Choose Your Own Alternative

A very simple but endearing experience. It takes many runs to have the complete picture of what's going on, but the small titbits of worldbuilding are very much worth it. If you want to chill for 1h with some very well written narrative game, this is a no brainer !

Un voyage très intéressant dans la psyché des personnages ! Ponctué d'une narration rythmée et de choix percutants.. Je recommande !

If I had to describe the game in one word, right now it would be "what?". The game is a bit confusing. The closest I can compare it to is a Visual Novell. However, it doesn't have the usual structure of VN. You do have choices, and they seem to branch into something. But those choices are not explained to you, and neither are the consequences. Overall, you have 3 buttons at the start of the game. You can "explore", "observe" or "talk to the inner deamon". This setup is pretty unusual to me, but interesting. The "explore" button is basically the narration of the story. The "observe" button is kind of like your inventory. It shows you a list of items and a description of them. With a counter above each item (perhaps it's all the descriptions of an item you can possibly get?). Those two buttons, I think, are there for the player to understand what's happening. The only button that actually progresses the story and makes you actively interact with the enviorment is "talk to the inner demon". When you press this button, you get an "analyze" option. You have to choose 2 items to analyse (after a certain amount of analyzes, the demon only lets you analyze one specific item. For my first run it was cigarettes.). The items you choose burn or get devoured, and then you get a new description of them in the "observe" button. At some point, a new button appears. Now you can choose: either to analyze an item with the inner demon, or analyze 2 items with the new character. I have no idea what affect this choice has on the story. Just like I have no idea how the items you choose to analyze affect the story. After a certain point, you get the "sacrifice" button as well. Once you press it, you're prompted to choose an item to sacrifice. I chose "hatchet" (which I didn't even have among my items. The only items I had are "jacket", "seeds", "cigarette" and "letter". No idea how the hatchet got there.). After that I got a short monologue, and then the game ended. I have no idea what's going on. I'm not sure if the story is linear or if my choices matter, since I'm not sure what my choices even do. The only thing I understand is that my friend is possesed and I'm apparently exorcising her by sacrificing one of her memories. What memories? No clue. It seems the items are somehow connected to the memories, but their descriptions are usually so vague it's hard to tell what the memories even are. So far the game is very confusing, and I struggle to feel engaged while playing. However, I see a lot of potential in it. I'll try to play a few more runs and then I'll update my review.