Last Chance in Xollywood

"Last Chance in Xollywood" is barely a game, it's more of an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. This is mostly 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 is a poorly written sci-fi CYOA e-book with some gameplay elements, but I think some kudos should go to the author for not making the topic his imaginary anime girlfriend. Instead it's a bizarre and poorly conceieved book about a sci-fi movie director working with aliens in "xollywood", which puts the conceptualization of this junk somewhere below that of the infamous Eddie Murphy flop, Pluto Nash (have you ever seen it? It sucked). Except the production values here are incredibly much worse. And so is the writing. There's minor gameplay elements aligned poorly to what amounts to one of the worst tycoon games on Steam, a browser tier minigame that, unsurprisingly, failed extremely hard. This was slapped together with the godawful Ren'Py visual novel construction kit... enabling terrible authors to publish books as if they were games when otherwise we might have been spared the pollution. So, just like no professional writing took place here, no professional software development took place, either. 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. This isn't a complete e-book and it's not free, you need to unlock the whole thing through a delusionally priced $6 DLC. Imagine if bookstores ripped out the last chapters of every book and tried to charge you to read them. That's basically what the author here is trying to do. Disgusting, isn't it? Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the e-book peaked at only 5 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 5 copies to satisfy the entire world's demand for it. While this E-book has no up-front cost, 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.

Andi is one of my favorite game developers. As always your new game is yet again oozing with atmosphere and humanity. Glad to have immersed myself in this strange world you've created. Loved it!

Игра 'Last Chance in Xollywood' – это безумный и захватывающий коктейль из абсурдного юмора, проработанного повествования и неожиданно глубоких персонажей. Вы играете за неудачника, который отчаянно пытается пробиться в киноиндустрии Ксолливуда, погрязшей в коррупции и странных прихотях звезд. Визуальный стиль яркий и карикатурный, идеально передающий атмосферу гротеска, а диалоги искрометные и полны отсылок к поп-культуре. Геймплей представляет собой смесь квеста, визуальной новеллы и мини-игр, что вносит разнообразие и не дает заскучать. Сюжет полон неожиданных поворотов, а решения, которые вы принимаете, действительно влияют на развитие истории и концовку. Несмотря на комичность происходящего, в игре затрагиваются и серьезные темы, такие как амбиции, предательство и цена успеха. 'Last Chance in Xollywood' – это игра, которая заставит вас смеяться, удивляться и немного задуматься о жизни. Отличное развлечение для тех, кто ищет что-то оригинальное и не боится абсурда. Рекомендую!

pretty cool

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Fantastic game. I loved the story and characters. I was happy with the way it ended, but I still plan to play it again once its less fresh in my mind to see how some of the other choices work out and what the other playable characters are like.