Cinders

I had this game gifted on my birthday as taken from the top 10 of my Wishlist and I was really excited to try it. I downloaded on the first opportunity and soon I sat down with tea and snacks, my cat nested on my laps I opened the game and let the story engulf me. Or so I hoped. With a deep regret I have to say that I cannot recommend this game. Let's starts with positives: - visually beautiful The artwork, the small animations of speaking, how scenes are connected, music... All of those small things were polished and detailed into an aesthetically pleasant and coherent entity. - working smoothly Technically well done. Possibility to Save on every step and Autosave on Quit make it convenient to play as much (or as little) as one wants. No glitches (so far), no junk, no weirdness. UI/UX very intuitive although there is no much of it. Now the reason why I even write this review. - the plot is questionable Personal opinion but I loath to be dumped into an action, forced to make choices based on characters that I don't know at all whilst having a Big Bad Thing that happened which is about to be revealed and then... "7 days earlier"... Safe to say my keyboard had a hard time. - the writing is atrocious I noticed that my wrist was hurting. Then I realized it was because I was spamming the space (and the mouse click to have some variety) in a mad speed excited for the story to happen. I click and I click and I click and I click... Two sessions (and two hours) later I paused in the middle of the dialog and stared blankly at the screen with a dark realization hitting me: "This is not going to get better." To separate this big statement into smaller chunks: - characters are straight up boring and/or unlikable to the point I don't care about them/what's gonna happen to them - they are all preachy/playing self proclaimed psychologist/having nothing to say and yet yapping for dozens of slides - there is so much unnecessary dialog which brings absolutely nothing to anything and makes me feel like I waste my time - choices matter, but do they? It sure didn't look like it. - the writing itself its just not good (maybe it would be for a 15-year-old fanfic project but not here). I though maybe I am just picky so I've read few random dialog lines to few of my friends and the opinions were from "read worse" to "could be better". This is not the reaction one wants from a game that is a visual NOVEL. I love books and I love video games. Getting a visual novel felt like best of both worlds. Yet my enthusiasm was swiftly executed by yours truly. Saddened by that fact I felt obligated to remove another visual novel from this dev team from my Wishlist. Frankly, I feel deceived by the gloating reviews and enticing self description and this comes from someone who actually enjoys average stories. I am a firm believer there is a beauty to be found anywhere and it seems that this aspect of this game had been unfortunately lost on me. And Cinders... Cinders will stay for some time on my desktop. Maybe I will feel inclined to give it a second chance. Maybe there will be a rainy day where I don't feel like anything too involving and this icon will catch my eye. Maybe... Or maybe it will just gather dust, counting days since "last played" until I remove it with "no hard feelings, kiddo. It's just a business" vibe as clean the last of its files from my PC.

Every time I see this title in my library I feel a little bit pissed off, because that's how I felt like while playing it. It's been years but I STILL remember how bad it was, and now I finally decided to write a review. The writing is absolutely terrible, this is what I remember most vividly. The dialogues went on and on were painfully cringe and often repeating and/or redundant. I don't remember much of the story except that it was shallow and childishly written and I hated it. The art is very off-putting to me. I like most of the backgrounds, but the characters look like barbie-dolls in full glam hair and make-up. It looks WEIRD! They look lifeless, it doesn't help that they just stand there barely moving their mouth. I realized I'm probably not the target audience, but young girls deserve better games than this. Sorry I felt like I was a bit too mean, I don't like leaving such negative reviews, especially for indie games. So I want to say something positive. I really like the outdoor nature scenes, they are beautiful, almost like a painting you could hang up on a wall.

I'm not entirely sold on this game, so I almost gave it a thumbs-down..... The positives are the artwork and the basic structure of the story-line (hell, it's a classic....you can't go wrong!). BUT, be aware that no matter how hard you try to be a decent, forgiving human being while making choices for the Cinderella protagonist, easily three quarters of the endings are either bad for you or result in you becoming an unpleasant, borderline tyrannical ruler of the kingdom. Not that anyone should expect a "happy ending" in a fairy tale (I think we all know how dark most tales actually were before being cleaned up for the modern masses), but the vast majority of the possible endings are of the downbeat variety, REGARDLESS of how many "good" choices you make. As well, you'll have to play through this sucker multiple times to get all the achievements, let alone every possible ending, so the dialogue and music (and even the pretty artwork) starts to get thin real fast. So, why on earth am I recommending it? Because the core of the game is solid and even two or three playthroughs weren't enough to take away the entertainment/fun value.......after that point, and trying to be a completionist, yeah, it stopped being fun. But if you're not the sort who needs to get every achievement and see every ending (and even all the different endings aren't THAT different from each other), then it is enjoyable, up to a point. So, tepidly, weakly, half-heartedly recommended.

I played through enough of Cinders to get all the endings, and honestly, I kinda wish I hadn’t. This game just isn’t very good. The writing feels like it was done by a middle-schooler, the characters are incredibly shallow, and most of the female character art looks exactly the same outside of different hair and clothing. A lot of the story was boring and predictable, while other parts just straight up didn’t make much sense. The only real redeeming quality for me was the background/location art, which actually looked pretty nice, but for some reason you can’t even take screenshots of it? Overall, this was a very forgettable experience and absolutely not worth the $20 price tag.

lots of choices that have impact on the MC's personality and the people around on her

I thought the story was okay. There were a couple great moments here and there, but it was pretty simple and mostly predictable. But I absolutely love the art. This game is gorgeous, and I think it makes it worth playing, even just a little bit. I'm also a fan of how the title screen updates with each ending you get.

Truly one of the most whelming games I've ever played. To be fair to Cinders, it's a visually gorgeous game (especially the backgrounds), and the art still holds up very well over a decade after the game's release. But the writing just doesn't match up to it at all. It's rarely outright terrible, but instead thoroughly mediocre almost the whole time. The whole thing reads like an outline of the events that happen; characters outright state their actions and motivations constantly, removing almost all tension from the story, which combined with the clunky prose and awkward branch merging just makes Cinders an utter slog to read. I can't even say that it aged badly, because frankly, there were plenty of much better-written visual novels available in English in 2012. This was released a few months after the full release of Katawa Shoujo, and Digital: A Love Story was released in 2010 and is much shorter with few graphics at all, but it's a far more compelling read than this. And that's not even getting into all the quality VNs we've gotten since then. Aside from the art, Cinders' major selling point is its choice density: it has a lot of choices, all of which affect your progress towards an ending in some way. In my personal opinion, the way branching is implemented here is in a "quantity over quality" way. Most of the story is actually fairly linear, meaning that your biggest hints that anything is happening are minor dialogue changes and the top-right indicator (which shows up when the line of dialogue was influenced by a previous choice). The endings themselves differ significantly...but are too short to be satisfying, especially on a replay. I can't in good conscience recommend playing this game. A physical artbook would be nice, though.

Not for me. Based on the description/videos, I was excited for the "break the story any way you want" thing, the promise of an adult game/story where choices actually matter (and really shape the story). For me, I felt that it was *way* too much just clicking of dialogue/story that I had no control over, it was extremely repetitive, melodramtic, and very thin/not great writing. I didn't personally enjoy the art style, but I could easily set that aside if everything was really good or even as expected/promised. I think this is definitely suited towards a much younger audience who would probably enjoy it more than I did. As well, the choices seem that they - at best - barely matter, and they feel very few and far between. I found I was trying to speedrun to the end just to see how it *would* end, and I was very frustrated when pretty much the entire ball, I either could make basically no choices or the choices I had available had absolutely nothing to do with anything I had done up to that point. I don't want to be extremely harsh, but in the end, I did feel like I really wasted my time here - I am just clearly the audience for this, which is too bad, because it does seem like a cool idea.

If you want a Cinderella retelling, trying Cinderella Phenomenon, which is free, has beautiful visuals, a good plot, and lovable characters. I'm kind of going on a review spree right now, and although I don't want to hurt the creators or anything, even five years later I still remember how unimpressed I was with this VN.

A unique fairly short VN jam-packed with impactful choices that allow you to create your own "Cinderella." Very replayable. Additionally, the art-style and OST are so distinct and moody. However, while this game succeeds at being a Cinderella sandbox, the character writing is so mediocre. Especially if you're looking for a romance story, don't play this. The romance is very short and entirely underdeveloped. The stepsisters are a highlight but in general, the characters are all pretty bland and forgettable (more plot devices then anything).