nice, but I guess that's not a particularly grand observation. Two of the characters are said to have disabilities, so I'm definitely interested in seeing more of how they are portrayed. I think despite being able to relate at some base level, the narrative of Oliver's mom being abusive towards him getting toned down/nullified as soon as the nightmare ends seems kind of… weird? I assume it's one of those things that the full game will explain/straighten out.

Sunflower Pie is Playable on Steam Deck. Touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text. Right touchpad is also active. Watch out for Menu, as it's mapped to the Esc key and the game has no save system.

In an alternate universe with a touch of sci-fi, the world is continuously tormented by superstorms. They show up every few months and destroy everything in their path, forcing people to hide in their shelters, sometimes for weeks at a time. There's never enough time to fix everything before the next storm, so repairs are an eternal money sink. It's become far too expensive to even have human children, so as a cheaper alternative, people have genetically engineered half-human, half-melon hybrids (referred to as simply "melos") to adopt as children.
Enter Y/N, a human who's ready to experience the outside world again, now that a superstorm has just ended. The first thing that comes to mind is going on a date, and sure enough, they create a profile and find a match - a melo named Melonais (call them Mel, for short).
Your job is to help Y/N navigate their first date with Mel. Every branch has two options to choose from and most (if not all of them) contribute to an overall rating; they can be either friendly or flirtatious.
Based on the ratio of friendly to flirtatious answers you have chosen throughout the date, you'll get one of the five possible endings. I did my best to stick to round values (0%/25%/50%/75%/100%), but according to the dev's comment, the requirements are a bit more relaxed.
I'm glad it was that easy to get all the endings, but not sure it was worth it in the end. All the endings have some positive note to them, but they all present the same way: one and the same image with second-person narration over it. I would have liked to see separate visuals, maybe even different BGM for the endings, so that it feels like discovering something new.
I think the worldbuilding was more interesting than the date, in the end. What is up with the superstorms? Why melons? How long has all of this been going for? I'd really like to see a bigger, more fleshed out story about the superstorm melon dystopia next.

Superstorm Melon Date is Playable, probably because it's missing half of the basic features provided by the Ren'Py engine, not to mention mapping them to controls on the Deck. Touchscreen, A or R2 to advance text, Y to hide textbox, Menu to bring up save menu.

A short story about an unnamed protagonist (Y/N, if you will) grieving after the loss of their online friend to an accident. They first met when Y/N decided to check out a certain VR game, but didn't mean to stick around after their trial was up. Then, Ji-min approached them and helped them with learning the basics. Eventually, they've both created a world to hang out in together… and the rest is history.
Y/N notes that Ji-min's influence on them was largely positive, save for the fact that they royally messed up their sleep schedule just so they could talk to her more. And now that she's gone, Y/N doesn't care to go back to their regular life. Their parents, real-life friends, their boss, they're all reaching out, hoping to get some sort of sign about Y/N, but they're ignoring all calls and emails, instead opting to lay on their bed, staring up at the ceiling as time passes idly by. Every once in a while, they log into the VR world they shared with Ji-min, only to encounter CH35H1R3, a seemingly brand new bot, made by VirtueTech to annoy new players… or is she?
This was originally written for NaNoRenO, so like with most other VN event submissions, expectations should be kept low. I liked the visual contrast between the dull browns and greys of the real world and the explosion of bright colors in the VR world (including, but not limited to, CH35H1R3's absolutely garish design) and the fact that, in spite of its duration, it features voice acting.
The one part I don't get is the choice at the very ending: as the last thing they do before moving on, should Y/N keep Ji-min's last voice mail or delete it? No matter what you choose, the credits pop in so quickly that there's no way to sit with the choice or even just the fact that the game is over. If you choose to keep it, it will play again after the credits, which I suppose is a nice bookend, considering the game also starts with Y/N listening to it, but it felt oddly weightless to me. I think it's only normal to keep a memento tied to someone who's passed away if they meant a lot to you, so the idea of deleting Ji-min's voicemail is just weird to me. If it were a material thing, you could at least look for something similar in the future if you find it still matters to you, but you can't retrieve immaterial things after they're gone…

this was for you. is Playable on Steam Deck because you need to bring up the keyboard to input your name at the start. If your keyboard placement of choice is at the bottom, keep in mind that it will obscure the input completely. I misspelled my name and couldn't fix it afterwards. Touchscreen, A, R1, R2 or R3 to advance text, L1 or Menu to bring up the save menu, L2 to rollback (I may have remembered L1/2 the other way around) and View to skip text.

I can only assume this dark fantasy yuri about Cassidy, the exiled princess of the Veromere family, now living alone in a forest and Elowen, the mysterious stranger who suddenly appears in her life, had been on my wishlist for years at this point, considering it first released on Steam back in 2020. What deserves continuous praise, however, is just how much care this game has been given ever since it first came to life. It had two demo versions (in 2016 and 2018), then a full, unvoiced release on Steam in 2020, and then a full voice acting update, released this April. Personally, I'm utterly in love with the UI design; everything just looks so nice and clean. From a gameplay standpoint, Cassidy and Elowen both having their own textbox design is a great touch; not to mention that the previous speaker's last words stay on screen as their textbox becomes more opaque. From a technical standpoint, despite the game never coming out on consoles as of now, it lets you choose which button style prompts you want to see if you're playing with a controller. Besides a CG gallery and a music room, there is also an unlockable short story, an achievement menu and most importantly, a completion tracker, which is something that's hardly ever seen in VNs (at least to my recollection) and to me, at least, implies a deeper degree of investment on the devs' part. I closed the game after having seen about 97.5% of all text, I believe? By that time, I had already gotten all the available endings twice over and I couldn't imagine what other combination of choices could lead to new textboxes… but to be fair, at that point, it's all just flavor text. Oh yeah, there's a whopping total of eight (!) endings you can get. I realize I'm not talking about the story at all, but I'm really just too shocked by how much care has been put into all the other aspects (not to say that the story isn't good). Girls' love stories aren't something I'd usually read, but this one was really good. If a fantasy story about girls falling in love with each other, with just a twinge of horror sounds like something you'd be interested in, you can't miss out on this one. Just know that even if you end up loving it, you're never going to love it more than the devs.

Without a Voice is Verified on Steam Deck, which matches my experience as of 20/11/2024. It's got to be the best mapped control scheme for a VN on the Deck I've seen yet. (You'd think it had a console release already!) Touchscreen or A to advance text, X to toggle auto mode, B to hide textbox, L1 to rollback, R1 to skip, Menu to open menu. A control guide is also available within the game.

Y'all thought we were saving the cats by finding them, but they actually explode into confetti after you click on them. Also, these cats have crazy, sci-fi adjacent names. Imagine naming your real life cat "Ravager" or "Sentinel."

Basically an owlyboi kind of game without the futanari/femboy kink. Between the AI-generated CG art and the spirit in question having no real personality of her own, everything about this one is one big skip. Ran incredibly poorly in the menus, too, for some reason.

I first watched a playthrough of this game a few months ago and was hooked on the creepy atmosphere with none of the ever-present time-limited or survival-adjacent sequences, so when my friend Saku had a key on hand, I knew I wanted to play it for myself. VHS was already a dying medium by the time I was born, but my grandma still had a player and a sizable collection of tapes, so this was a relatable enough premise (even if obscure local TV channels like the one Amanda would air on aren't a thing to begin with over here). This is a rather simple puzzle game that has you interact with various episodes of the show to progress. My opinion is unfairly biased, because I did use a guide while playing, but I don't agree that all or most puzzles in the whole game are obtuse; just about every solution that comes to mind is featured somewhere within the relevant tape. Sadly, this game seems to be considered by some as "YouTuber bait", as it is just a step away from being merely "Chapter 1" or "Episode 1" rather than a standalone, considering how little information there is to digest regarding the lore. The sequel came out a little over a week ago (a year and a half after the first game), so I may reserve my judgment for when, if ever, I play that (and the inevitable further sequels).

This short adventure game has an absolutely gorgeous pixel art style and a great atmospheric soundtrack; it's hard to believe that it was originally made in just one month for a game jam. The story element, however, feels rather obscure - while some of it is right there and obvious enough, the rest is (to me at least) just kind of confusing. Recommended only if you don't suffer from thalassophobia.

As per the store page, this is just a spin-off story, released to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Bloody Painter franchise (?), which I don't know at all, so forgive me if I've missed anything. You play as a nameless girl, who wakes up in a mysterious room underground. You have been kidnapped by a mysterious, mask-wearing man and soon enough, you learn from him that you have to behave for at least seven days if you don't want your corpse to be left to rot after he kills you. It's a rather simple horror VN with a twist: if you make all the right choices, you'll get the guy to warm up to you ever so slightly, which is the prerequisite for all the good endings. You can't die later than on day three, which I found a tad disappointing; I love horror VNs that go crazy with it and let you die at pretty much every opportunity, but here this was underutilized and almost all deaths were identical. The character art is solid, same for the backgrounds. The music is generic, royalty-free stuff. The translation is okay (but still, bonus points for misspelling "hungry" as "hungary", I never thought I'd encounter that out in the wild). Interestingly enough, Bloody Painter is fully voiced, though only in English. Unexpected, considering it's a Chinese franchise? I'm not big on serial killers and other openly dangerous character types as love interests, but I don't mind a creepy rendezvous like this once in a while. If you played this one already, you might be able to guess that my favorite ending was the one where two years after making her escape, MC starts receiving roses from Bloody Painter every Halloween.

It was supposed to be another normal, boring night for Amy: come home from work, eat dinner, watch a movie or play some games until her friend Liv wakes up, chat with Liv, then go to sleep. However, she received a weird email from Blaise, whom she recognized as an old friend from school. Blaise claims to have sent out emails to all school friends, asking to join his new group chat and reconnect, hoping for a reunion in the near future. Soon enough, Amy will learn that the weirdest thing about the group chat isn't everyone being online after 2 AM…

This one has a simple setup and throws you right in. Amy's at her computer, listening to some chill, lo-fi-adjacent music and getting to know her new-old, old-new friends. Something I noticed people who reviewed the game didn't like was being forced to type out Amy's messages perfectly before they can be sent. At some point later, an option to have them typed out automatically was added. Personally, I didn't mind that one bit. In fact, that's the one thing I was really interested in; it's much more satisfying to type out an actual sentence than keysmash continuously for the message to show up, like in the Emily is Away series. That being said, Amy is quickly faced with an explanation for what's going on, and that's when the game quickly fizzles out. I noticed a review entertaining the thought that it would be more interesting if the people in the group chat were just regular people who lost their minds as opposed to ghosts that decided to target Amy in particular. This may have ended up much more chilling, especially because at least one of the three ghosts should have no desire to target Amy (she's currently lacking direction in her life and she doesn't seem to have any specific dreams). Still, this was more my speed than the other VNs I've played this month.

In this short horror puzzle game, you play as Lin Lixun, a newbie policeman who stumbles his way into a re-investigation of a peculiar murder case. I guess I could say that this gameplay style is easily one of my preferred for horror games specifically; exploring locations to piece clues together, interspersed with simple puzzles every once in a while. There was only one puzzle I couldn't figure out right away and I only solved it by chance. That being said, I think I was mostly out of it while playing, as it took me an embarrassing amount of time to associate the names with characters they belonged to. Because most of them don't have sprites, however, and are hardly shown otherwise anyway, I think it would be a good call if each speaker name had its own color, as opposed to the three or four colors being used at all times. I also made it worse for myself by pausing the game halfway and accidentally picking it back up a whole week after I initially started it. The first half is very loaded, the second one not so much. The translation is good, but every once in a while, some stilted or unnatural phrasing turns up, as it goes with Chinese to English translation. In the end, I wasn't really into it, but if you feel like a 2D sidescrolling horror puzzle game set in China with supernatural elements, feel free to try it. And because it's only about 3-4 hours long, do yourself a favor and set aside enough time to play it in one sitting.

It should have been a Halloween like any other, but ever since her father passed away four years ago, Elle has never been the same. Today, she tries talking to him for the first time and then, her fate brings her and a mysterious girl, Lucia, together. This was a wonderfully heartrending story of two strangers bonding over their grief, asking hard questions and giving painful answers. It's not overlong or preachy by any means, but if you happen to be coping with grief at the moment, you may want to wait until you feel comfortable reading. I hate to admit it, but I have recently been thinking about mortality to a degree that scares me, so I think this "fit the mood" somehow, so to speak. As per the credits, this story seems to have been inspired by real events and feelings of one of the devs, so I would like to thank them for putting such a vulnerable part of themselves out there. It's not often that a story acknowledges just how closed off we are from each other past the usual pleasantries without swaying too hard in the other direction and coming off entirely unrealistic.

What can I say? I noticed there was a Halloween-themed one and I bought it.

Already played one of these earlier in the month, but I figured there's no reason to keep it unplayed in my library until next year. This was big enough that it kept me looking. You can zoom in quite a lot, too. The capybaras are spread out enough and there's a few other things to find, which I also like. The BGM is a full on, upbeat, Halloween-esque track that doesn't loop every few seconds like the simple ditties this subgenre started out with.

Thanks to Inversed, for just 15 minutes, you too can assist a 19th century poet as she writes supposedly the most important work of her life. Although this VN was made for a jam with strict limitations, the main character is fully voiced, which I would never neglect to notice. The word choice minigame is likely not as robust as it seems on the surface, but that's not a big deal. The UI design is simply gorgeous. On its own, this didn't really wow me (been there, done that), but it's important to acknowledge that this is just a small part in a bigger puzzle ("The Purgatoryverse", a shared universe for all of Tymedust Games' works), which I suppose I've only just started piecing together.

This one did an okay job of setting up a dark and moody atmosphere. Half an hour wasn't enough to learn a substantial amount about the characters' circumstances, however, so it didn't do much for me.

A simple RPGMaker game where you have to help Jake find all the pieces of his Halloween costume before he can go to the party. To get all three endings: 1) complete the outfit and leave, 2) complete the outfit, collect all candy and leave, 3) complete the outfit, collect all candy and unlock the trunk in the bedroom. Both the environment art and character art are great, but the game is far too short to be paid (and judging by some reviews, it used to be), so I'm glad to have found it after it was changed to F2P. The dev claimed Jake's story would continue, but it's almost been a year and it doesn't seem like anything is in the works. Oh well.

A short kinetic novel about a witch who lives in the forest just outside a city (or was it a town?) and makes an unexpected friend. Inoffensive and rather bland. The choice between ADV and NVL-style presentation at the start was a nice touch, but I found myself wishing for more BGM variety.

Ever since I started playing Coloring Pixels, I've been hungry for more while they're busy working on new packs. I wanted to recommend this one, but even though it has its own aesthetic and a robust options menu, it's got to be running on spaghetti code. During every session, it would crash multiple times for unknown reasons (there was an info window for it, but it's not like I could have done anything to warrant the crash). The best I got was a suggestion from someone on the forum to turn off the particle effect, but in the end that was more of a placebo effect. To add insult to injury, if you barely started an image when the game crashed, it may not have saved at all. Some of the options wouldn't save either, I had to turn down the ambience SFX every time I opened the game up again. Play this one only if you're crazy for pixel coloring.

This is a cop-out "write-up", just here to show that I completed the game. I took five months from when I first started to getting the missable toilet achievement, so I don't remember the story well enough to comment on it anymore. If I replay the game at some point in the future, I'll talk more about it.
For now, I will say that every frame is a painting, but this would have worked so much better as a movie. Nearly all the interactivity in this game simply feels shoe-horned in.

Funny how the devs claim they reworked the free level to make it harder, considering it took me four minutes to complete. I guess their hands slipped on the keyboard.

I've never played Paw Patrol: Grand Prix (and likely never will), but I think this might be the best Paw Patrol game yet. While in the end it is still repetitive, I cannot rightfully complain about it, as it is aimed at kids and therefore meant to be played in shorter sessions (or so I would assume.)
Ryder and the team are busy preparing for Paw Patrol Day when Mayor Humdinger shows up and starts being a nuisance. The story will take you through four open worlds based on locations seen in previous games (Barkingsburg being new to me), which is an improvement over randomly getting boxed into a location and forced to complete it perfectly. I collected all the pup treats I could find in each and every location due to force of habit, but in this game, for once, there is no need to do that. Once you've gathered a set amount of treats, you'll get a new unlockable and the progress bar will reset, but between the mission rewards and all the treats that are just laying around, there's enough for about a dozen more unlocks than there actually are.
Most notably, this may be the least broken Outright Games title I'm aware of yet; it ran flawlessly. (Okay, no, it did crash on me once, but I prefer to chalk it up to a freak accident and it did save right before the next objective, so it's all good.) Maybe they found a good studio to develop this one, maybe Nickelodeon insisted that it be good or maybe there just wasn't any crunch, who knows. I'm a low-spec player, but I bet it looks great if you can run it on a more capable device, too. I was positively surprised Xbox didn't force me to play in Polish as it did with previous games, even though the option is there.
I only have a few petty nitpicks:

• The previous games have conditioned me to mash the action button when performing an action, but here, this yields a broken-sounding SFX. As it turns out, you're actually supposed to hold the action button until the bar fills up to hear the SFX properly… but who's got the time for that?
• Citizen help requests refresh almost immediately after you complete them, instead of disappearing to indicate completion. If you weren't completing them as you went, have fun backtracking!
• You can't move the camera while driving. I think the fact that you're only able to control your vehicle with the left stick is supposed to feel like playing a racing game? Maybe? I don't know, I don't play racing games. Either way, I'm not a fan. I'd like to see where I'm going and adjust accordingly instead of having to stop and turn before I can change direction.
• Some of the things they do are just ridiculous. Since when can you repair anything with a jackhammer? A few tasks were easy enough that I'm convinced Ryder could have done them himself instead of making the team do them.

And a word of advice to anyone planning to play this in the future: do yourself a favor and toggle the option to auto-select characters on. With eight characters, each having their own vehicle, it gets annoying fast.

I like subscribing to Game Pass, because it lets me play new games on release day, and Rolling Hills was one of those games. As Sushi Bot, you move into Rolling Hills and open your very own sushi place, which the locals hope will bring new life to the village… and it very quickly does! …you just don't see much of it. The tourists must just be coming over for sushi and leaving, 'cause there aren't that many of them standing around outside, not to mention there's no inn or any other place to stay in.
Randos aside, there's a cast of specific characters, such as the mayor and the local shopkeeper, but also multiple new additions as the story progresses. Some of them provide some kind of service (at the grocery store, the furniture store, the cafe), but besides that, they're all terribly forgettable (when put together, the new residents are an extremely random bunch of people, too.) Still, you can treat them to coffee or a meal to level up your friendship for bonuses, which would be a great mechanic if the characters were more than their signature traits.
As for the main part of the gameplay, it's a Diner Dash-adjacent restaurant management deal, except you don't have to worry about finding the right table for everyone. Instead, you need to match the type of the dish (vegetable, fish, meat, dessert - not actual in-game names) and its numeric value (quality, I believe?) to what each customer wants (for a perfect rating, both variables have to match - it doesn't work like UNO).
This could have been fun if Sushi Bot wasn't so dummy thicc. It's a struggle to even point at the dish you want to pick up, sometimes. This also extends to serving the dishes; I've given the dish I was holding to the customer on the wrong side of the table more times than I can count. A dash is available, but it's very limited and has a cooldown, and I couldn't explain why it's not permanent if I tried. That only meant I was using the time freeze mechanic much more often.
While in Diner Dash, customers annoyed by businessmen yapping on their phones would eventually get frustrated and leave (a punishment for poor seating choices, or just for being too slow), customers in Rolling Hills don't seem to care as much, even though they are visibly annoyed. Instead, a customer might fall asleep at the table, and if you don't wake them up in time, they'll wake up on their own and leave with a smile before ordering any more dishes. Okay? Your loss, I guess?
At the end of the day, your progress is summed up and you can watch a replay of how much XP you got throughout the day. Earning both XP and money quickly becomes a slow process, but you can speed it up somewhat by furnishing your restaurant with the right kinds of furniture. I may have liked this more if there was any kind of floor grid to help with placing decor symmetrically. As it is, you can't actually do that and not for a lack of trying; for some reason, I just couldn't put two of the same item next to or against each other and have it line up perfectly.
You'll also have to level recipes up by adding matching ingredients to them. Maybe this was just a side effect of the order in which I leveled up my recipes, but in the late game, the lack of new veggie recipes was clear as day. Being forced to serve rainbow (universal) recipes instead just feels like a cop-out. If you level up your friendship with the shopkeeper, you'll get the option to restock the store for a set price, for as long as you can afford it. I looked at negative reviews a few times while I was playing the game and one complaint was a lack of a button to buy out the store all at once. I don't know if that's hard to implement or not, but after an update, there is now an option to skip the confirmation for buying each and every product, as well as a new way to level up recipes (whereas originally you could only use ingredients one by one, now, if you mouse over a recipe and you own enough fitting ingredients, you can choose to level it up from there.) This… is an okay alternative, I guess? (Imagine me shaking my head vehemently right after saying that.)
There are also daily challenges to provide a sort of baseline for the day - spend a thousand coins, talk to three characters, wake up a sleeping customer, etc. These are rewarded with a set amount of points, which you can then redeem for recipes and hats. Yes, hats. There's an absolutely crazy amount of hats Sushi Bot can wear, if only you so please. That being said, the further you progress, the easier these are to complete without even keeping track, and so you'll rack up the points, but have nothing to spend them on (I must have had a little over a thousand by the end; if I'm not mistaken, the sole most expensive item costs 250 points), which is just unfortunate. Besides buying recipes with challenge points and getting them as the restaurant levels up, you can also buy a few from the traveling sushi chef, who only shows up on Sundays (Animal Crossing, anyone?), which feels off, considering there is no other measure of time besides that.
After you finish the story, there are still five more recipes to unlock, so you have to get your restaurant up to level 20. I'm really glad I stopped there until the game was updated: now, you can play special challenge services, and if you do well, these yield a lot more XP in a much shorter time than the usual slog at the regular restaurant. I can't deny that these are creative, but some of the ideas - huge Sushi Bot vs tiny customers, underwater level, an impossible maze - make me feel like the devs genuinely don't know what's a bug and what's a feature. But hey, besides the XP, you can also get a different skin or a new horn sound for Sushi Bot! That's something, right?
All in all, I'm glad to finally be done with this game. The art style is to die for and I've been craving a time management game similar to Diner Dash, but everything else about this one falls so flat, it's insane. Maybe the devs should take writing and/or game design classes next time, I don't know. And make your next game shorter, while you're at it.