Across the Grooves

Across the Grooves is the third choice-based visual novel by Nova-box. In this game, you play as Alice, a young woman whose life is turned upside down when she listens to a record that allows her to make changes to her past that will have unforeseen effects on her present. Alice has a normal life. She lives with her fiancé and works as a banker. That changes one day when she receives a package from her ex-boyfriend Ulysse containing an unmarked record. When Alice listens to the record, she finds herself in a vision of her past. When she comes back to the present, she realizes that as far as the rest of the world is concerned, she and her fiancé have never met. This sets her off on a journey to track down Ulysse, uncover the secrets of the record, and get back to a version of her life similar to the one she left. For a choice-based game, the story follows a fairly linear track. Most of the choices you make correspond to one or occasionally two of four symbols, and the biggest changes to the game are determined not by specific choices you make, but by how many of specific symbols you've chosen by certain key points of the game. During the game, the only major changes I noticed based on my choices in the moment were whether or not I got to talk to certain characters, or the general tone of certain interactions. Your character’s appearance and some background information change somewhat at different points in the game based on your accumulated symbols so far, but they don’t influence the overall flow of the story in a big way. The biggest changes happen in the epilogue. My experience with this feels pretty typical of the Nova-box games. The art was beautiful and the music stood out to me more than in the other games. The game doesn't skip dialogue you've already viewed and there are long sections that don't change between playthroughs, so it gets a bit cumbersome to skip to new parts after you've played a couple of times. This was especially true in this one, which felt like it didn't have a lot of hugely story-changing choices in the middle of the game. There are a number of places where you can cut a conversation short, but those choices typically have symbols and might affect the ending you get. Although the main story doesn’t vary as much as I’d like in a choice-based game, I did enjoy following along with it and figuring out the history of the record along with Alice. It was interesting how a number of the side characters in her life showed up again in multiple versions of her reality, even though she only met them when she started her quest. I didn’t love the romance options in this one. [spoiler] I liked Ulysse and was rooting for Alice to get back to him, but Alan and Patrizia, the other two options, both didn’t connect with me, and in one of my playthroughs it felt like the person Alice was hanging out with at the end of the game was not the person I had been focusing on earlier. It also kinda bugged me that she starts off motivated to get her fiancé back and is just.. okay with losing him pretty quickly no matter what you do, even if you play her so that she isn’t pining for Ulysse or pursuing her other options. [/spoiler] Across the Grooves was an interesting visual novel, though it did not branch as much as I would like for a game about the consequences of different choices. The art and music were good and the main story was very compelling. However, I felt like many of the different paths were same-y and playing the game over again felt very repetitive. I liked it a little more than Seer’s Isle but not as much as Along the Edge. 6/10

[b]Bank employee accidentally changes her own life story by listening to a mysterious record[/b] My first Nova-box game and definitely not my last. The engaging story and gouache art got me hooked. The pensive music fits really well, too.

Played previous Nova Box games and really enjoyed them, especially Along the Edge. Across the Grooves is also a nice visual novel with plenty of interesting twists and outcomes, as well as expected unique art style. One thing that differs from previous titles - characters, i felt like they could have been written better and that there was a lost potential. Other than that, it's a good interactive story about time traveling and life decisions, with some amount of music lore.

This is not your "Life is Strange" fix.

Comme quoi il est possible de faire quelque chose d'intéressant avec le VN. L'histoire est assez prenante, avec son lot de choix et conséquence pour une petite re-jouabilité. Une direction artistique assez belle, avec une bande son magnifique. Les succès qui ne pompent qu'a la fin de l'aventure, c'est chouette pour l'immersion. Par contre il semble impossible de refaire un moment précis de l'aventure pour changer des choses, comme peut le faire les derniers jeux du studio Quantic Dream ou l'excellent BROK the InvestiGator et il faudra sans doute se refaire l'intégralité de cette dernière. ;)

Merveilleux jeu que j'ai dévoré ! Les musiques sont sublimes (le coup des paroles qui changent selon nos choix mais j'en ai la bouche qui tombe !) Pour ceux qui ont adoré Along the edge, vous allez assurément adorer ce jeu-ci (avec un petit easter egg pour les fans héhé). Personnages attachants, ambiance disquaire, vinyle, vintage ! Petit lexique musical pour les novices comme moi, j'ai beaucoup apprécié ! Encore un 20/20 pour Nova-box !

Una historia bonita y cautivadora que toma un giro siniestro e interesante. [h2] 💕PROS💕 [/h2] ✔️ La historia es emotiva y te sumerge en preguntas existenciales (¿cambiarías tu vida si tuvieras la oportunidad de hacerlo? ¿Regresarías al pasado para salvar a alguien a quien le tuviste cariño, pero que ya no forma parte de tu presente?, por ejemplo). Además, tiene un giro oscuro muy bueno y misterioso. No diré mucho para no hacer [i] spoilers, [/i] pero si te gustan los viajes en el espacio-tiempo, las logias y las sectas, este es tu juego. ✔️ El apartado gráfico y audiovisual es excepcional. Si bien las letras de las canciones no riman mucho y, aun siendo la música el eje central no vayas a esperar un musical, se nota el cariño y el esfuerzo puesto en ello. ✔️ He aprendido muchísimos datos sobre bandas, cantantes y leyendas musicales o literarias que ni conocía, y me ha gustado ver otros nombrados que sí, como [b] Crowley, Lovecraft [/b] y [b] Edgar Allan Poe. [/b] Se nota que quienes han desarrollado y escrito esta novela visual tienen pasión por el tema y saben de lo que hablan, no son menciones al azar ni por rellenar. ✔️ Tiene la duración justa para una novela visual de este tipo (aunque detallo más en las cosas negativas que considero, más abajo). [h2] ❤️‍🩹CONTRAS❤️‍🩹 [/h2] ✖️ La traducción al español. Está plagada de errores ortográficos y gramaticales por todas partes y la hacen parecer totalmente [i] amateur [/i] en el mal sentido. Soy consciente de que este juego es un indie con un presupuesto limitado, pero se podría haber hecho una traducción mejor con muy poco esfuerzo, corregir post-lanzamiento..., cualquier cosa. ✖️ Los saltos temporales hacen que queden demasiados cabos sueltos, y te puedes liar un poco conforme avanza la aventura. Como digo, la traducción no ayuda para nada. ✖️ Precisamente por esto, se queda un poquito corto y parco en cuanto a explicaciones de por qué pasa lo que pasa en la historia. No esperes un final totalmente resolutivo. No sé hasta qué punto las decisiones que tomes cuentan realmente, ya que solo lo he jugado una vez. Pero hay algunas que parecen bastante determinantes. Así que prefiero no incluirlas ni en los pros ni en los contras. [b] Mi nota: [i] 7/10 [/i][/b]

that was awesome! :)

oynaması çok keyifliydi; özellikle müzik ve müzik kültürünü seviyorsanız sizin için çok daha zevkli bir deneyim olacaktır. ne kadar farklı sonlar alınabilir açıkçası henüz bilmiyorum ama kendi ulaştığım son bana yarım kalmış, tamamlanmamış hissettirdi. onun haricinde kesinlikle farklı deneyim sunan, zaman zaman düşündüren ve güzel çizim tarzı bulunduran oyundu. indirimdeyken tavsiye ederim

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