Gerda: A Flame in Winter

This is a really cool narrative game, with good story, and interesting setting. I would really like to give this a positive review, as I liked most of it. Unfortunately, it has some cons that soured my taste with it: - Twice I ran into an bug in which, after an autosave, the logs/dialogue/narration claimed I'd made a choice I had not done in the previous scene. In one of these cases it only changed a minor dialogue option later in the story from easy to challenging, and in the other case it resulted with a character being dead in the following scenes. Since you don't have manual saves, only an autosave and one save slot, this means that you sometimes have to live with the results of the bugs, not with the concequences of your choices. - The Train station scene felt more like a puzzle with imperfect information, than a culmination of my previous choices. Not sure if it is or not. It could also be that the game gives you a lot of things to do in this scene, but passing those checks will still automatically lead to success or failure depending your choices, which isn't great either. - There is an element of rng when it comes to persuasion checks. It is annoying when you keep failing easy persuasion checks after considering and planning the choices that led to them. I think the rng should have been there as an option to save you, if you made mistakes earlier in the story or scene, not as a last, although easier hurdle to overcome if you made the right ones. - The game should show you the dice rolls or at least their numerical results. A very minor thing that would have made the rng mechanic visually more pleasing. - The game needs a run toggle. The bugs, especially after running into them twice, are what mainly leads me to give this a negative review. If I had not gotten them in my first and likely only playthrough, I would have been able to recommend this game without reservations. Still, I'm interested to see what this studio does in the future.

Great purchase for history buffs, just wish the choices and stay checks in the main campaign were as forgiving as those in the DLC

Interesting game mechanics. Multiple ways to play the game, too, who you side with, who you help. I enjoyed the simple visuals, it's quite soothing. The game is short, but since it's interesting to see how other options work, you can replay it for hours.

Wow. Just wow. Art is stunning. Graphics do not need to be ultra realistic to be beautiful. The visuals look like a watercolor painting. And the story?? It's agonizing, everything makes you second guess yourself.

Great game, there are quite a few bugs though, in my recent playthrough I went to the clinic and got Sophia the penicillin, and later in the game, when I was helping them get past the checkpoint, the game acted as if I hadn't gotten the penicillin for her. And some of the diary entries don't match what happened. For example we got Heinrich held in the Inn, and I did it without anyone getting hurt, and the diary entry still said that Heinrich stabbed Peter in the shoulder.

Top shelf