How Stories Die

Around twenty or so minutes into this game, after meeting all three waifu, they immediately start a discussion about what feces tastes like. That should have been a hint. This is an AWFUL game. The graphics and sound are barely adequate, and the writing is even worse. Jokes aren't funny, character moments are vapid, characters themselves are cliche, the basic plot is a storm of cliches, tone is all over the place, and pacing is wretched. Like too many VNs, the characters just go on and on, never using five words when they can pad it out to fifty plus scene transitions. The main plot is supposed to be a vehicle for a metafictional frame story, but I'll never know for sure if the frame story is more compelling because I quit midway through the insipid main plot. I don't have any faith that whatever big revelation was coming would have been any good, though. What I played of How Stories Die had the air of being written by someone who thinks he's clever, but isn't. I'm sure the writer THOUGHT whatever he had planned was awesome, but it'll probably have the same issues as the rest of the game- long-winded and nowhere near as original or subversive as it seems in the writer's head. The last straw which pushed me into quitting was a puzzle where the solution is to repeat an apparently purposeless action for 10 or so iterations searching for a secret message, only for that message to be encoded in a way only a complete lunatic would think is reasonable or efficient. Just plain bad, in short. Got it for free and still feel cheated.

Decent, cute game with great art-work imo. Worth a play, if you like VN's &/or cute anime girls. A little on the short side - took about 30 mins. to finish (reading all of the text), other-wise like 5-10 mins. per play / run-through. But has multiple endings so if you're a completionist & the above pertains to you, then this is a game for you. Either way, thank you developers for making it in the first place - I like the perspective of the main character & dialogue very much. I'm actually surprised it's free-to-play, because I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you create more material for the game & have it play-out a little longer, say, closer to an hour or more per play-through, I'd def be willing to pay for it, should you ever decide to charge for it, so long as the price is right well enough of course. In any event, cheers, thanks again developers, & have fun everyone. -G

一款免费互动小说（Galgame）。 除了女主立绘还行其他没啥优点。 作者的文字过于朴实无华，情节安排平平无奇，甚至幻想线还有些明显不合理的地方，看得人昏昏欲睡。 本来想快进过一条线就封盘的，结果Haruka线后面有个选项还卡住了（只有两个选项，但都是不断重复相同的内容，无法推进）。

Tested 60+ hours, informal "playtime". I didn't find any "Halt&CatchFire" bugs. A few minor misses (spelling and grammar errors, wrong name in the NameBox, etc.) I enjoyed it, didn't wipe the disk in frustration. That's high praise from me.

Not bad for a medieval type visual novel. The setting for the story is a bit cheesy and feels a little rushed. The choice tree isn't too vast but is quite sufficient. This can be played to kill time and have a bit of fun. It ain't too bad. :thumbsup:

TL DR Version: No. Just no. Longer version: The game starts off ok, and had an interesting premise, but sadly it goes downhill from there. The game goes so off rails once you pick whose route to follow that I was constantly facepalming as I played it. Also the story has continuity issues in that the three routes no sense when put side by side by side. It's like the author just wrote whatever they wanted for it, and didn't look to see if that route was plausible in context of what you learned in the other route. But even that was tolerable compared to the arc with the writer trying to make the perfect story. That was just utter nonsense and felt like filler honestly to me. And that part never resolves on any route, and even though I got the good end in all 3 routes never saw a resolution to that sub plot. Overall felt like it was there just to pad the game. And finally, how do you mess up saving your game???