
A deep and immersive narrative puzzle game.
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Languages: English**languages with full audio support
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Reviews
Themes across 40 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
A well-executed game whose primary mechanic will be family to players of Return of the Obra Dinn -- slot details into a list, with a check happening after five correct answers (instead of Obra Dinn's three correct answers). And for once, it seems to be an investigative game that isn't about murder! I will say that while the music is surprisingly good, the voice acting can be a little stilted and there is a disappointing quantity of typos for a game about writing a book... Still easily worth the price!
Rivals is a short (about 2.5 hours) long detective game about piecing together the events surrounding two fictional musicians. The music samples and voice recordings made me immersed into the time period and the events, which is the greatest achievement of this game. The bulk of the gameplay is about cross referencing dates, making notes and connecting separate events into a neat timeline. After all that the story opens up to be a very human story of two friends living their lives in each others shadows. I would easily recommend the game to any fans of detective games.
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Hours played at review time, across 40 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Rivals is the commercial follow-up to the freeware game Family. Both are puzzle games where you pour over letters, interviews, voicemails, and more first-hand sources to learn the story of fictional musicians, in this particular case focusing on the rivalry between two alternative country musicians. These games work similarly to Return of the Obra Dinn in that you won't know which details you've figured out correctly until you have correctly assigned a set of five dates and titles, giving you hints about which ones you have right and wrong while discouraging brute-forcing the answers. The story in this one is a bit more linear than in Family, but it's still a classic behind-the-music story, and it's no less enjoyable an investigation that its predecessor.
"That sitar belongs to Ravi Shankar....'s brother."
I did enjoy this game, though it took me a few minutes to figure it out. It was extremely short!
Perfect if you're in the mood for a short burst of not too challenging logic puzzles.
It's a must buy if you enjoy good detective puzzlers (Obra Dinn, Her Story) and/or good music! The game has two main things going for it: a sudoku-esque system where you deduce clues in various ways ranging from reading diary entries to listening to records and an intriguing, almost bitersweet story about the rivalry between different music currents in the late 90's / early 2000's. It's short, but well worth the price, especially since it has a more challenging new game plus mode with more puzzles, and you get cool music recommendations!
Played both this and https://owl-skip.itch.io/family in about 2 hours total. These 2 games are much easier to guess and brute-force than Obra Dinn simply because there are less permutations. I finished Rivals a lot faster than I maybe should of by juggling hints around and in the end I finished without reading the last few notes. I enjoyed how listening to the songs could give hints and that some answers could be found through googling facts and dates (especially in the NG+ bonus mode). Good stuff all around, if a little short (as expected from these types of puzzle games).
Much better than Conspiracy, you can really see the improvements made between games. Unique, compelling story with good voice acting as well. The new game plus mode was a fantastic addition that was really fun to play through. Great job Owlskip! :)
It's a fun puzzle game, isn't too long to complete but it is fulfilling
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