Recently Played: Forgotten, Not Lost – A Kinetic Novel (Summer Sale)

Prepare to be hit in the feels because this game does not sugarcoat anything. It takes the truth and dresses it up in a tomato costume.

That’s right, a tomato costume.

Forgotten, Not Lost is a visual novel (“kinetic” – I’ll explain later) by Afterthought Studios, a small dev team composed of five people who have made a number of titles, including A More Beautiful World.

The story is centered around an old man who lives with his wife, Madalene, in a small house in the village of Memoria (symbolism!). Right off the bat, we are treated to a short series of depressing revelations and events in the same vein as Up and The Notebook. The old man has immense difficulty remembering aspects of his life that are so significant that even he feels awful not having the ability to recall them. Heck, the story opens with his inability to recognize his wife’s face. Yeah, that’s an immediate hit to the feels.

Recently Played: VA-11 HALL-A (Summer Sale)

Do you like bartending? Do you like visual novels? Well, I’ve got a game for you.

VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartending Action is a game that combines mixing drinks with all of the cute anime girl cyberpunk aesthetic you need alongside some infuriating minigame cruelty.

If you’re curious about the “Holy shit” surtitle, it’s because the game spent a long time in development and was only *just* released this past June (2016). The prologue version, which came first, will supposedly be released for free on Steam at some point.

In VA-11 HALL-A (“Valhalla” being the pronunciation/”actual name”), you step into the shoes of Jill, a relatively lonely and depressed bartender working at one of many franchise bars in Glitch City. The year is sometime after 2070 CE (AD in-game, but I like to keep with the times).

Recently Played: A Little Lily Princess (Summer Sale)

Crawling my way through my Steam sale purchases (seems like eons ago …), I decided to plunk down and play A Little Lily Princess, a visual novel by Hanabira (published by Hanako Games, who also published Long Live the Queen). Since I’m an absolute sucker for games involving innocent girls falling in love with other girls, this was totally up my alley.

Based on the 1905 novel A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (who also penned The Secret Garden), the player is sent through the everyday experiences of Sara Crewe, the only daughter of a wealthy English widower living abroad in India. At this time in Sara’s life, she has been sent to London to live at a boarding school while her father continues his business in India. As horrible as this sounds, Sara lives in lavish comfort provided by the school at her father’s insistence.

Announcement! Steam Summer Sale Series

Try saying that five times fast.

Awful alliteration aside, I’ve got a series of reviews coming your way as I play through all of my Steam Summer Sale impulse buys (that I made very responsibly by limiting myself to a $100 CAD budget).

On our roster (so far) we have, in no particular order:

1. Influent*
   
2. Aviary Attorney
3. VA-11 HALL-A
4. Forgotten, Not Lost – A Kinetic Novel
5. A Little Lily Princess
6. Season of 12 Colors
7. Learn Japanese To Survive! Hiragana Battle

*I’m playing the Korean language-learning version, as I wanted to refresh my knowledge and learn new words.

I’m very excited to finally have more games in my library that I will get around to playing whenever I can/feel up to it. I know that this selection is pretty much half visual novel, half language learning, but I’m pretty stoked to play all of these and share my thoughts with you!

I’d love to hear about the games you’ve recently bought in the sale or are planning to pick up. Leave a comment!

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On a more personal note, life has been hectic lately. I know I say that a lot, but this time it really is.

Right now, we’re dealing with a broken water heater that was leaking and flooding the basement (we opted to shut off the water altogether and have had to walk to McDonalds to use the bathroom for *ahem* no. 2s), a house guest arriving this weekend, as well as an upcoming move to an apartment! That doesn’t even include the other stuff going on for my co-dictator of the universe involving college preparations.

After we’re set up in the apartment, looking for work will be my top priority. So, I’ll likely opt to play the smaller games/VNs for stress relief. Thankfully, I’m well-stocked in that department now.

In a fit of excited graduation feelings, I decided to take advantage of the post-graduation credit offered to me by the university. Alumni get a sum of money to put towards any School of Continuing Studies course they wish, provided the money covers the cost of the course. Since I am a language nerd, I’ve decided that I’m going to take a course in beginner Dutch, starting in October.

When it comes to stress levels and having too many things on my plate, as with dessert buffets, my eyes are bigger than my stomach. Let’s see how all of this goes. Wish me luck!

 

Recently Played Visual Novels and Thoughts On TyranoBuilder: Visual Novels Galore!

This is sort of a hybrid post, considering I don’t have too much to say about the three programs I am about to discuss, but I’d like to get my thoughts out there.

On today’s program (what), we have:

• Cursed Sight

• Asphyxia

• TyranoBuilder Visual Novel Studio

(links to Steam store pages)

Around the time I bought Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star (link to my review), I also picked up a few other visual novels (VNs) including two shorter titles, Cursed Sight and Asphyxia alongside the second chapter of Higurashi (which I have yet to play–it’s the sort of thing you save for when you’re in the right head space). As I mentioned in an earlier post on visual novels, I’ve grown more selective when it comes to which visual novels I purchase. Ever since I picked up Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos only to find out that the team who made it had disbanded and were not planning on releasing the latter parts of the story, I’ve been careful to check Steam reviews as well as game release dates. Oftentimes, if a VN installment came out a few years ago and there has been no news from the developer, chances are you’re never going to see the rest of the story and it will become one with the pool of cliffhangers plaguing the Steam store.

Luckily for me, both Asphyxia and Cursed Sight are finished. However, I feel that they represent two ends of a spectrum in terms of “serious”, non-dating sim VNs. By serious I mean ones that don’t revolve around breaking the fourth wall constantly with jokes and gags–these ones are the polar opposite of the dreaded One Manga Day (free on Steam, but regrettable nonetheless). They both tell a story and are good in their own ways, but since they are quite different, why not throw them together in one review post?

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Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star

Thank you for joining me for this special holiday blog post. Please note that this post will contain some spoilers for the first game, Hatoful Boyfriend (link to my review), as well as for the sequel.

You have been warned. Merry Christmas!¹

Well, boys and girls (et. al.), it’s Christmas Eve. In honour of this holiday, I decided that there was no better way to celebrate than to review the sequel for Hatoful Boyfriend.

Recently Played: Emily is Away

Are you itching to relive the awkward moments of talking to your crush on AIM during the early 2000s? Yes? Well, head on over to itch.io and download Emily is Away, a game by Kyle Seeley. Spanning five years of your character’s life, you get to experience five conversations with Emily, a girl who personifies every annoying thing about talking on AIM (or Messenger, in my case) with someone you had a crush on. You’ll feel awkward, you’ll laugh, you’ll want to throw a Coldplay CD at her head.

Recently Played: A Dark Room

Okay, so this browser game came out in mid-2013 and has since been made into iOS and Android app versions. However, I just happened upon it yesterday and, considering I hadn’t heard about it, felt that it might likewise be something unfamiliar to most people.

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So, what is A Dark Room? It’s a text-based browser game designed by Doublespeak Games, meant to be kept going in the background. You start off as a person in a room with only a fire. Your only option? Keep the fire going. A stranger enters the room and eventually starts giving you suggestions as to what you can do. Collect wood, build a cart and a trap, keep the fire going.

Choice of Robots: a text-based game about love, robots, and politics

Note: as per usual, the majority of the images in this post (save for the one above, linked from the developer’s website) are screenshots I have taken.

Ever wanted to be a scientist and design robots to take over the world? Or do you dream about creating the perfect robot companion (romantic or platonic)? If you’re into choose your own adventure books, Choice of Robots might be something you want to look into!

“Choice of Robots is an epic 300,000-word interactive sci-fi novel by Kevin Gold, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.” (from the Choice of Robots page)

Available on multiple platforms (links to each provided at the end of this post), this wonderful experience brought to the world by Choice of Games contains multiple hours of gameplay as well as 72 Steam achievements for you to unlock. With 7 hours put into it, I’ve only unlocked 44 of those and I plan on hunting the rest down (I didn’t become an achievement completionist until I became active on Steam).

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This review differs from my previous ones as it is part review, part playthrough. It will likely end up being very long.