No Recollection

I'm not going to downvote since it's free and it's someone's labour of love, but must admit I only got as far as Day 2. The premise is intriguing, but the narrative is incredibly slow and tedious and I don't want to skim-read for hours to get to the reveal. The description states that the story is 150,000 words. That's the length of a doorstop sci-fi novel! There is way too much fluff about the colour of the walls, the characters' food preferences and other information that isn't contributing anything. My advice for future work would be to keep in mind the narrative purpose of each scene and only include detail that adds value. But congratulations to the developer on publishing their first project single-handed and making it available for others to enjoy.

(Expect the runtime to be 16ish hours, dont trust the 2 hours on some of these reviews like I did lmao) Honestly? It's slop. Not bad slop, mind you; its fun in a Vee-Ehnn kinda way, but its not exactly the most groundbreaking of mysteries and really the only thing that kept me really reading through the final act is seeing how possible it'd even be for it to end. (Which btw, kinda felt.. milquetoast? if that makes sense. Things were technically resolved for some characters but it didn't feel like they did in a rewarding way. [spoiler] Apollo not being flamed for being a horrendous father is truly a travesty.[/spoiler]) Overall I think it kinda just need editing. The prose isn't bad and the characters are entertaining enough to make it not terrible to read but I don't think it entirely justifies its large runtime by the end of it. The beginning is definitely just a lil egregious in having fluff without also having the substance paired with it; it feels like the pacing between the plot and character building stuff is imbalanced (though that can be partly blamed on the plot itself not being the most interesting thing ever). I think if I could give the game a Maybe recommendation I would, but otherwise its going red for me. The authors already proven themselves capable of writing a full length story so hopefully they keep at it and improve.

[h1] PLEASE do not play this game unironically [/h1] I usually don't write serious reviews on games because everything I would like to say has already been said. But this "game" has broken me down in such a way that [spoiler]I feel like I've been experimented on by the government.[/spoiler] [b]If you do plan on playing this game just to laugh at it, stop reading this and go on ahead, this is best experienced blind[/b] (even if you can see the upcoming plot points miles away) but also, please bring along at least one other person with you. You will not make it alone. The Protagonist (who shall be referred to as Splimp) might just be the DENSEST bastard that has had the displeasure of being shat into existence like a baby giraffe. Not only is he an insufferable incel but he is the stupidest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on both sides of the Mississippi. And you are stuck with him for the entire 155,000 WORDS. Most of which are him pointing out things you CAN SEE WITH YOUR ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ EYES. It is legitimately baffling to see something appear on screen and watch as Splimp uses all 6 of his neurons to worm his way over to that thing in a cool and crisp 23 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SENTENCES. Splimp is like a parody of a redditor, but there is no joke. Splimp interacted with a woman for like 3 hours tops and legitimately goes "mmm this is the woman I am destined to be with". I am truly afraid that Splimp is a self insert protagonist and someone like him is really out there. Jane is the first woman to force herself to talk to Splimp for more than 5 sentences and that's ALL Splimp needs to start being extremely off putting and weird about her. No foolin', Splimp says the line "I will protect you, I will be your knight” MORE THAN ONCE. AND ITS PLAYED COMPLETELY STRAIGHT. Splimp's attitude towards Jane becomes even more infuriating when you learn Jane's past. Jane was a victim of SA. The very next scene is another tasteless slop of her taking off her sweater and Splimp going “Cowabunga! baZONGAS! Breast?” Its ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sickening. Jane also has DID and her other personality is a murderer. (Hey buddy, I know this might be hard to hear but just because they did it in Danganronpa doesn’t mean you have to do it in your glorified fantasy that you published on steam.) Jane.exe (who shall be referred to as Jingles) is kinda just there to be there. The story wouldn’t have to be dramatically changed if she didn’t exist, she’s mostly there just to take the brunt of the 2 manslaughter charges (Which is not how that works. It was pretty obviously premeditated.) The story might even be a little MORE interesting if Jingles didn’t exist, because then we would have one whole solid reason to dislike Jane for more than just the way she was written. Every single character in this game is really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad but if I had to choose one to be my favorite it would be Jingles, because she hates Splimp just as much as the audience hates Splimp. I’m going to group the other two into one paragraph because I’m pretty sure the writer did the exact same thing. Apollo is an agent working for the secret government evil people, he’s also just as annoying as Splimp, it's almost like they’re clones!!!!! At least Apollo is written to be annoying (I think??) but that doesn’t change the fact that he is a bastard and will not be let into heaven. And one more thing, why is Apollo mad that Splimp stole his melanin? That just means that Apollo has a better chance of getting a job in America. Veronica is also there. Her only character trait is complaining that she was never given a character. They also mention that she is an exhibitionist and it doesn't go anywhere. Due to the asinine way the game was written I really thought that Veronica was going to strip as a distraction in the climax. On the topic of asinine writing, this game has the WORST pacing out of any game I have ever seen with my little peepers. It’s like the developer was trying to reach a word count for an essay, and if I’m gonna be honest it’s a little suspicious that the word count is displayed prominently on the store page. The developer also likes to use the same few words over and over again until they drill into your skull like a brain eating amoeba. A few examples include concrete, promptly, quizzically, inquisitive, and cute. The game also has a lot of EXTREMELY OBVIOUS red herrings that Splimp immediately falls for reasons mentioned above. There’s not much else I can really say on this topic because I’m no expert, but if you think this review is poorly written, you are not prepared for the sludge that No Recollection will serve you on a silver platter. I don’t know what else to say, other than, if the developer is reading this, please just write a book next time.

(My real playtime is 33 hours) Let me preface this by saying I enjoyed my experience playing this game, because It was in a call with two friends on discord, and there is a 0% chance I would make it through this game on my own. Also I had to voice Apollo and Veronica, so I was ready to explode during the Day 6 interrogation which lasted THREE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HOURS It's a fun game to make fun of, assuming you have the patience, because good lord, the pacing of this game is atrocious. You could remove well over half of the lines in the game and get the same, if not a much better experience. The amount of times Berry describes the concrete of the wall or floor is absurd, as well as the fact that the berry flavored bastard just HAS to describe EVERYTHING THAT YOU CAN ALREADY SEE IN FRAME like the visual aspect of this visual novel doesn't exist (Which honestly it might as well not, you wouldn't miss anything if the game was in .txt format), the author of this game has clearly never heard of "show, don't tell" and its agonizing to watch. And jesus christ, the sheer amount of unneeded suspense that leads to the most obvious possible outcome is genuinely infuriating. The only time this game isn't extremely predictable is when we're giving it the benefit of the doubt, the amount of times one of us said some stupid bs as a joke that we thought the game wouldn't stoop to, and then the game ACTUALLY SAID IT DIRECTLY AFTERWARDS was insane (most of the time involving Berry being a disgusting incel) Honestly, the general premise of the story and most plot points (while being a little "generic looking") is good, and has potential, its just the execution is painful. I think the most infuriating section of this game (other than the three hour interrogation) was the fact that they have the flashback of Jane being raped, and then LITERALLY NEXT ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SCENE in the dorm, they have Berry being like "oh my got shes taking off her hoodie im gon see jane breast!!" and "im sleeping in the same bed as jane what if this turn sexual!!" and its the most tasteless ♥♥♥♥. (I know it's not explicitly said she was raped, but its highly implied, especially after the "Looks like someone liked it." line from Andrew) Lastly, the visuals. Holy mother of god, even ignoring the ugly ass Vroid models, the dev seems to think posterizing a stock asset instantly makes it look like its in the artstyle, it does not. Every background is just a collage of stock images with basic photoshop effects and no concern for any sort of perspective. NITPICKS AND STUPID BS THAT DIDNT FIT UP THERE: - Would it kill you to add food to the plates, every time it would say "You haven't touched your food" and then show an empty plate was hilarious. - STOP ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ USING THE "omg its like were in a video game/movie/horror story" CLICHE ITS SO ANNOYING - This game should NOT be 1.6GB, like theres a three minute 31MB uncompressed wav file of rain sounds, 27MB of wind blowing, 20MB of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CRICKET SOUNDS, etc, along with every character sprite being 2/3 or more of empty space and it adds up fast. For reference, this VISUAL NOVEL is almost as large as BTD6. - The plot point of Berry stealing Apollos melanin is the funniest ♥♥♥♥ - The song "Smoov" which is like Janes main theme has a sample that sounds like Squidward falling off a building and we died every time it came on - The gap between showing Jane the killer with a knife, and Berry noticing said knife is 23 SENTENCES. - Murder and Manslaughter aren't the same thing, stop using them interchangably - Love when Apollo starts loredumping the Cold War - These people are starving to death, all they eat is one meat and a fruit each day, no wonder Jane is such a hungry bastard - The word "concrete" is said 45 times throughout the game - The word "promptly" is said 85 times throughout the game - The elevator doors are just solidcolor rectangles and its really bizarre

MATURE CONTENT WARNING: This game contains depictions of sexual assault. This is not listed in the content warning by the dev. I highly suggest the developer add this to the game's steam page. REVIEW: No Recollection is a game that is influenced by the Danganronpa series. In fact, the game has lifted direct plot points from the first two games so clearly and closely to the original source material that I would call them derivative. The story line in this game is ripped off at its best and egregiously offensive at its worst. On a high level, teenagers with no memory are trapped in a facility. They go about their daily lives of having lunch, playing video games, and trying to figure out what happened to put them in there. For me, there were two completely unbearable plot points that I feel someone who plays this needs to know before going into it. Firstly, there was a bad end where the entire joke of the end is "going to look at the computer without your cute gf means when you get there there is an extremely obese man (made in vroid so he looks atrocious) who kills you." There's no reason this exists except for the author to make fat jokes. Secondly, there is a character in the game who has most of her arc ripped from DR1. There's one change though: she was SAed. There was ZERO reason to have this character have to go through a brutal assault. Being assaulted shouldn't be the way you further a character's story, especially having SA make her into a killer. The most offensive side to this last part is that the protag learns this story and then almost immediately after, the character and the protag get in a situation where the protag is sexualizing the character. Like... why? What's the intent here? FINAL THOUGHTS: The developer clearly wanted to pay an homage to a series of games they really liked, but didn't understand what made those games good. They padded their story with thousands of extra words in order to make it feel like a full game, but those words were fat jokes, sexual assault, and picking bananas vs blueberries. I have a lot more gripes, but I don't want to nitpick and get lost in the weeds. I truly want to give props to the dev for making this. This was a LOT of work you did in order to create this game. But it's not a game I would recommend.

7/10 No Recollection is an average looking visual novel with a beautifully crafted story about solving a mystery. My takeaway: I truly loved playing and reading No Recollection; easily one of the best written free visual novels I’ve come across. It took me 12 hours to fully complete this title and while I was playing I couldn’t stop reading it. The achievements weren’t too hard and does a great job at rewarding the player to explore different endings. Very well done on the author's part but it is clear the creator isn’t an artist. The biggest gripe I have about No Recollection has to do with some unnecessary dialogue and the visuals as a whole. The game is just a little… ugly. I really hope this gets remastered at some point because I have a feeling it would be a lot more popular. The visuals took away from how well the story is written and pulls the player away from complete immersion. Sometimes the MC can be a little dense in visual novels and this isn’t an exception. There were moments where I felt like yelling at him to be more aware of the obvious but it wasn’t to the point where it became a problem BUT what was a problem is that he often commented on the same things over and over again to the point you’d believe yourself to be blind. Like if something is gray he will tell you it’s gray at least 7 times; part of me wants to replay this just to see how many times he feels the need to tell me the color of something in front of me but despite this increasingly annoying internal dialogue he has, it didn’t take away from the main story for me. The other characters were likable and the more I read the more I grew to like them and their flaws. [u]Pros[/u] [list] [*] Beautifully written. [*] Almost no spelling or grammar mistakes. I caught 2 in the 12 hours it took me to read it. [*] Unpredictable! I had theories while I played and almost all of them were wrong. [*] It touches very real topics in a sensitive way. It isn’t played for laughs or gags. [*] Multiple endings! [*] It did make me laugh and tense at times. [*] Music was fitting and the usage of sound effects also fit. [*] The game is HUGE. at 150k words it’s well worth looking into. [*] Achievements! [*] Can you believe it’s made by one person? Great job! [*] The foreshadowing was crazy. [/list] [u]Cons[/u] [list] [*] Just a wee bit ugly. [*] No trigger warning for some of the more sensitive themes in the story. [*] Just one love interest despite having almost all of the main cast feel like they could be love interests. [*] A few loose threads concerning random plot points like whether or not we need to eat but it isn’t important enough to make that much of a difference in my opinion. [/list] [spoiler] Despite being about government experiments I didn’t feel like the story was all that corny and generic. If anything some of the fourth wall breaking took away from that and feels extremely out of place in a story like this. [/spoiler] Theory: [spoiler] I normally never do theories so this is just a testament on how much I loved this title. At the very end there’s an optional epilogue regarding their futures. Jane and the MC end up, in one ending, living with a man named John Smith. John Smith takes them in after hearing their stories and related to them due to his son getting ‘locked away’ 6 years ago. This lines up with an extremely minor character named John Smith you come across living in the facility who was the first to be brought there for experimentation after committing arson. Seeing how Jane was there for presumably 2ish years it’s not impossible the first resident could be John the son. John Smith, the father, also states his son’s name is John which further backed up my assumption since John, the son, also had his last name listed as Smith.. I was really hoping that maybe this ties into a possible second story but maybe I was reading too much into it. [/spoiler] To see more reviews like this one come support me and follow this curating page! I’d really appreciate it! https://store.steampowered.com/curator/46085490-SumiSux-At-Games/

Una novela visual lo suficientemente intrigante como para engancharte y hacer que quieras ver el desenlace (personalmente me gustaron los finales). Está bien narrada, aunque se siente que la estiraron de mas, habiendo partes demasiado descriptivas, llegando casi a las 10 horas. Los gráficos son amateur (imágenes editadas para los fondos y capturas de modelos 3D para los personajes), pero para ser un juego gratuito safan.