Nina

This is a spoiler free review of NINA. NINA is a short and simple game. In the beginning you are a formless thought assisting a girl in a room who can't remember anything. Over the course of several days you talk to her, learn more about her and the people around her, and examine her environment for clues. Whenever she goes to sleep, she forgets your previous interactions, but you don't, so you are able to continue your interactions with a bit more knowledge. I think this a cool gameplay mechanic in which you are able to help her with whatever condition she has, and get to feel the same hopelessness the creatures around her express at her amnesia. The game itself is short, with good art and an interesting premise and multiple endings (several bad ends and one ending that rolls the credits.) What music is there provides good ambience, but there isn't really much music. The writing is effective but the story as a whole isn't very fleshed out. I was left feeling there could have been more to the story and while the ending isn't unsatisfying, it leaves a fair bit up to interpretation. There is some ARG stuff in there to explore, and I think that is a cool aspect of the game that would be interesting to see it continue to develop. It's a quick experience but I think it's worth a couple bucks to engage with the psychological horror aspect of it. I played this on my steamdeck, it's fully playable with minimal usage of a keyboard to input text. I tried this with a controller out of curiosity and I would not recommend that, you really need a mouse or trackpad.