Burden Street Station

This is a very cool game, and I love it, but... it's WAY shorter than I expected. It's almost like an extended demo. This can't have been the full intented scope... Either way, what's here is really well done. It just feels like what they were going for here wasn't fully realized, and it's actually kinda heartbreaking.

Если вы задаётесь вопросом стоит ли покупать эту игру то вот мой короткий ответ. Да. Да стоит. А теперь я буду хвалить игру почему она мне так понравилась. ДИЗАЙН. Дизайн всего. Только чисто из за этого я уже могу дать игре высокий балл. Очень хочется собрать спрайты персонажей и локаций чтобы просто хранить их настолько они красивые. Видно что стиль игры вдохновлён ENA но при этом у неё есть свои механики. Очень интересное сочетание рисованной 2D графики и пикселизированной 3D графики. При этом персонажи не сливаются с фоном и их всегда хорошо видно. Механика со сменой личностей мне тоже очень понравилась. Я специально иногда отвечал неправильно чтобы посмотреть как на это отреагирует персонаж. Хотя ближе к концу, когда у тебя ну уже много личностей немного заебывает их менять. Про сюжет могу сказать это чисто вылизанный сюжет без драм тд что бы не кого задеть. конфликты решаются сами собой. ты должен им просто наслаждаться. И я скажу мне этого очень нахватало хорошо доброго сюжета особенно после прохождение Омори. 9 из 10

A wonderfully human game about communication, relationships and the difficulties of that. Bawled my eyes eyes out. Stop reading this and just go play it, damn

Overall I'd say it's a mixed bag. It's a heavily story based experience and ultimately the story misses more than it hits and what it does hit is seriously weakened due to the bad gameplay design. I'd say that currently it just isn't worth the £10 asking price, especially given its 3 hour runtime. [h2] The world [/h2] The world is interesting in concept but the game never really expands on it. You play as an archivist servant of emotional consumption gods that preside over other gods on a quest to find a dead god. It sounds badass but it never actually goes anywhere. The consumption gods are implied to be not good people but we never hear of them much outside of the opening. Is the emotional harvesting bad for people? Why are the emotions needed? Never answered. [b]The main plotline is more concerned with the microstories of various near-ordinary people or the macrostory of the local gods than it is the world around them. [/b] Additionally, I'd say it kind of wears the strangeness as a thin veneer. The surreal nature and setting of the game is just set dressing for the quite mundane stories within. This could've taken place in any setting and it would be mostly unchanged. The characters for example have crazy designs but personality-wise are people you could meet on the street. On the gameplay side, the world really just exists as a vehicle for the dialogue to take place in. You walk around an environment for ~5 minutes until you find the one (or two) people you must talk to to progress. There is nothing else to find in the world aside from side characters which are all extremely "indie RPG" meaning they look cool, say one "funny" line and do nothing else. It LOOKS excellent artwise but due to the narrow perspective and flat gameplay it's more like a loading screen than an exploration. There is nothing else to do in the world other than progress the plot. Randomly the person you're speaking to will decide the conversation is over and move somewhere else in the world. You walk over to them again, and begin another conversation. If you can't talk to them, talk to someone else. [h2] The writing in general [/h2] The writing is very modern and shallow. It contains surface level references to topics like (trans)gender identity, (christian) religious critique, the meaning of art, mental illness etc but it never really goes deeper into anything, it just mentions their existence. I'd say in general the dialogue writing is good but unfortunately as a result of the dialogue gameplay the writing really only shines when two OTHER people are talking to each other which is unfortunately rare but when it does happen it's quite good. I will give it points for (minor plot spoilers)[spoiler] ending a situation in an unhappy way [/spoiler] and (major plot spoilers)[spoiler] the other god being all of your dialogue bits is a cool idea.[/spoiler] [h2] Gameplay [/h2] The main gameplay is finding the character you need to talk to, then conducting a conversation with them. They say a few things and then you try to pick the correct response out of the options you have. Sounds okay, right? But it gets worse. You have a growing number of personality options (up to ~12) and only one option will progress the scene. The rest will force you to sit through the last few dialogue lines again. Additionally most of the personalities on a given dialogue will just use generic phrases meaning you can tell which option is relevant just by looking through them. It gets worse though. A random selection of those non generic options will be "close" answers which just means you fail and loop again but this time with a single extra dialogue line. It basically makes every single conversation into the world's least interesting puzzle. You can flowchart it: - Is this option different to usual? If no, skip - Is this option different? Try it. If it's wrong, repeat from the start. If it's right, you continue. [b]Ironically for a game where the central mechanic is the dialogue choices, there is no choice. It's binary. If you get it right you progress. If you don't you suffer a few seconds delay.[/b] What makes this all the more bizarre is you can use an ability that instantly shows the correct option but it gives you a bad status effect that makes using that ability again harder. You then have to play a 30 second minigame on the other side of the map to get rid of said status. But there's no punishment for guessing wrong (aside from wasting time) so you never need to use it. Your choice is to use the OP ability and not suffer the flowchart gameplay (and waste your time) or use it and then go across the map (to waste your time somewhere else). The ability feels like a band aid solution to a deeper design problem - that problem being that guessing at arbitrary dialogue options just isn't fun. [b]I'm gonna be flat out here and say that this does kinda ruin the game.[/b] You can't focus on the dialogue and plot because you're just constantly stuck guessing options. The main focus of this narrative game is obscured by bad execution. And it even gets worse as the game goes forwards because you get MORE options meaning more wasted time. [h2] Presentation [/h2] In short the art is my favourite part of the game. All of the characters look nice and their animations are really expressive and give so much depth to them. The moment scenes have cool visuals and the UI animations are all neat. The music is just about fine. [h2] Nitpicks [/h2] - Some of the dialogue options are used WAY more than others. Forward is used far more than any other, and some are used only once. I want to hear what Advertisement guy has to say but it's not even used (I think). - The menu taking a while to open is annoying, especially when checking the map. The animation is cute though. - Collecting cosmetic points for talking to all the NPCs is neat as a collectible but WHY do you get points for doing close answers? You are incentivising people to waste their time by picking incorrectly. - In the final section of the game you are forced to [spoiler] confirm a mentally ill man's delusions in order to progress the game. He's kind of made a joke of with a lot of his ridiculous theories but then it turns out he's truly an ill person who needs care. The game even makes reference to this with angels specifically laughing at him being depicted as bad. But we're laughing at him and using him? Is he a joke or not? In the course of the story he gets better but it feels a bit morally wrong and out of theme, especially for such a socially conscious game. [/spoiler] [h2] Conclusion [/h2] Overall, I'd say you should really only get this if you're a really big dialogue fan who also doesn't mind sloggy gameplay to get to the actual writing. Also definitely wait for a sale it's too expensive at base

It's like a spaced out version of 90s point and click games from [i]Humongous Entertainment[/i]. Heartfelt, fun story. Only thing missing is a whimsical minigame

потрясающая игра, абсолютный кинотеатр. от финала даже расплакались. до прохождения, я даже не думали, что так привяжусь к персонажам и смогу сопереживать КАЖДОМУ ( даже Руту лол ) очень качественная анимация, дизайны персонажей, фонов и МУЗЫКА, ОСОБЕННО в 3 городе, ну это же просто мёд для ушей!! очень нравится, что варианты выбора идут от масок и можно самому выстроить так называемый "образ". Я не знаю как написать обзор не проспойлерив ну ВСЁ, так что просто прошу - поиграйте!! если любите Эну дрим барбекю - к прохождению обязательно, я испытывали по ходу прохождения похожие вайбы.

amazing game!