Burden Street Station

One of the most unique things I've ever experienced. Talking to characters feels meaningful and actually takes you somewhere. All the dialogue is rich and it's paired with a great cast of creatures. It takes a while to get invested in their stories, but as time goes on you actually start to relate in a way. The constant tension between a greater mystery and just casual conversations is almost terrifying in a way, like there's nothing to be done. The overarching mystery of how God disappeared is, of course, what takes the spotlight in actually getting you invested. However, such an intriguing premise somehow gets outshined by the journey, as cliche as that might sound. And by the end, I honestly believe that's the point. Visually, the game is also stunning. With images as confusing as its story, everything feels... weird. I had a persisting feeling that everything was being held together by a string. From the character design to the backgrounds, it was all so colorful and all over the place, which is what makes it so charming. Paired with the music, it's (again) SUCH a tense atmosphere between a worry-less/doomed world. The only criticism I can truly give this game are the dialogue choices. They WILL feel random for the first 2/3rds of the game, and the mechanic itself doesn't feel satisfying. // With every abstract piece of media, there's always that thought: do I really understand what it means? Well, maybe I don't. But what I got from it probably matters most. And what did I get? Well, I'd recommend you see it for yourself. 8.3/10 (for a ~3 hour game)

好喜欢，还想玩类似的作品

Игра на вкус как пубертат

mreow meow nya mrrp :3 :3 :3 <- what this review would be if it was posted by domesticated

+++Iodine和团队把一部游戏做了出来并坚持到了发行，可喜可贺！！ ++视觉、概念与ui设计，我喜欢吃这一口，我永远喜欢Iodine的角色和视觉设计 +很酷的概念 +对话穷举模拟器，但是试错没有成本，而且有提示机制，原谅了 +我喜欢抽取时刻的演出，有些很震撼 +我要看！Pillory！彩蛋！ +理清思绪的设计让人有一点困惑但还好 +到了高镇之后，普通npc的对话好了很多，灵讯天使加分 +结局还可以，加分 ？引导差，但我满地爬凭直觉学会了所以给中评，地图传送有点迷但因为地图不大所以到后面记住了 ？游戏性成谜，散步聊天模拟器，获得的身体部件并没有让主角更聪明，反而增加了穷举时间 ？故事性和叙述给中评。[spoiler] 对于创造世界这样宏大的主题而言，这样的几个凡人小故事，对社会阶级的描绘隐喻，以及对社会生产秩序的解释过于单薄，灵讯天使的台词和结局挽救了一下这一切，[/spoiler] 给到中评，否则这条就会出现在下面的差评里 ？抽取时刻的视觉很震撼，但是里面的内容和出现的时机又有点割裂，角色故事和“抽取时刻”的视觉表现相比有些落差，[spoiler] 而且神明故事的表现和抽取时刻本身居然没有太大关联[/spoiler] ？我是首发的时候入手的，对于当时的价格，游戏时长偏短，不过价格经过调整后，可以接受 以下内容可能有一点尖锐但是我很想表达我严肃品鉴了这款游戏并尊重这个作品，所以我才写了这么多： -[b]对话穷举模拟器[/b] ，为什么是穷举，就是因为我无法用逻辑弄明白我该说什么，以莉迪亚[spoiler] 的对话为例，我到底该不该安慰她？[/spoiler] 答案都很反直觉，最后只能穷举。[b]而到了后面，让我发现答案的依然不是正常逻辑，而是排除重复出现的选项[/b] 。我玩一个游戏能玩到思考起游戏性到底是什么，那我是真的有点被这个游戏弄迷茫了——穷举法能算玩法吗？ -交互位置怪怪的 --我从第一个场景的第三个对话就开始不舒服，打到中后段真有点红温吧，我不行了尤其是莉迪亚，怎么每一个对话都朝着和提示毫无关联和正常人脑回路里毫无关系的地方去，甚至还能向着和提示完全相反的地方去的；不是，除了直接给答案之外的提示和正确答案有什么关系吗我硬是跟着提示穷举了所有错误答案，[spoiler] 让我鼓励鼓励结果告诉我答案是剩下那个反问，说出来把人家逼急了，[/spoiler]这前后文有什么关系吗 --我很少打休闲对话模拟器打得有点急了的，我认为游戏设计和剧本设计这块有一点问题 *尽管我提出了这么多建议和意见，我还是想说Iodine我们喜欢你.jpg 能开发一款游戏是了不起的！请继续加油！！ +++ Huge congrats to Iodine and the team for finishing BSS and finally releasing it!! ++ The visuals, concept, and UI design—this excatly what I like. I always love Iodine's character and visual designs. + Super cool concept. + Dialogue enumeration simulator, but no punishment for wrong answer and there's a hint mechanic, so it's forgiven. + I love the presentation of the "extract moments"—some of them are absolutely mind-blowing. + Pillory! Easter! Eggs! + The resting on bench/in hotel part is a little confusing, but it's alright. Managed to understand at last. + Once you reach High Town, the regular NPC dialogue gets way better. Telephangel is a huge plus. + The ending is pretty decent, bonus points. ？ The tutorials/guidance were pretty bad, but I crawled around and figured it out eventually, so I'm giving it a mixed review. The teleportations between scenes were a bit confusing, but since the map wasn't huge, I managed to memorize it later on. ？ The gameplay is a mystery—being a walking and chatting simulator is okaym, but the body parts you get don't actually make the protagonist any smarter; instead, they just increase the time spent on enumeration among choices. ？ The storytelling and narrative get a mixed review. [spoiler] For a grand theme like world creation, these few small stories about mortals, the metaphors for social classes, and the explanation of the social production order feel way too thin. The Telephangel's lines and the ending saved it a bit, [/spoiler] which is why it's getting a mixed rating, otherwise this part would have ended up in the negative reviews below. ？ The visuals of the "extract moments" are stunning, but the content and the timing of their appearance feel a bit disconnected. There's a bit of a letdown in the character stories compared to the visual spectacle of the "extract moments." [spoiler] Plus, the presentation of the gods' stories surprisingly doesn't have much connection to the extraction moments themselves. [/spoiler] ？ I bought the game on the day wen it was released. For the price back then, the playtime was way too short for 50yuan/15bucks, but after the price adjustment, it's acceptable now. The following might be a bit sharp, but I really want to show that I seriously reviewed this game and respect the work, which is why I wrote so much: - [b]Dialogue enumeration simulator[/b]. Why enumeration? Because I couldn't use logic to figure out what I was supposed to say. Take Lydia's dialogue as an example: [spoiler] should I comfort her or not? [/spoiler] The answers are all so counter-intuitive that in the end, you just have to try every single option. [b]And later on, what helped me find the answer still wasn't normal logic, but just eliminating the options that kept popping up.[/b] When playing a game gets me to the point of questioning what "gameplay" even means, I am genuinely left a bit bewildered by it—does enumeration work as a part of the fun? - The interaction prompts are placed weirdly. -- I started feeling uncomfortable right from the third dialogue of the very first scene. By the mid-to-late game, it genuinely started to grt on my nerves. Especially with Lydia. How does every single dialogue branch off into something completely unrelated to the hints and completely out of pocket for normal logic? They can even go in the exact opposite direction of the hints! Like, seriously, does the hint have anything to do with the correct answer unless it literally gives the answer to you? I literally followed the hints and enumerated every single wrong answer. [spoiler] The hint tells me to give some encouragement, but it turns out the answer is the remaining rhetorical question, which ended up setting her off. [/spoiler] What does the context even have to do with anything here? -- I rarely get tilted playing RPG without battles, so I think there's a bit of an issue with the game design and the scriptwriting here. * Despite all the suggestions and criticisms I've made, I still want to say: Iodine we love you.jpg Being able to develop a game is an incredible feat! Please keep it up!!

(gonna disclose that I am acquaintances with one of the creators, Iodine, so might be biased a tad) (also spoilers) Burden Street Station is a short, sweet, and sublime visual novel about making conversation with peculiar individuals and building a rapport with them on a quest to locate a missing God. You're a librarian who sorts out moments of individual lives who gets sent on this aforementioned mission to a mortal planet, accompanied by a book that is missing its vital contents. All in all, I enjoyed my time with Burden Street Station and especially admire making a game with such a unique presentation that also doesn't rely on any combat-oriented gameplay. A game subverting the usual requirements of gun or ball for wider appeal. I respect it a ton! The story moments intersect in ways I'm yet to fully digest or appreciate but, overall, the importance of valuing life's transience, of forging your own reasons to exist, and establishing connections weaves into a pretty tale that did strike a salient chord (albeit, I feel, a little imprecise in how it all exactly connects together). I like how the three moments you help orchestrate reflect the moon, sun and storm shelves you sort books into right at the start. I like the similarities between the final conversation, the reasons of the schism that leads to the whole premise of the game, and how that is kinda paralleled by the individual moments you discover; ones about religion, art, and relationships. Whether is a reflection of the creator(s) individual experiences, who is to say, but I'd be surprised for a game that so specifically highlights aspects of faith for that not to be the case. This game is a visual novel at heart, which I respect even as a genre not really for me, and while I appreciate the variety offered through the multiple dialogue choices, I felt after a while I could very easily game the system. Lotown quickly taught me that the real way to advance conversations was to just find the response that prompted the person to keep speaking. At first, that might sound reductive because that's quite literally the goal, but I mean that I realised it was usually things that were specific questions that would advance the conversation. The other options would usually default to cookie-cutter lines that were wholly irrelevant or statements that would outright stop the discussion, meaning I never felt any need to use the insight or even rest on a bench. More crucially, I actually never felt I needed to pay much attention to what was said, because I really just had to notice patterns in the speech and not the words actually being used. It is a cool idea for gameplay, and I think it works fine for it's humble 3-hour runtime, but admittedly not as in-depth as I hoped. On this note, I think LoTown was pretty load-bearing regarding gameplay amenities. In LoTown, there are bus stops to ferry you across the map, as well as a hotel to fully recover from multiple burn-out levels if you'd been abusing insight. These things, oddly, do not appear in the following two sections of the game. Sure, it makes sense you don't have bus transportation in some areas, but it did make having to run back and forth to check things a little inconvenient. It also felt like a bit of a design oversight considering we had it at all during LoTown. Also, I will add that while Ruth's final interaction with Lydia was conducive to their 'moment' and all, I do think there was quite a bit of whiplash going from LoTown's happy reunion between Lydia and her brother to suddenly an intense argument where she swears to never talk to Ruth again. It's not that it was negative inherently but that Lydia's involvement felt odd, like she'd just been thrown in for the sake of drama, and I think there could have been a way to resolve Ruth's conundrum without the whiplash. Despite the above criticisms, Burden Street Station is an admirable piece of stylised work that maintains a player's intrigue all the way through. I enjoyed it and I'm sure people more privy to visual novels would enjoy it even more. Well done to the people at Critical Reflex for picking this up and especially well done to Iodine, who I know worked so hard on this. Pat yourself on the back!

good game. wish it was longer