Aurans

Aurans can create anything they can imagine and believe in. It feels like a statement for struggling creatives, and I definitely enjoyed the lively characters, magical worlds and atmospheric sound and visuals as the story engulfed me. Short as it is, the story is heartfelt and deeply personal, from the teenage home of the main character and their pop cultural references to games, to her struggle with wanting to become more powerful, juxtaposed with the friendly patience of the cast of Aurans guiding her. As a short story it is an easy read, but the media of visual novel, while I was a bit skeptical, is a huge part of the charm and world building, speaking into a tradition of storytelling in videogames that both the main character and author are deeply embedded in.

First a disclaimer: I know the developer (Alex) through work and also backed the Kickstarter to get it on Steam, so I'm fairly biased. Aurans is a fairly basic Kinetic Novel, and it's making a lot of the typical mistakes found in first game projects, such as overscoping and doing a lot more CGs early on than what is maintainable for a full length project - but this also gives Aurans a lot of raw unpolished charm not found in projects by more experienced visual novel creators. The artstyle has a sort of punky but homely feel to it. Alex is clearly fighting with getting their vision realised with their drawing abilities, but at the same time, leads to a refreshing and very obviously queer aesthetic that enhances and gives authenticity the story being told. The story hits hard though. Especially in the beginning when you can feel the authors own experiences with loneliness and bullying being conveyed through the many, many CGs that really hammer home some uncomfortable emotions and lets you know that this story is the author's own escapist fantasy form their teens, This definitely leads to some uneven world building, but also gives you that freshness that you can only get from someone desperately trying to get an idea out of their head and unto paper that they've been dealing with for more than a decade. I have a real soft spot for trash. I'm not saying here that Aurans is bad, but merely that I personally really enjoy finding things made by less experienced creatives, things made with passion and hard work, but without the wealth of experience that removes all the rough edges, and it gives me great please to recognise and appreciate the underlying works and ideas. Like finding some really interesting fanfiction, that isn't comparable to professionally published fiction, but has an underlying quality that so easily gets lost. I recommend reading Aurans if you too crave these types of pure authentic experiences, can relate to the neurodivergent experience and won't go broke from the expense. It's not the best game you'll ever experience, but it most certainly is art, and I'll be looking forwards to the sequels.