Freshman Year

Freshman Year is short and to the point, but will sit with you once all is said and done. The Art style does a great job invoking the uneasiness the creator likely felt when retelling this story. in It’s a very short but artistic experience that I would recommend everyone experiences at least once.

5-minute visual novel/art game with minimal interactivity. Worth checking out if you like that sort of thing and aren't just going to complain that it's not "really" a game.

Sure it's short but it gets the point across quickly. It is half way between a choose your own adventure book and point and click adventure a la Sierra games in the 80's. Like others have mentioned they don't get how can you get into a bar as a freshman or why friends are seemingly oblivous to what happened to their own, it's all very accurate to what happens to many young women (and even men) when they leave home for the first time and have to navigate life alone for the first time. I would probably use this to open a conversation about sex with a teen prior to them entering college.

Sorry to say it, but the only thing thats shorter than this "game" is the time that you will need to completly forget about it.

I tried this vignette out of curiosity but I really can't recommend it, even if it's free to play and will "only" waste 3 to 10 minutes of your life. You basically just press for the next vignette. As said it's really short and there are some typos here and there, some choices as well but they don't really have an impact on the game. The visual is particular but not really to my taste ; the background music starts okayish and as you move forward in the story it turns into a stressful noise. Freshman Year is about Nina, a college freshman ; apparently, it supposedly illustrates a situation that the real Nina Freeman experienced. You're at home, browsing Facebook, until your friend Jenna textes you to meet her at the club. Nina dances, drinks alcohol and waits for her friend that doesn't show up, until the bouncer [spoiler]starts hitting on her and sexually assaulting her. Luckily Jenna arrives, interrupts the scene and prevents her friend from being ra - ped.[/spoiler] The context itself annoys me : young people addicted to social medias and partying, getting drunk all the time for "fun" and sexually assaulted. The game could send a message like "be careful at the club, with alcohol and drugs ; stay home at night ; ra - pe can destroy a person and should be fought". Instead, at the end of the game, they act as if it were a normal thing, saying the guy was a creep, that the same thing happened to another girl and [spoiler]they ended up doing it in the bathroom.[/spoiler] I just want to say : [b]NO[/b].

Nina, and every other person who ever had to experience harassment like it's portrayed in this game, I'm so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sorry. You should not have had to go through this. To the person who reviewed this game with comments downplaying such events or even making fun of them: wow, that's disgusting. While I wouldn't necessarily describe this as a game, it's really worth 'playing' if you're not triggered by sexual abuse and flashy images.

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