Playing as Arabella Greene, an elderly English botanist, your overall task is to finish up researching a handful of plants for her debut herbarium, “Forgotten Flora,” at the behest of her publisher-to-be. Starting in the greenhouse, you solve a basic puzzle that introduces the game’s controls and overall puzzle presentation, before you’re allowed to wander the premises and start the game in earnest. Botany Manor is split into distinct chapters, with Arabella needing to complete research on two or more plants per chapter, upon which more of the manor is unlocked to the player, leading into the next chapter. Puzzle solving is the core strength of the game; every puzzle is solved by successfully triggering a given plant’s ideal growth conditions, but finding out what those are and how to achieve them makes up the bulk of each chapter. This brisk explanation truncates what is consistently a healthy admixture of exploration, investigation, and experimentation. Leveraging its own art style and whimsical premise, Botany Manor features fantastical plants which react to all kinds of external stimuli, ranging from weather to sound to animal activity (often through roundabout means as befitting a puzzle game), and it’s up to the player to study the clues strewn about the rooms and use them in conjunction with the manor’s various contraptions to bring each sapling to bloom and complete her research.

One of my favorite aspects of puzzle-solving in Botany Manor are the various documents which serve the double duty of fleshing out the setting and characters while also keying players in on which devices and techniques should be employed for which plants. Being as vague as possible for this example, there’s a folklore book with a peculiar story involving a plant, and the story ends up being critical to understanding how to bloom it. The book provides necessary context to understanding certain aspects of the environment, which link over to another element of the puzzle. Every document is like that book; perfectly couched in its respective context, giving a weighty realness to them that breathes life into the game. Newspaper articles follow the same cadence you’d expect of reporters investigating an odd river phenomenon. Letters from official sources have a cold formality, while ones from Arabella’s sister are warm and playful. It’s through these texts that the game’s setting is fully realized—another reason I adore it so much. There is an efficiency in the writing that is unbelievably potent for a game of this scope and scale. And they’re necessary too! These aren’t just lore snippets or optional collectables: Most of them are pieces of the puzzles themselves, offering vital information about each plant. Acquiring this information is one step of the puzzle-solving process, and the game allows the player to assign documents like books, newspaper articles, and letters to each plant’s entry in Arabella’s herbarium.

This is a delightfully ingenious way to corroborate disparate information and sets players up for success. Getting stuck on any puzzle, even when you have all the information, is really frustrating, and assigning these clues to each specific plant helps organize the information and refocuses attention on the puzzle as a whole, as the player will know which clues correspond to which plant. It’s not necessary to assign information in this fashion, so players with no need or interest can skip this step without any penalties, but when working on four or five plants at a time, it becomes more useful and adds a degree of satisfaction on its own, as a plant’s page isn’t fully complete without its clue assignments. This clue assignment feature’s effectiveness cannot be understated, as it turns what might otherwise be a bother or struggle point for some players into part of the puzzle-solving process, reinforcing the core strength of the game and smoothing out the experience overall.

The only downside to this system is that the actual text in the clues themselves are not collected. If you find a temperature chart, and you know the chart corresponds to one plant, but you forgot which entry on the chart relates to the plant in question, you’ll have to manually walk back to the chart to review it, rather than selecting the entry in your clue catalog. This is a minor downside, as a little inconvenience is often necessary to keep players engaged in a game with no stakes. Botany Manor affords the player many concessions as a more relaxed puzzle-solving experience, and being forced to backtrack through the gorgeously decorated and realized rooms and lawns of the manor is hardly a punishment at all (especially since Ms. Greene is a spry old woman who can sprint with the best of FPS characters, though I am a bit crestfallen that she cannot bunny hop.) This is the only point of the game’s design where I could see someone reasonably arguing “I wish this element worked differently,” which speaks to the game’s sheer quality.

After reading a fair number of decades-old letters, newspaper articles, correspondences, and books, the story of the titular Botany Manor and Ms. Greene herself winds its way out into the light. The manor is old and contains its share of surprising secrets, but I will set them aside to focus on Arabella Greene’s narrative, as her history is a spectacular example of how such few words can invoke such a strong connection and emotional bond with fictional characters, even silent protagonists like Ms. Greene. I mentioned before that Arabella is an elderly Englishwoman; what I have not mentioned is this game takes place in 1890. Our understanding of Arabella’s history is made manifest through private letters and official documentations; she grows up and becomes fascinated with the botanical sciences, seeking to further the collective understanding of the myriad plants in her neck of the woods.

As you might expect, she is disenfranchised constantly by men who believe academia and fields of science are exclusive realms which are forbidden to women. A fellow woman in her family desperately seeks to set Arabella up with one of her neighbors, citing that it’s for “Arabella’s own good” as she’s getting on in years and won’t be able to bear children if she keeps up with her silly little flower obsession. There’s one absolutely infuriating story about Arabella going on a brief nature excursion with a notable botanist and his wife, and another young man roughly her age. Arabella makes an actual botanical discovery about a peculiarly-shaped mushroom and brings it to the botanist’s attention, and he dismisses it as her confusing the mushroom for a different species; you find a published book about this newly discovered mushroom by the botanist later, and the unremarkable young man is accredited on the cover, with no mention of Arabella.

These are heart-wrenching, incensing revelations that burn in your mind as you solve silly little flower puzzles in your silly idyllic manor. The whole veneer of the game gets covered in a dusty sheen of would-be triumphs and denied opportunities. They’re the kinds of anecdotes that stick with you because of how real they are, juxtaposing with the warm atmosphere and stylized art direction of the game. There’s no blood or gore in Botany Manor, but its portrayal of the institutional and systemic desecration of this poor old woman’s lifelong pursuit of knowledge and harmony with her environment over the course of decades is just as gruesome.

Botany Manor surprised me, to say the least. While its plant-based puzzles, detailed corridors, and well-kept gardens were what drew me in, I did not expect to be drawn into the life of Ms. Arabella Greene so vividly. Her story is told not through bombastic cutscenes or epic expositions of her storied lineage. It is quiet, and quaint, and gradual, blooming in the light of a lazy midday sun, but it is no less stunning for it.

The post Botany Manor Isn’t Afraid to Have Thorns – Botany Manor (PC) Review appeared first on Gamesline.

The dinner-table pitch for the game is quite simple, though not enough to tell you if the game might be up your alley. The story is sold to you as a crazy new dating reality show where failing to find a partner will see you end up dead. “Most men would kill to trade places with you,” says the host of the show as she tries to sell you on the fantasy of having the freedom to choose from and socialise with five beautiful young women much as the Steam description does. 

Initial impressions were extremely disappointing, with host-and-producer Kat being so crass and nonchalant about the whole ordeal, including your own death.  Hand-behind-it-all, Damian, brings some even more choice vocabulary and imagery to the point that 10 minutes in I was already regretting my choice to give this game an opportunity and thinking I had been suckered into playing someone’s bad, trashy, and completely average sexual fantasy disguised as something more unique. Thankfully these fears were off the mark, as the whole repulsive first scene is meant to put you on edge about this reality-show tirade, and the characters’ disregard for good taste is completely deliberate. 

As I worked my way through greeting the main cast for the first time, I found my curiosity won over by Scarlett. During a brief sequence in the library, you can find her hiding a book behind a magazine and making an attempt to play the ditzy bombshell type for the cameras. However, after making a seemingly honest connection and having her offer to show you the book she’s actually reading, her clumsiness gets the better of her and she drops both it and the magazine only to reveal a third magazine underneath and running away in shame. 

This simple spin on a common trope got a good laugh out of me and garnered enough goodwill to keep me playing —at least long enough to get me speaking with Scarlett again and understand why she would pull such a ridiculous trick. This experience can describe the charm of Find Love or Die Trying in microcosm. Though it’s not revolutionary, and it won’t blow anyone’s minds, it never plays out quite like you’d expect, or goes for the low-hanging fruits, knowing just what kind of new spin to use in order to get a good laugh or a concerned gasp out of you. 

While I would not like to spoil a fairly tight and well-paced 5-hour experience by revealing all of its secrets in a few paragraphs, be aware that everything is not quite as it appears. References to the current state of the world and nightmares hinting at the past behind your requisite visual-novel-main-character amnesia have more substance to them than you might initially think, and most things that seem odd about your housemates do so for a reason. Most. 

The writing really is where Find Love or Die Trying shines. Being such a DIY project, most of the music comes from incompetech’s venerable and bountiful royalty free library. And though the in-game sprites look really good, a couple (and I do mean a couple) of the CGs look a little off-model. Even though the main illustration that you’ll see everywhere from the title-screen to its little promotion on steam and social media looks quite good, you can easily see it bears designs that would still be altered a tad as the rest of the game continued development.

Technically, there is not much to discuss on the gameplay side as it is a pretty by-the-books VN with minimal choice. But I do have to commend with extreme emphasis Find Love or Die Trying’s robust accessibility features. From text-to-speech for the visually impaired, to colour fixing for the colourblind —of which I suppose I am one, but I never feel a need to use those options— to the most important to me: A fine tuning bar to set the exact speed of the auto scroll for the text. GOD, believe me that it is completely out of my endless mercy that I will not subject you to a whole paragraph of me throwing praises upon it, dear reader. But this is the only visual novel where I have been able to set my ideal auto speed, and never felt a need to press a button to make things go faster for the entirety of the experience. 

Find Love or Die Trying is everything you would want out of a debutant in any art-form. Strong on the fundamentals, very literate on the tropes of its medium, plays to its strengths, doesn’t neglect its weaknesses, and though this game doesn’t make a particularly consequential statement there is enough there to let you know that Cho-Wong is a thoughtful person who writes from a human perspective. It’s easy to digest popcorn entertainment, with more than a couple surprises thrown in and it left enough of a good impression on me to want to write something on it and let more people know about it as a way to give something back for those five hours of fun.

The post Ready for Prime Time – Find Love or Die Trying Review appeared first on Gamesline.

2021 had a number of pretty good hits that I am grateful to have relished my time in and even finished! But still many more games—even of surprising quality, that did not necessarily make it to my personal top five—were unexpectedly brought out into the world that year which I hope to dive right into at some point.

Some of them are still collecting dust in unopened packaging as we speak.

5. Dungeon Encounters

Dungeon Encounters is a strange one; when it was briefly published on itch.io, one would have not guessed it was a Square Enix work, specifically coming from the direction of Hiroyuki Ito who has not done any large development of since Final Fantasy IX and XII. Dungeon Encounters is a sparse take on dungeon crawling, using very limited visuals and leaving much to your own imagination. You navigate a character along a simply-designed, grid-based grid and much of what unfolds in the game is described and flavored through text description.

It is interesting to see a major publisher otherwise known for big budget RPGs take their signature concept in a completely stripped down direction, akin to many minimalist MMOs and similar back-to-basics grinding systems, like Progress Quest, one of the first idle clicker games. It definitely would have fallen under my radar had I not heard about it via word-of-mouth from a friend. Lately I’ve been researching and diving into unique approaches to game design, and Dungeon Encounters is certainly something that fits the bill in something I would love to not only try, but also study.

4. Minute of Islands

I know it is reductive to say that Minute of Islands gives off Adventure Time-vibes at a glance, but there is a reason why the aesthetic of the latter continues to enthrall and inspire all these years later since the series’ conclusion.

As a side-scrolling story game, the sight of the game’s slick, weird designs and eye-catching animation alone has gotten me curious as to what more can be offered with it. I wonder if it will evoke similar things I felt positively about within my experience playing Gris, and there’s only one way to find out.

3. Eastward

Eastward is a really (really!) pretty game, with an incredibly compelling story behind its long, ragtag development period. We are continuing to see this recurring trend of Earthbound-likes and arguably even Zelda-inspired titles coming out as of recent and although Eastward seems to be doing the same with its own pastiches and problems (Eastward pays explicit homage to Dragon Quest if anything), at the very least, I don’t think we will ever see something to the effect of what YIIK: A Postmodern RPG tried to do ever again. And also having already taken a chip at it, the gameplay is really long. Really, really long. And well, that’s mostly its problem. I’m curious as to what more projects may be in store for Pixpil, Eastward’s developer—and hopefully they’re shorter ones!

2. Kena: Bridge of Spirits

I was supposed to try this game. I was even supposed to cover it. And… I just didn’t? There’s a literal physical copy of this thing sitting on my shelf among all my other games cases next to my workstation as I am typing this piece away. The plastic shrink wrap is still on it.

I remember Kena: Bridge of Spirits catching my eye at the various shows it was promoted in prior to its formal release. I was thinking how cute it was. I was thinking about how interesting it would be to unpack this new setting in a sea of previously established IPs. I was thinking about meditating on the methodology of its creation with a little controversy sprinkled in.

As you can see, I have a lot to potentially say about Kena: Bridge of Spirits, but that potential will have to wait and continue to rest unopened on my shelf until I actually play it.

1. Beast Breaker

Unions are freaking awesome! And with all the good they can bring, they can also inadvertently create good PR campaigns!

I was not aware of Beast Breaker until the reporting that its developer’s workers, Vodeo Games, mobilized the first legally recognized video games union in North America. Not only was I thinking, “Hey, that rules!”, I was also able to learn more about this said developer’s work. As it turns out, Beast Breaker seems pretty interesting! You play as a small, rodent-sized warrior who is trying to defend their community of other critter-sized friends from “mosaic” monsters. There is a tactical aspect to the game, and you have to strategize your approach to these paint-by-numbers designed monsters while you upgrade your own equipment and repertoire over time. On top of cute visuals and rather straightforward gameplay mechanics that I think I will enjoy on an adrenaline rush, the culmination of the events that accompanied this game’s development is a positive sign of things to come.

I also just love to play as a little guy.

The post Elvie’s Top 5 Missed Games of 2021 appeared first on Gamesline.

Axiom Verge 2
Thomas Happ Games

Toem: A Photo Adventure
Something We Made

Phantom Abyss
Team WIBY

Garden Story
picogram via Rose City Games

Soup Pot
Chikon Club

A Musical Story
Glee-Cheese Studio

Vokabulantis
Wired Fly Stop Motion/Kong Orange/Morten Søndergaard

Road 96
Digixart

The Wandering Village
Stray Fawn Studio

Unbeatable
D-Cell Games

Death’s Door
Acid Nerve

Behind the Frame
Silver Lining Studio

Moonglow Bay
Coatsink

Lootriver
straka.studio

Despelote
Julián Cordero & Sebastián Valbuena

Last Stop
Variable State

And one more thing! A micro-round up of micro-proportions by Asobu Games:

Asobu is a content-production and publishing team that is brand new bridging Japanese developers to the west which is something we always need more of. And for this event, they put together multiple games that all look really neat! For this, I think I’ll let Christine’s expert note-taking do the talking for this section because she summed my thoughts up completely:

Elec head by NamaTakahashi – “gettin vvvvibes”
demolition robots kk by Takaaki Ichijo – “looks like gundam rampage”
Walk by Kazumi Games – “look fucking weird as shit fmv silent hill school girl what the fuck”

AND THAT’S DAY OF THE DEVS, PEOPLE! We did it! 19 games in about an a blistering 70 minutes! I’m utterly exhausted now. Normally during press conferences I can chill during boring games, but LOOK AT THAT LIST! When was I supposed to chill? During the 3D dungeon crawler that deletes itself? Or while a game promised 148,268 different routes? Just an utterly ridiculous way to cap off the -1th day of E3 2021. The curation put together here blew me away and I think I can speak for all of us after watching two hours of Geoff Keighley, that we needed it. I hope you enjoyed the recap and good luck with the rest of the game presentations this week!

The post E3 2021 Day 1 – Day of the Devs Roundup appeared first on Gamesline.

Regardless of these circumstances, the worst parts of the game industry—which undeniably stems from the bigger budgeted, glitzier parts of it—should not overshadow the hidden treasures waiting to be found deeper in the dark. Remaining faithful to my background in games coverage and that ongoing agenda, my narrowed down “Top 5” game picks for 2020 hope to not only stay true to my tastes, but to also make room for the sort of indie, niche titles I want to continue to narrow my focus on supporting.

This is my second year taking part in Game of the Year with Video Game Choo Choo, and I honestly don’t know if we are the best group to survive against some retroactive apocalypse with, but at least we’re the most fun.

5. Star Renegades

Not only do I typically dislike roguelites, but I also don’t understand the mass of the lore, text, and chunky artstyle that lays the foundation for something like Warhammer 40,000. However, if you combine elements of those two things and get Star Renegades—it somehow becomes something I genuinely enjoy!

Star Renegades is a roguelite strategy RPG that takes your squad up against the growing army of an invading empire after being warned of an impending, future doom if their tirades are not stopped. In addition to facing off enemies in a mission-based campaign, you must also deal with building allyship across your teams to hopefully influence the next line of heroes, and even potentially your own progeny.

Just as the tactics-styled combat feels great, Star Renegades also looks great, with its deliberately low-bit graphics, and just a dash of tilt-shift effects for that extra kick, harkening to a vibe so strongly associated with 80s pulp literature and sci-fi fantasy art. It gets your adrenaline pumping to utterly crush a giant mech-like structure and see it fall apart with every pixel lovingly rendered in detail. Although progressing through the game may come off as repetitive because of its inherent roguelite-ness, my interest in Star Renegades has not faltered and it continues to be a straightforward experience to zip in and out of if I’m ever in the mood to knock some heads.

4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Yes—Animal Crossing: New Horizons is by no means a low budget, independently produced game. It is also certainly the complete opposite of what one would call “niche”. But it is a game I still continue to love and thus is a game that stood out to me in 2020, which is something that I think I can speak for on behalf of many others.

Animal Crossing has pulled me in with every consecutive title it has had to offer in its mainline series thanks to its signature cuteness and the utopian-like wholesomeness that embodies what each game is. Its visuals and use of audio is iconic, and it is no wonder given that they are purposefully designed to harken back to a sense of nostalgia and more innocent times. These elements are all the more enhanced and with higher definition in New Horizons. With even more enhanced sensory weather effects and further taking minute textures and animation detail in each and every single character to the next level, New Horizons is a visual treat worth every snapshot with its in-game camera.

It provided the literal gateway island package from a pandemic: just as much as you could commit to fulfilling tiny goals provided in a single-player experience, you can also hang out with friends or meet new ones across the world without leaving your home. Even outsiders to gaming hopped on to the New Horizons hype pretty quickly, but it was also simultaneous to growing discontent from others who justifiably felt the game was occasionally frustrating and was too much of a departure from past games with its new mechanics and an unprecedented, economically devastating thirst from the community.

But from hosting graduation ceremonies, celebrating high school proms, roleplaying the missing dine-in experience, providing live entertainment, and to some extent, holding the 2020 Tokyo Olympics that never was, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, became more than just a mere game. For many such as myself, it was a source of escape and comfort. To others, it was a necessary means to slowly accept reality and heal. I personally have not played the game with the same frequency as I initially had since it came out, but I still pop open the game once in a while and anticipate every new update still expected to come—even as slow as they may be—to keep on hearing that sweet Animalese.

3. Chicken Police: Paint It RED!

There were a lot of games released in the last two years alone that featured an exclusively anthropomorphic animal cast within a thriller-mystery setting, and there are even more to come in the early portion of 2021. A. Lot. Of. Them! I am not sure what it is about this highly specific genre to find a surgence recently, but I’m certainly not complaining if all them are anything like Chicken Police.

Chicken Police: Paint it RED! Is an utterly feral point-and-click noir-themed game with anthropomorphic animals. (I think this is the first time I can apply an actually appropriate use of the word “feral” here.) I first discovered the game at Indie Arena Booth’s online show this year and I was already impressed with the demo then and became even more impressed with the full game. It’s raunchy, it’s reckless, and it’s just downright a racket! Playing a rooster detective fallen from grace who is forced to work with a former partner on a new case, the game has you use an interrogation system with assorted mini-games sprinkled throughout its narrative as you explore the gritty city of Clawville.

With a unique, eye-catching visual style that collages animal photos with humanoid bodies combined with impeccably high quality voice acting and shockingly dense writing, nothing can be said about this game that isn’t downright ludicrous. It is constantly making fun of itself and the genre it pays homage to, throwing in sequences like an extensive action car chase scene (with guns and all), a brief mini-game where you have to help the femme fatale zip up her dress, and a frequent, excessive use of extremely stupid animal puns such as constantly saying “cluck” instead of a typical F-bomb.

The game was developed by The Wild Gentlemen, a new independent game studio based in Hungary that comprises a team that previously has had AAA industry experience—and it really shows! As I discussed within my first impressions of the game in the aforementioned Indie Arena Booth Online piece, I was initially concerned how the game was going to approach fantastic racism if it was going to be present in its story, but those concerns were alleviated experiencing how much the game does not take itself seriously enough where anything that seems like it was going to be played straight instead turns completely sideways. Chicken Police is a genuinely funny and solidly presented game that knows exactly what it is and what it wants to do. I was surprised by how much Chicken Police turned out to be a hoot—or rather a bakaw.

2. Carto

In 2019, Death Stranding urged you to see the lines across the distances that separate our communities, while 2020 was the year that Carto had you literally draw them to connect them together.

Carto fought its way into my field of vision by climbing over countless other demos that were made available during the Autumn Edition of the Steam Game Festival this year—and it stuck with me since. Playing as a young girl, the game centers on your ability to manipulate map pieces to build paths and solve puzzles to further navigate across different lands in an effort to reunite with your grandmother after a storm tore you two apart.

What stood out to me the most in Carto was how each proceeding use of the game’s main gimmick continued to exceed my expectations in what it could possibly do next. The game not only has you connect one map piece to the other, but also forces you to reconsider how the mechanic can be used in clever, mind-blowing ways. For instance, one situation may hint you to consider the direction a tree may be pointing toward in one scene to figure out where to put the connecting map piece to get into the next scene. Another situation may urge you to consider how you place or move a map piece in being the key to unlock something as opposed to where, and its final location is not crucial to solving the problem at hand.

The game has you travel across different places that feature assorted, imaginary cultures that can easily be interpreted and have elements to them seen as analogous to real life cultures in their own ways. Every person you meet treats you with kindness and politeness, and although lacking in understanding who you are and what your map shifting abilities are capable of, they indirectly help you just as you in exchange provide help to them—if not for a few comical, but still encouraging misunderstandings here in there as well.

With a charming, illustrative style reminiscent of a children’s book, Carto shares a very welcoming, optimistic view of the world and unites it through puzzles. Carto endearingly imagines a globe much smaller than our own to paint a big picture on how different people from all over can connect all thanks to a little protagonist who simply wants to go back home.

1. Spiritfarer

My official, full Spiritfarer review for Video Game Choo Choo was actually the last review I wrote for the site for 2020, so it is coincidental for this title to cap off what video games meant to me for that year. It is a game that truly helped me understand what it really means to be able to play something, and laugh, and cry all at the same time.

Spiritfarer is not only a game that is visually appealing to the eye, it can also be outright warming and nurturing to the heart. In spite of its themes revolving around the expectations of dying, Spiritfarer avoids getting crass or dark in its approach to the topic, instead re-examining it through a lens that is both invigorating and healing. Death is unfortunately inevitable, but the countdown to life’s end doesn’t have to be experienced with haste and total dread.

As a game, Spiritfarer succeeds as a resource management sim in every aspect, offering you a variety of activities to do from tending a garden, cooking, and maintaining relationships with various, lovingly designed characters. In addition, you have to customize your boat around building facilities that can fit each of these characters’ needs in addition to helping you sustain and utilize the resources you forage on your seafaring travels. And lest we not forget that this game has a fishing sim! None of these tasks are very pressing, and you are free to take all the time you need, just as much as all the spirits you ferry along the way are taking their own remaining time on their own terms.

Your desired outcome for each and every one of these tasks is ultimately about making others feel good—and it feels good doing it! From the smooth, flowing waters that trickle alongside the edges of your boat to the unique, detailed bounce in every characters’ step, every element in the game’s visuals also shows how thoughtful each creative decision has been made through stunning results. (The game also perhaps has one of the best interpretations of an anthropomorphic snake design I have ever seen.) The game’s draftsmanship in its animation just oozes with rich detail. It looks beautiful just as much as it mechanically feels smooth. These subtleties add so much richness in places where the story intentionally lets you fill in the blanks and further enhances the more specific moments that carry a lot of emotional weight, such as further learning about an NPC’s prior life through a bit of dialogue and when you have to eventually let someone go.

As I discuss this, we are still currently in the midst of a very difficult time raked with inescapable, endless stories of sickness and pestilence. Many continue to grieve, and although it may not be in response to a literal death, loss is still something that can be experienced in a myriad of different ways. For releasing in a time like this, Spiritfarer imparts you with an even more profound message than it probably initially foresaw, offering its own perspective on how to process something that can be difficult and harrowing. Although we can’t easily hug others at this very moment like you can in the game, at the very least, through expressing love and care even at a distance, can we assure each other that pain and grief does not have to be endured alone, and that is something the world definitely needs to be reminded of more.

Spiritfarer hopes to teach you how to “learn how to say goodbye” by learning how to be appreciative of the better parts of an arduous journey that it takes to get to the end. And in bidding a disdainful farewell to 2020 as it came to its own end, here’s hoping the new year will steadily climb up from the lowest point to become something worthy of an embrace and to mourn over for.

The post Elvie’s Top 5 Games of 2020 appeared first on Gamesline.

Playing as Stella, you are given a boat to travel the world and recruit more passengers who are awaiting their time to finally be released into the afterlife. This boat can be customized and upgraded, enabling you to build more rooms and facilities to fulfill you and your passengers’ needs. These facilities range from structures like an open garden to plant and grow food, or special bedrooms specifically designed to best fit your otherworldly passengers’ personalities respectively.

Exploring different islands, you must also collect and purchase resources, like ore or seeds, in order to manifest enough ingredients to improve your boat and help your passengers to begin with. Like for a lot of the starting structures on your boat, such as a basic kitchen, you need to have a certain amount of wood.

Your navigation of the seas is not limited to just hopping from island to island, but there are also zoneless parts of the waters that can be pilfered for more material through events. The map will spawn idle areas filled with debris, hidden treasure chests or crates floating in the water that randomly spawn across the map cyclically. In areas where thunderstorms are heavily brewing, Stella can trigger an event to catch lightning and get glims, the game’s main form of currency. Other events occasionally trigger throughout the game, each dedicated to collecting specific materials. The game also offers a co-op mode, in which the second player can control Daffodil, Stella’s cat that tags along, and assist with these tasks.

Spiritfarer uses a day-night cycle, and observing realistic seafaring rules, your boat cannot move and will stop when the dark of the night hits. This encourages you to invest your time on doing activities on the boat itself or you can sleep into the next day. You can invest many leisurely hours of your time solely in the game’s fishing system, in which you can catch food or discover other items of possible use as your boat sails.You can also queue up the oven in the kitchen to have enough meals prepared to give to your passengers when demanded.

Taking on the appearances of different anthropomorphic animals in their ghostly forms, your passengers have specific needs that must be met on routine to sustain their moods. Each of them have likes and dislikes, and despite being dead, they still need to nourish their hunger. They have profiles you can use to track their moods and observe their preferences of what you last did with them or gave them. More importantly, you also have the ability to hug them. As you progress, you will learn about more and more snippets of both these passengers’ past lives and even fragments to who Stella actually is and was.

Each and every single one of the souls you board have unique identities. One of these passengers,Gwen (who appears in the form of a tall, reddish-brown deer) helps tutorialize earlier, basic aspects to the game. Gwen immediately reveals herself as a blasé character: she is a picky eater, disliking fruits and vegetables, and reeks of snooty, upper class status. For that reason, her needs will be much different from the other passengers—as they all are to each other—and things that you give her must compliment this personality. Regardless of these, she is very respectful and affectionate to Stella, in fact even hinting at a history they once had together.

It is not enough to say that Spiritfarer’s visuals are beautiful, incorporating very thoughtfully drawn 2D animation to capture every subtle moment and sequence of movement you see in-game. The game’s art director notes that they wanted to reference the feel housed by big studios like Disney and Studio Ghibli and that they were inspired by character designs by artists like Don Bluth. The game’s attention to detail is immense and there is animation explicitly designed for almost everything. In idle times, you can often see your passengers doing various things around the ship. From Stella’s complex hand gestures as she throws her fishing line into the sea, to the very subtle lull of the waters as your boat traverses, the animation meshes seamlessly to the ambience of the game’s sound design, nearly having you truly feeling the tropical heat and smelling the salty sea breeze in the air.

Spiritfarer does not hold your hand and you are free to take all the time you want to perform tasks —assuming you are not neglecting your passengers. But this lack of direction is both a positive and negative. Although the actions you can take and how they are controlled are explained in bits and pieces as you move forward, you may have to make a few mistakes before you learn how things work. For instance, after upgrading your fishing rod, it is not immediately explained it will now experience strain based on the strength and rarity of whatever you are now catching from that point on. This is not clear until you break your rod for the first time.

The game’s narrative is also entirely based on your completion of quests, specifically around the quests asked of by your passengers, which are each pivotal to their specific stories. So sometimes this might mean performing fetch quest after fetch quest without any clear insight to when the next big thing will happen and move the narrative forward. Though needing your passengers’ relationship with you to be positive is one factor, what other triggers contribute to this is not clear initially.

There is a linearity to the game and an eventual end to your own journey as Stella, but the path to putting things in motion is not always direct. That said, this is a game that is meant to be played at your own pace, but it is not consistent how much of it is in your control,especially if you want to speed it up a little.

Spiritfarer’s aesthetics and sensibilities draw from different sources of myth and cultures’  takes on death, specifically on perspectives that revere death positively. For example, Charon is a figure pulled straight from Greek and Roman mythology. The idea of crossing waters into the afterlife is something that can be found in belief systems and stories from all over the word. And as is, death still remains so interwoven with active tradition. Consider a holiday like Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) and ancestral veneration practices in many Asian cultures.

The game’s idealism on death also harkens to social death positive movements; death positivity hopes to challenge and transform the negative stigma that often hovers around death, believing that opening up those channels of discussion would improve and help the communities most affected by it. Death is not taboo, and Spiritfarer believes in acknowledging and confronting it firsthand is detrimental to grief and healing.

It is inaccurate to just say Spiritfarer is a game entirely about death, because without life, you simply cannot have the other. As the game has its characters confronting their pasts, it also encourages us to ask questions about our own lives and what we will leave behind when we are gone. Who have we hurt? Who have we helped? And what will my life mean to me when I must confront its end? Death remains a scary, unanswerable mystery and it surely is a harrowing event that deeply impacts everyone around it, but that does not mean the ripple effect it creates has to remain painful. Spiritfarer wants to bring an optimistic, soothing outlook to the forefront by suggesting that the means to overcome the grievances of death is to understand the value in life first and what it means to make the most out of it. If we were all just able to look death in the eye and give it a hug, it would make the process a whole lot easier for everyone.

The post Spiritfarer (PC) Review appeared first on Gamesline.

Milky Way Prince – The Vampire Star opens up through the lens of a fairytale titled, “The Milky Way Prince”, which revolves around a boy who catches a fallen star. The boy becomes so overwhelmed by the star’s beauty and glow, he cries into it, and it evolves into a prince. The prince then whisks the boy away with him in an effort to save his kingdom in the sky.

Following the introduction of this tale, the game puts you in the perspective of Nuki, a young man who has an obsession with the stars. Nuki also dreams of romance, and he projects himself through the “The Milky Way Prince” story. One night, he ends up meeting Sune in a parallel fashion to the tale, just as the boy met the prince. The two quickly become infatuated with each other, and the rest of the game follows the course of development on what quickly turns out to be a very shaky, unstable relationship.

Typical to most visual novels, Milky Way Prince is a text-heavy game that gives you, the player, agency over a series of dialogue-based options you must choose to move forward. The game does not use a branching system, and instead uses a quota fulfillment mechanic of some sort, in which a certain selection of specific choices is what determines what route you will be directed to. Milky Way Prince also provides a schematic from the very beginning you can follow along to hint and track what path you are on throughout the remainder of the game. There are also interludes where you must intimately use your senses, as Nuki, to do things such as touch Sune or to examine your surroundings. These interludes are pivotal in discovering additional elements to the narrative and can even affect the direction of the story you are currently in.

The game is very stylish, incorporating a monochromatic black and red palette with minimalistic, 3D-rendered backgrounds to suggest scenery without overstepping and needing to imply any more detail than they need to. The flat, anime-inspired character art adds a surreal, dreamlike quality on top of these backgrounds, fitting for the abstract nature of the game especially when it becomes visually more eccentric at certain key points. Very subtle animation and lighting effects add depth to these scenes, all topped off with a dark, mellow, electropop soundtrack, disruptive and jarring when moments demand it to be unsettling. A lot of the game depends on not showing, but telling, which makes what would otherwise be visually graphic scenes all the more emotional and stirring. All these elements combined make up for what is ultimately a somber, and unsettling game.

With all that said, Milky Way Prince – The Vampire Star is extremely distressing and disturbing, and it warns you of this with caution before you may move forward playing. The game is semi-autobiographical, programmed and designed by Lorenzo Redaelli in an effort to create something that resounds his experiences with a similar relationship in which borderline personality disorder clouded it. This is not a game about constantly replaying over and over to find a perfect, happy outcome for two lovers, but is one about experiencing their tumultuous, painful journey to understand what potentially went wrong.

Because of this, in some ways Milky Way Prince is less of a visual novel and more of a linear story with very few interactive elements due to the inevitability of the game’s final outcome. Arguably, the game could be initially perceived to be a very narrow, negative view of what borderline personality disorder is, as if suggesting there is futility in having a romantic relationship with someone who has the condition.

However, I personally found it clear that the game was trying to make a point that the relationship depicted is a two-way street: in which Nuki’s over-romanticism of a toxic relationship is a huge factor in worsening Sune’s struggle. They both suffer huge lapses in their mental health in their own specific ways, and this combined does not help either of them and only fuels negativity. But this ambiguity might be belittling and may only raise more questions for an outsider, such as myself, especially to a very real issue that I think deserves more clarity from an educational standpoint. Given the game is short in playtime, we do not see fully in depth Nuki and Sune’s higher moments, and the duration of this relationship is not clear. I think if a longer glance into their relationship in times where it was consistently positive was brought into the foreground, the tragedy of its eventual collapse would have been made even stronger.

As previously described in regards to the game’s dreamlike nature, this ambiguity also grows more apparent later in-game. The hard line between fantasy and reality is blurred for purposefully artistic reasons to depict the characters’ struggles as external. An example of this is the visual link between Sune and moths. Moths are often symbolically associated with death and destructive qualities, and there are times where they suddenly appear on Sune’s skin when he has a moment where he lashes out. This might seem like an obvious symbol, but there is other imagery way more vivid and wilder than this that might not read immediately, making things confusing. At times, the game gets too artsy and experimental.

These accessibility issues are not limited to the game’s storytelling elements, but it’s technical elements as well. The game depends a lot on visual cues yet has epileptic elements to it that certainly shuts out some potential players (an aspect about it that is included in its warning prior to playing the game) and it depends on auto-saves despite it encouraging replayability to have multiple experiences. This makes replayability tedious, having to endure a repeat of scenes just to see where your path can divert.

In addition, I ran into a number of bugs and hiccups just even trying to run the game, all likely due to the game’s more eccentric elements sometimes clashing with its programming. In an initial playthrough of the game, there’s a segment where you must hover over a shape and click it to move forward. Not only is there no explicit instruction to do this, the clicking mechanic was not triggering for me in this run of the game. This can easily lead one to believe the game might have just crashed.

Milky Way Prince – The Vampire Star may not be accessible to everyone and it is also a game that I find difficult to recommend due to its heavy themes. I also think due to said themes that its execution could be more fleshed out and streamlined, leaving a few things left to be desired. Nonetheless, it is still a game that deserved to get made and we must encourage and thank creators, like Redaelli, for willingly putting out honest, vulnerable work as ways to heal from their own traumas.

If you are genuinely interested in the personal insight and dynamics of an unhealthy relationship, Milky Way Prince is something worth exploring, but this is not a game you should casually dip your toes in if you want to escape into a fantasy world and feel good. This is a game that thematizes serious issues that exist in our reality worth discussing. Games like these do not only exist in a bubble for pure escapism, but now more than ever they also serve as a productive medium to channel and offer diverse experiences worth sharing and educating others about.

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Indie Arena Booth took things completely online this year by hosting an expansive, virtual chatroom where attendees and developers can directly engage together. Trying to simulate the full-on convention experience, you could create avatars and navigate digital exhibits appropriately designed to thematically match the game they’re representing.

There was actually a small customization aspect to making the avatars, using different parts from some of the games being showcased to originally designed assets specific for IAB’s event. I personally settled on being a cat head floating in the void of space.

Walking around in a digital convention can be just as overwhelming as doing the same in a physical one, so you could’ve easily opted to open the map and jump around wherever strikes you as grabbing instead. Steam also ended up hosting a landing page dedicated to the event, so you could scroll through the games and streams like a traditional catalog. IAB typically goes hand in hand with Gamescom every year, and the two events collaborated again, with IAB fashioning itself as connected to the latter.

Given many scheduling push backs and delays due to the current world circumstances, games continue to be a nightmare as many anticipated AAA titles scheduled their releases all at once at the height of the holiday season this year—and unfortunately, even the indies are not immune to this release chaos! Indie Arena Booth Online states that they hosted about “185 games from 53 countries” this year, and you can bet I barely have scratched the surface in trying to tackle a majority of them.

I narrowed my focus on titles with available demos that I have never played before, even if they had already previously appeared in the Steam Summer Fest lineup. You can also find my other impressions of many other games I have tried from that event not specified in the aforementioned piece here. Ultimately, here are several games that I was able to try:

As Far As the Eye

A turn-based Eurostyle city builder, you take the role of the literal wind as a guide to beings known as Pupils. You have to help them manage their skills and resources before the world is submerged in an impending flood. The game is procedurally generated and there are different tribes of Pupils you can choose to start off with, each with their own benefits and disadvantages. The game is very cute looking with a storybook-like artstyle and mechanics that are pretty simple to learn. As Far As the Eye presents what seems to be a very meditative, peaceful experience that one could easily immerse many hours into, with only time and potentially poor choices serving as a threat to this journey.

Chicken Police

This is the third point-and-click, noir-themed, mystery game with anthropomorphic animals that I know of in development that is pending release for the last quarter of 2020 or early 2021. I am not sure what is inspiring this trend, but good for the furries, I suppose. What stands out immediately about Chicken Police is its zany art direction in using photo collage by merging real animal heads with humanoid bodies, which fits the absurdist, comedic tone it immediately gives off. Playing as a rooster detective, the game is fully voice-acted (with incredibly high production values) and is just screaming hamminess similar to the Ace Attorney series and its pastiche Aviary Attorney, but it takes it even further with a sprinkle of raunchiness. Unfortunately as with many works that feature animals as the primary population of focus, I’m already erring on the side of caution given the game has already made it clear there is going to be some exploration of their own version of an allegory to racism heads on, but I am definitely intrigued so far in how the rest of it is going to be such a trip.

Jessika

Jessika was released earlier this year and is an FMV containing many elements similar to Her Story, Emily is Away, and the Simulacra games. You work for a group that specializes in processing the digital footprints and data of the deceased at the request of their family. Like the aforementioned games, Jessika has you peruse through media left behind on a computer in order to find the information needed to move forward. The game puts you in the perspective that this job is noble at first, but after being thrown into a case revolving around a woman named Jessika, things take a dark turn. Jessika tackles heavy themes such as suicide, abuse, and privacy, so I am wary approaching the game given how consistently there seems to be an unfortunate standard with how women are treated in mystery titles like these. The game otherwise has a very intuitive, smooth UI and a system worth revisiting to see where the narrative takes a turn and can possibly exceed my expectations.

Neurodeck: Psychological Deckbuilder

Neurodeck is a different take on the deck-building genre; instead of aiming to build a collection of characters to fight, the goal is to rake up cards themed around psychology and the subconscious. You start off each “session” by selecting a particular character’s profile with a starting palette of different skills and passive abilities. The cards collected include things like memories, emotions, and other miscellaneous sources of comfort to combat monsters in the form of phobias and negative feelings. The goal is to complete each profile’s tree by tackling a sequence of battles, personality tests, or even meditating. It is currently unclear to me right now how much went behind the game in following this theme and if the information conveyed is something backed by proper research and consultation, but the premise is definitely interesting.

Over the Alps

Over the Alps is another game that has already been released as of this writing. A text narrative game, you explore a branching thriller taking place in Switzerland in the midst of World War II, making dialogue choices through the form of postcards. The game is extremely stylish, emulating the artstyle of Franco-Belgian comics contemporary to the game’s setting like The Adventures of Tintin. Although what seems to be very simple in execution, Over the Alps’ visuals and engaging writing are sure to be its main hook.

Paradise Killer

This game is pretty incomprehensible in every single way, but that doesn’t lend itself to be a bad thing at all—far beyond it. Paradise Killer is a murder mystery game where you take on the role of Lady Love Dies, an investigator freed from her exile to investigate a mass murder in Paradise. Paradise is an island that regularly gets destroyed and regenerated every few millenia thanks to the constant meddling of demons, and the recent incident disrupted the island’s latest cycle to finally achieve a near-perfect state. Paradise Killer is drenched with the colors of lo-fi, vaporwave dreams and PS1-era aesthetics, so it is a little hard at the moment to determine if there are aspects to the game that are still unfinished or deliberate. But eccentric is clearly an understatement to describe a game like this, as it is filled with layers of cryptic lore and utterly surreal visuals that want you to keep asking questions. The game has the promise that there is no true answer to the mystery at hand and that there are multiple ways you can tackle the narrative. It is certainly something I am looking forward to and I too, hope to enjoy my own time in Paradise.

Sword of the Necromancer

Your girlfriend is dead and now you have to find the forbidden Sword of the Necromancer to try to revive her! Roguelite, dungeon crawler games like these are not my jam at all and I personally find that many of them just end up blurring together in my mind. Yet, Sword of the Necromancer definitely has promise for those who are into this genre as another one that can be added to the personal library with pretty solid visuals, straightforward mechanics and even a co-op mode.

Weaving Tides

Weaving Tides is a puzzle adventure game in which you mount the back of your carpet dragon friend in order to weave across the textile-laden world to solve obstacles along the way. At some points, with your dragon’s tail acting like a thread, you need to patch up holes in the map by weaving through them. Enemies encountered can also be defeated by trapping them within the weave you make. The game’s concept is very charming, entirely themed around textiles and the processes behind fabric and embroidery. It has a visual style that is textured to look like everything is made from arts and crafts in some manner, presenting tiny, subtle details craftspersons would recognize and appreciate.

Many games events that have happened in 2020 have proven the resiliency of an industry when it comes to easily translating things for a community that has already been so normalized to the idea of being online and plugged in 24/7. Indie Arena Booth Online has presented a very unique and fun take on what a virtual show can do and look like. They continue to ask the questions on what future in-person events should do to innovate and be as accessible as possible, now knowing that a virtual event is more than capable of fulfilling everything a real life one can. In some ways, events such as these are possibly paving the path to large shows like E3’s obsolescence, and this also begins to beg other questions on how valuable some physical events were to begin with and what that means for them when they return.

The post First Impressions of Indie Arena Booth Online appeared first on Gamesline.

Although we often know exactly what we want to say to someone, finding the right words is the hardest part. Even the simplest word choices can completely change a sentence’s meaning, and one line out of order can transform intent from harmful to healing.

We should talk. (stylized with the period) is a short visual novel that tries to portray this exact experience. You play as a woman spending her time at a bar and her interactions in it. From the bartender to the unexpected encounter of an old flame, you will spend your night talking with a variety of people. As you juggle these conversations, you are interrupted with text messages from Sam, your partner. How you handle and respond to all of these interactions will bring about some sort of outcome at the night’s end, whether it means building a new relationship or destroying one.

Unlike many other visual novels or text-based choice games, We should talk. uses a “sentence spinner” to form your dialogue choices. Like a dial, you spin words across three segments in a text message styled window to develop modular sentences. For instance, tone can change a lot by your choice of subject pronouns, such as beginning a sentence saying “we” versus centering on yourself with “I”. You have to piece together the right words you want to say in order to form a cohesive thought and move forward. We should talk. suggests that the mere combination of the words you choose can dramatically affect your connections with others. The game is presented in a slight, first-person view, and there is no real control over your character’s navigation in the game. As the narrative proceeds, your character gets shifted to the next character she will inevitably talk to.

Conversation and language is nuanced, but this game, on the other hand, is not. Despite being a game that boasts about multiple choices, We should talk. is incredibly linear and limited in how it wants you to play. As mentioned, there is no real means to choose who you want to talk to and your character has no choice but to interact with everyone available anyway in a specific order. As a result, We should talk. is less of a visual novel and more like a kinetic one—or even more like an interactive short film. Although the fixed cast the game has to offer is quite small, it would benefit the playing experience immensely to skip segments since the game has about nine possible endings that you are encouraged to achieve. It feels tedious to discover you only need to change one single thing to acquire another ending but are forced to endure the same blocks of dialogue all over again. As a heavily text-based game, it also lacks logging history to backtrack and review previous dialogue.

The path to completing all of the multiple endings is also unclear, as well. For instance, although I may have developed two strong relationships with two characters, only one of their endings will be featured at the end. In one playthrough, I decided to utterly disrespect the main character’s relationship with Sam throughout the game but ended up developing a positive relationship with another character down the line. I basically ended up developing an accidental friendship with this latter character. As expected, an upsetting breakup sequence was shown as one of the game’s endings, but the other events were ignored despite the fact that it has its own distinct ending sequence. There is no explanation as to what dictates how one ending overrides the other.

The game’s very short length also especially hurts the characters, making them feel superficial. A single playthrough of the game may only take about under 20 minutes worth of your time. Although short and sweet can be impactful, your interactions with everyone comes across as swift and shallow. The characters seem stuck in the script they are programmed to follow, and on some occasions the tonality of the conversation refused to change despite my attempts to bring it into a different direction.

As I have mentioned, I played a run of the game trying to be terrible to Sam. Despite picking some of the rudest options, Sam’s character would repeat dialogue you would find in other playthroughs where you would otherwise be respectful and kind to her as if nothing happened. She somehow continues on-script, acting very nonchalant to my responses as if I did not just insult her. Just as it is unclear how to achieve the different endings, there were times in the game where steering the conversation was just as unclear due to the writing’s lack of flexibility. I can’t gauge what I’m doing if the characters only act on fixed behavior no matter how I react.

Visually, the game is just alright. The game’s graphics do their job for an otherwise simplistically styled game. All of the characters look distinct without complex details, but there definitely is a bit of amateurish quality that can be a bit off-putting and noticeably so with its animated elements. That said, with an otherwise approachable color palette and pretty chill indie pop soundtrack, style is definitely not We should talk.’s weakest quality.

Despite being a noble attempt to win an audience with a relatable, modern topic, We should talk. feels more like a demo than a full game. The idea that crafting parts of a whole to formulate dialogue is unique and gives a lot of promise, but it all feels so shallow after a few playthroughs when you realize so much of it does not matter and gets repetitive—even though the game boasts otherwise. There are a lot of interesting ideas being channeled in We should talk., but a lot of it falls short and cannot shine in what ends up being an underdeveloped project.

We should talk. is right in saying that we should take time to consider our words before they come out, but I don’t think this is a game you should be investing much time in. There are tons of other visual novels and choice-driven titles out there that provide more worthwhile content within the same amount of time We should talk. offers for its entire playing time. I actually would recommend checking out and supporting the games by Angela He, who has done numerous visual novels that are short in play but very effective in their storytelling. Although We should talk. could not follow through with something more fulfilling to support its message, at the very least, it has the benefit of being short.

The post We should talk. Review appeared first on Gamesline.

You play as Dysis, a young woman employed by a science and research firm, who is tasked with seeking out the missing Evan Goldstein, a significant figure behind many advanced innovations. Controlling Dysis, you explore the island solving puzzle after puzzle,  uncovering the truth behind Evan’s disappearance and your possible role in it.

Evan’s Remains is beautifully rendered, utilizing a pixel art style to convey thoughtful, detailed animation through very simple shapes and color. The movements and subtleties captured in each character’s behavior are meticulously done, like Dysis’ long hair that blows in the wind. The game’s soundtrack is serene and has a strong, relaxing vibe to it. It successfully conveys both the beauty and melancholy of an abandoned island and the lost characters that trek its sands.

Gameplay consists of a series of stages in which you must hop your way across platforms in order to get to the other side and progress on. Platforms disappear once you jump on them, so strategizing around this mechanic quickly becomes important. Puzzles get more and more complex over time, introducing more elements like color-coded switches that may move platforms around or remove them entirely.

An early puzzle for example, has Dysis climbing up a series of rising platforms, but one piece to a staircase-like sequence climbing up is missing. In order to fill in these gaps, you have to go back and forth toggling a switch to ensure every piece necessary for enough jumping momentum appears at once. Sometimes the complexity of these puzzles may mean cycling through the whole thing over and over until you figure out the right combination of steps. Total failure is not possible, and the game does not punish you if you are taking too long to complete a puzzle. There is no timer set to any of the puzzles and they can be reset if you feel like you have gone too far to fix things manually. In addition, none of the puzzles have any dangerous threats to Dysis that can possibly cause her to “die”.

Unfortunately, the game falters in its story and exposition. Much of the plot is unraveled through dialogue cutscenes⁠—and there’s a LOT of them. Although Evan’s Remains has such a tiny cast of characters, I felt like a majority of the game’s running time was dedicated to endless chatter just to advance the plot. Almost every level completion is capped off with dialogue, which is incredibly disruptive to how meditative the rest of the game feels. For example, after Dysis meets a new character for the first time, she attempts to track them down. What ensues is an especially grating sequence of walking and stopping every few increments just for a few new lines of dialogue to be said in a cutscene.

Later on, a huge twist turns the whole story upside down, making things pretty convoluted and somewhat nonsensical, so this makes the game’s particular method of narration especially egregious. In an effort to avoid spoiling a game that has a generally short playing time (a mere 2-3 hours), let’s just say a lot of what you learn gets thrown out the window and is not what you think it is. Because there is so much new information to unpack near the end of the game, Evan’s Remains has to spell it out through a long-winded speech you have to click through, line by line, in case you were confused. It is pretty painful sitting through essays worth of dialogue to explain everything that happened when I would rather be playing the actual game instead.

My qualms about the story’s specific direction aside, there could have been better ways to break up and present the narrative. Considerations could have been made to edit down the script. There are multiple other ways that the story could have been organically implemented into the gameplay itself, but those opportunities were missed. Another remedy to this could have been the ability to adjust the game’s text speed or skip UI animations like what other titles provide, like some visual novels.

This issue brings to light Evan’s Remains’ other weak point, which is accessibility. The ability to adjust the cutscenes can do a service for many without having to click endlessly through textboxes, but having access to changing the controls entirely would also prove to be beneficial. The game’s controls are unfortunately bound dependent on what system you are playing on and there is no way of adjusting them without third-party means. I give the game props, however, for providing the option to skip puzzles if you find yourself in a frustrating place. Players have the right to change difficulty as they see fit for their experience and it is clear Evan’s Remains’ team holds their story in high regard to ensure people properly finish the game—but I just wish it could have been conveyed way better. I was more challenged by the amount of textboxes I had to sit through than the actual puzzles I needed to solve.

Overall, though I may be grimacing about how things developed, the initial intrigue of the game’s premise certainly kept me going to find out more. My objections to Evan’s Remains is not through the story’s exact details, but through how those details are sloppily regurgitated to the player. After having completed the game, I look back and can see how foreboding things were hinted at once you know how it all ends. Evan’s Remains is not trying to make a bold statement about a player’s agency at all, but has an interesting take on how some people’s perspective on morality can be quite skewed from others. There’s a bigger world and cast of characters that Evan’s Remains dips its toes in that could be further elaborated in another form. Though for once, it would be refreshing to finally see a piece of media showing an ideal world where scientists aren’t assholes and their work is being used for a common good. Maybe.

Evan’s Remains presents straightforward gameplay with compelling ideas and pleasing visuals. The game can offer something fulfilling for anyone seeking another puzzle game for their library. Although the story is interesting at heart, many elements to it could have been reworked or reimagined in such a way that is more palatable. Evan’s Remains is otherwise decent for what it is hoping to achieve best, where its biggest strengths lie in its puzzles, not its plot.

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