Bad Faith

I thought the world they built up was nice. And the character art is cute! Unfortunately the plot is a boring revenge fantasy without a lot else going on. A small gripe I have is the heavy use of auto-advancing text. I get that it is for effect, and signifies a thought or sentence being interrupted but I found myself having to go back and re-read that block of text 90% of the time. Also, the font it switches to for the main character in the final act is barely readable. Other than that, it works flawlessly on the Steam Deck as do most RenPy games. And I've uploaded a control scheme that other players can use if they choose.

Dość krótka nowelka. Tylko do czytania, nie ma tu żadnych wyborów ścieżek czy nawet kwestii dialogowych. Horror. Potrafi być momentami krwawa. Daje kopa. Być może trafiła do mnie szczególnie ze względu na osobiste doświadczenia ze szkolną przemocą. Autorka w posłowiu pisze, że gra powstała w oparciu o osobiste doświadczenia. I to czuć. Jest tu o samotności w społeczności, zamykaniu się w sobie by nie prowokować innych, próbach dopasowania się za wszelką cenę, przemocy psychicznej i fizycznej i do czego to wszystko prowadzi. Można powiedzieć, nic nowego. Ale autorka sprawnie buduje nastrój i napięcie, dobrze wykorzystuje medium. Tempo jest dobre, finał mocny. Jeśli nie jesteście pewni - jest demo. Demo to pierwszy akt (z trzech).

"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves" What a stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ quote, I'm killing way more than two people, idiot.

Bad Faith is a story about Magda, a girl living in a place called Haven. A community where girls of pure heart and soul live in harmony in an island separate from the rest of the world that is considered insane and evil. A community that enforces that all girls must remain pure with dire consequences if they stray even just a bit...you can see where this is going, right? The game's 1st half does a good job in showing us how horrid the haven is, the first scene is [spoiler]punishing a girl for bringing unregulated books in the haven is banished as a result in one of their [strike] culling [/strike]meetings.[/spoiler] Magda has already experienced it before and was saved from that fate but now has to suffer from isolation and bullying for being a person who 'stepped out of toe', no matter how hard she tries to be a 'good person' under the Haven's regulations. In this story she meets a being in an abandoned looking lab which ends up being the cause of her 'downfall' I'd say the game had a very strong start, it shows how horrid purity establishments are, how they can just be a different brand of evil while claiming to be 'good', how bullying, evil acts are ignored if the perpetrator thinks their justified and are ultimately blind to their actions. But I feel it ended up being too rushed in the end. It had a satisfying end for anyone who wanted those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ getting their deserts. But I feel a lot of things could have been spread out before ♥♥♥♥ hit the fan for Magda. Either way, it was a nice read.

(Note: My actual playtime is closer to 3.5 hours. I first played the demo, which I got from itch.io, and so I fast-forwarded through the first chapter.) I kind of wish there was a "Mixed" option. Bad Faith, while ultimately - and by ultimately, I mean "after reading the postmortem, ranting to a few friends about some vague details, and letting the story roll around in my head for a few days" - satisfying, caused me a fair bit of frustration. The first two acts are good, I liked the epilogue, but man, the third act...

Bad Faith was a visual novel that I had kept my eye on for a while but didn't have the chance to play until recently thanks to a friend gifting me the game for the holidays. I had a vague idea on what to expect from the title (religious undertones, some potential queer representation/perspective, ect.) but I essentially went into this game blind. If you enjoy horror elements regarding isolation in community, the suffocation of religious rules and the harshness of breaking those religious taboos, as well as commentary on the hypocrisy of individuals who claim to be pillars of faith, then you will more than likely enjoy the contents of this game. It does have a slow pace, but when you are playing a character who (to be frank) is a member of a cult like community, slow pacing in the face of everything I believe is to be expected. The build up to the climax I believe is well worth the cost.

Short, linear visual novel with beautiful art and writing. The sort of community it presents is extremely familiar to me and I think they captured the atmosphere well. Also great accessibility options. Worth checking out if it seems interesting to you

Did I enjoy this visual novel? No. Would I recommend it? Yes, absolutely. The themes present in this visual novel are intense, and they are also specific enough to resonate with my personal fears and anxieties surrounding the close policing of behavior and even thoughts, and the devastating consequences that this can have. The members' rhetoric, their hypocrisy, and their brutality were nauseatingly realistic and left me feeling unsettled all the way through Acts 1 and 2. Thus, Act 3 for me was a visceral sort of fantasy wish fulfillment, haha. Though I've seen some other reviews mention that they felt Act 3 was fumbled, I thought that it really hit the nail on the head. [spoiler]The violent revenge fading into regret, and then the loss of Magda's newly reclaimed autonomy to a fellow victim who should have been her ally but instead used their power to take advantage of Magda, was a satisfying natural conclusion to Magda's and Nils' repression, isolation, and torment. I also enjoyed the open-endedness of what the future might hold in store for the survivors of the VN's ending.[/spoiler] tl;dr on my review of the story - I can acknowledge the quality of Acts 1 and 2 from a technical standpoint, but they were Too Real for me to enjoy. Act 3 was where my excitement was really piqued. The minimal, often chilling soundtrack I think served to accentuate the story extremely well, as did the filtered photo backgrounds and the various fonts. The sprite art is very pretty and clean, in an ironic contrast to the subject matter that works very well. Additionally, while I personally did not make use of any of the accessibility features, I appreciate their inclusion - not nearly enough VNs take steps to make their excellent stories available to disabled players. As a small aside, this VN reminded me in a lot of ways of [url=https://milkplus.itch.io/soundless]soundless[/url] by milk+ visual, one of the earlier VNs that I played and one that I named as my favorite for a long time. If you enjoyed Bad Faith, you might like soundless as well (and vice versa, if you're looking at reviews trying to decide whether to play Bad Faith). soundless is also free, so you've got nothing to lose but some time if you check it out.