Do I Know You?

Do I Know You? is not a game, it's an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game. This garbage e-book is a hamfisted effort by an unqualified, failed author to address serious mental health issues and dealing with dementia. Trying to address serious issues such as mental and emotional health through the medium of video games (let alone garbage Ren'Py e-books) is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good. The "developer" here is not a professional in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this is not only utterly ineffective, it can be harmful. It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to address mental health issues. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers. People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get attention/fame by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here. Visual novels/e-books are tedious at best... imagine the best novel you ever read, be that Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Twilight (if you have terrible taste in literature), but then translate that to a format where the words dribble out and you have to click your mouse every time you wanted to read the next sentence, instead of just turning the pages. You'd think it was garbage. Now imagine that experience, but with much worse writing (because if these guys could write professionally, they'd be published authors and this would be on shelves in bookstores, and they wouldn't have to pay Valve $100 to self-publish this on Steam), and you have your average Steam e-book. One of the chief problems with failed authors polluting Steam with non-game E-books is that E-books can easily just be presented in a web browser... there's no justification for charging money on Steam for what might as well be a webpage. We don't spend thousands on buying a gaming rig to spend money on Steam for something Chrome or Firefox could do. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the e-book peaked at only 2 concurrent readers... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. The funny thing is, if you wanted to print this book, you'd only need to print 2 copies to satsify the entire world's demand for it. While this E-book is "free", you can get better quality, professionally written books and comics for free online (from places like Project Gutenberg) or from public libraries. Steam isn't a comic book store, neither is it Netflix, it's for games. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle. It's impossible for me to recommend things to PC gamers that aren't really games.

Unless you've been there, this VN makes no sense. Being forgotten, mistaken for someone else, the silence when they can no longer speak...this game is too short. It shouldn't evoke such an emotional response in such a short time, but it does. Because it's personal, on the nose, too real for someone who's been there, especially at the end. I recommend it, but if you've experienced this, you will cry.

very short vn about the progression of dementia in a loved one, took me about 10 minutes to read it and see all dialogue.

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A sweet and extremely short visual novel about dementia. I assume it's made from personal experience. I've also watched the slow deterioration of a loved one from dementia, and I think the dev did a good job of putting it together into an extremely short game. It does have soul, despite the length. The game would have been more powerful if it'd been more fleshed out, but it's free, and I don't know if Edward Tan wants to be a career game dev or just release one small, personally meaningful story. Edward, if you plan to make more games (this is already a great start), background music is a must. It'll make your game feel way more engaging and immersive. Everything feels 10x longer (in a bad way) with no background music. Your game will also feel much more professional if you change the default Ren'Py font and design elements. Also, Steam descriptions are less about describing your game per se (which you have done very accurately) and more about marketing it (i.e., obviously stay accurate but pique interest and intrigue). With story-heavy games, you can (and probably should) be more creative with your descriptions than gameplay-driven games. Good luck with whatever you choose to do.

"Do I Know You?" Is a very short visual story-like game, it takes you through the story of a son watching his mother go through the stages of dementia, it's very sad. I loved this game, I wish there was more to it but for what it is, I really enjoyed it. The art is beautiful and I love the music choice for the CD, it was very nice. I would recommend this but just know it will take you like 5 minutes to finish the game, it's super short.