I used to be a huge fan of horror genre, I watched every horror film, no matter how good it was, read S.King's, Lovecraft's books... Now for so many years already I watch only anime xD Every ongoing, enjoying horror series as well if possible. So, frankly speaking, my expectations about this game were high, perhaps too high. I thought thoroughly and decided to choose a positive review but I'm not very excited about this novel, unfortunately.
My first impressions were quite favorable: enjoyable anime style art, tho chars' eyes seemed too huge. But you know, right now I recollected our Russian proverb--'fear has big eyes' meaning that fear makes you exaggerate the threat. And it suits the story perfectly xD Ok, forget about my complaint. Ahaha Art is amazing! Period xD
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2645786443
For the first time ever in settings I found the opportunity to choose Dyslexic font. I never referred myself to this category of people. I was very curious, so I even made some 'research': read online articles about advantages of such fonts. That was fascinating and educational. Just for that I'm grateful! I compared two options and enjoyed dyslexic font a lot! I wish all games had this feature.
So, thank you for:
+fully voiced visual novel \o/ Absolutely every voice was pleasant to hear. It always makes my playthroughs so much longer, as I read fast but always, even when replaying, I always listen to the voice actors till the end.
+25 endings for a short story is quite amazing! For a short setting there're so many scenarios of deaths. I can't help but applaud the writer's imagination!
+achievements. 'Steam is still learning about this game' tho, unfortunately. It means achs aren't shown in the profile yet. But anyway it always feels good to be rewarded for reaching every milestone.
+really many choices and enough save slots to be able to save in front of every choice in every playthrough.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2645699719
What I disliked:
--my main complaint—the 'spookiest' edition is not spooky, I mean at all :( I was impressed first with the option 'normal/less' gore. Buuut...nothing! I even wrote in 'bug discussion' thinking there must be something wrong with it. Seriously, I double checked replaying a scene with a crashed skull but there was absolutely no difference visually. So why? Why did I have to choose the gore mode absolutely every f time I started the game and, believe me, it happened very many times. I saved before every option replaying it later, it's not like there're 25 endings and it means a player will have 25 playthroughs, no! so many different choices lead to the same endings. So I was choosing 'normal' gore mode again and again and again and again (｀□′)╯┴┴ but...nothing changed. It soon began to feel like mockery:( I even thought that what the name of the game meant: expected some horror spooky story?! Ahahaha Not it! Far from it! “evil cackling”
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2645716602
One good thing tho, or maybe not so good xD but the game kindled the yearning in me to play something truly gore, something really spooky. I wonder if I have anything like this in my library or there's a similar novel I haven't bought yet. I need to play smth like this at the first opportunity.
Despite my complaint that the story is not scary, I still liked it. It's not the game's fault that I had different expectations, right? xD I expected some supernatural stuff, Halloween curse is mentioned on the store page, so it's not a spoiler. But the most interesting part was about people! Reminded me different social experiments. It was kinda fun to observe that group of people going crazy just because of illogical fear, paranoia and superstitions. Their calm reaction to deaths, corpses just because it's Halloween curse reminded me ppl's calm reaction to capital punishment, killing animals for food when there're so many other sources not including murders... we were told it's ok, it's allowed because... welp, it's law, it's tradition, we were said it's fine in such circumstances... It's kinda scarier than any ghosts, zombies, demons and other supernatural stuff.
--no steam guide yet. The game may be finished just in a couple of hours buuuut I was replaying every possible choice and it took more time than it should xD Tho I admit this challenging part felt also rewarding. I managed to do everything myself! It may seem stupid I'm so happy about that as the game is short but, you know, with so many choices the storyline splits up in so many paths and they split up in so many branches that it's easy to get lost.
--saw 2 typos, plus the written and pronounced texts differed slightly sometimes. Maybe it's nitpicking but ideally they should totally match, right?
--skipping is annoyingly long because every time the story ended I had to look at the sloooowly disappearing studio logo, soon I sincerely started to hate that street lantern, why, what for did you do that?! I couldn't even minimize the game and wait for the main menu to load, no! I had to watch that. Add that gore mode every time too. I think they gonna remain in my memory more than the story itself. So tedious :(
--no idea why but I had to double click often to proceed with the text, quite often the game didn't respond to my clicking at all.
So, the game is a nice read for a couple of hours, especially when the guide appears. Don't expect anything spooky. Or maybe it's just me xD Maybe I'm not that easy to frighten XD because seriously for me it was mainly a cute story with relaxing art-style. I still recommend to give it a try and see for yourself.
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[th]More thoughts about the game in a [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/readingnook/discussions/0/3164335875693965183/] Reading Nook [/url][/th]
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