Ferrule Instincts

[i]Ferrule Instincts[/i] is a visual novel developed and published by Yellow Optic. You take on the role of Kayla Ferrule, a wealthy woman who's about to celebrate her 20th birthday. Kayla's friend, Miles, wants to take her out to celebrate. However, there are some shady people who are out to kidnap Kayla, so your objective is to prevent Kayla from being kidnapped so she can have a wonderful birthday. I'll end my story synopsis here to avoid spoilers and all that. As for the gameplay, [i]Ferrule Instincts[/i] has some options that are presented throughout the story. These choices determine whether Kayla will get one of three bad endings or the one happy ending. At the time of this review, there are no Steam achievements or trading cards, not even a CG gallery. Now that I've gone over the story and gameplay, I'll move onto my critique. After reading the store page description for this VN, I found the premise to be interesting. Storywise, it has the makings of a mystery, suspenseful adventure. However, I found the story to be somewhat flat. According to the developers, this VN is based on [i]Fool Me Twice[/i], but if you have no idea what it is, then the basis will get lost on the reader. I believe the story had potential. However, the characters felt flat, basically having almost no personality. The only ones whom I felt had any sort of personality were the "kidnappers". In regards to the choices, they didn't seem to make much sense to me. For example, [spoiler]if I chose the option to listen to Kayla's butler and return to the mansion, Kayla is safe but it doesn't result in a good ending - just the mention that "something is missing"[/spoiler]. It's probably unnecessary of me (but I'll mention it anyway) to say that because the story felt flat, the writing was the same although to give it some credit, I didn't notice any typos or grammatical errors. Also, the pacing felt fairly fine. Regarding the art, it's passable. It's more on the simplistic style, but the sprites are done well. It doesn't particularly stand out, though. In regards to soundtrack or voice acting, there is none. Yes, that's right. Despite that this is a visual novel adapted from a text adventure, I couldn't even hear one track. Of course, it's perfectly fine for there not to be voice acting, as plenty of VNs don't have them, but it's unheard of for there not to be any music tracks. Overall, would I recommend [i]Ferrule Instincts[/i]? Even though the story premise was promising, I have to admit that I wouldn't recommend it. If this had been a free VN with all the points I made, I would have given it a pass. However, for the asking price, I really cannot recommend getting it (unless it goes on a steep discount). Especially the lack of music was off-putting, since this would have been better off as a simple text adventure (which doesn't require music). If the devs make future VNs, I hope they'll make improvements, as I can see that [i]Ferrule Instincts[/i] is their first attempt at developing a VN. [quote]Flying free and writing reviews solely for [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44702020/]The Introverted Gamer[/url].[/quote]

I feel kind of bad leaving a negative review on what is most likely a passion project, but I can't in good conscience recommend this game considering its short playtime, lack of replayability and questionable storytelling. This game has a story that lasts about 10 minutes, if I'm being really generous and it only took me 40 minutes to get every ending and I read it aloud with a friend, so it would have taken me slightly longer. There are only 4 choices in this game, one of which changes literally nothing. There are only really 3 ending, despite there being marginally different versions of one of them, and none of them were particularly satisfying. Spoilers from this point on. Now, the storytelling. If I hadn't read the Steam page, I would have been missing [i] a lot [/i] of important context for this story. For example: Kayla is rich, Miles has fallen in with the literal mafia, Luna is Kayla's butler. Of course, it is possible to guess this information from the game itself, however it is never made clear. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if the story was good. It's not. I haven't read the book that this game is based on, so perhaps the original story is good, but the story presented in this game is... lacking, to put it mildly. Firstly, due to it never being established that Kayla is rich, she just gets randomly attacked by the mafia for no reason, secondly, after given a choice on whether to return home or not, it is unclear where you actually go, as you end up in a house, no matter what you picked (Although, the latter choice isn't your house). Thirdly, if you choose not to return home, the mafia chases you down and a fight ensues. Kind of. Assuming you're getting the "good" ending, you slap the mafia leader and just run back to your house. That's it. Another thing is the actual dialogue, which is confusing. For example, when the mafia arrives at Miles's house, he says "They are pressuring me, but they shouldn't know my address", but, after he turns to look at them, he asks "How did you know my address?". This just sounds odd and unnatural, almost as if it's been lost in translation, but the game is only available in English, so that can't be the case. Overall, this game is fun to laugh at with a friend for 30 minutes, but you shouldn't buy it if you're looking for a well written serious story. As I mentioned earlier, this game is based on a book which I haven't read, so, if you want to experience this story, that's your best bet.

Not worth the investment I'm afraid, and yes you're eyes don't deceive you, that how long it had taken me to finish this game, 4 times to get all the endings, mind you I spent a couple of minutes the next day to check if I mess anything. For how short this game was, leaving not much of an impact, it's very easy for me to ignore it and move on with my life, but wanted to give the developer the benefit of the doubt and share my thoughts and feelings on it while sprinkling in some suggestions to improve on this game. So, more or less the rest of this review is towards the developer than the players reading it. Firstly, if a game is this short with the selling point of achieving multiple different endings at least make them interesting or have them reveal some new information for the players to learn. All of the total of the 3 bad endings were particularly the same while the one good ending wasn't that satisfying as we don't get to spend much time with the existing character to feel it's earned or anything. What this game desperately needs is more scenes fleshing out the supporting characters like the butler and our main character's best friend, Mike. Furthermore, it would have been helpful to have an introduction to Kayla (the protagonist) and her relationship to being a part of a rich family, answering a lot of unanswered questions like, why are the mafia after her and for what? We don't get much of an explanation of what's going on from what the summary on the Steam page made it seem making it hard to follow through with what the story is about. Based on Kayla's body language and facial expression, it seems like she is the type of person who wants to be a 'normal' every-girl character which could be an interesting direction for the story being a commentary that inherited wealth isn't everything going make your life better or be apart of wealthy life isn't for everyone. I know this game is based on a book called Fool Me Twice written by the same creator (from what I could tell) having 300 pages, so I am sure there's enough content to lengthen this game gameplay run unless the source material itself begs a differ. I haven't read it so who knows? One thing I'm going to give credit for this visual novel (and one of the reasons I'm taking this review seriously in the first place) is the art style. Nothing too complex, something that's a cute and simplistic style that could make the character stand out by having dramatic poses and expressions. From what have seen on the creator's website and Twitter this game has potential, but a lot of work is needed to fulfil that requirement for the game to be fun and quirky. [b][u]Just so we're not here all day here's a list of some suggestions and improvements:[/u] [/b] [list]     [*]Add background music  [*]Have the saved file be a calendar  [*]Make the border of the texts clearer (to make it easy to read)  [*]Add art gallery [*] Option to change the font and size of the texts [/list]