Siren's Call: Escape Velocity

There's a lot of good and bad here, but given this is the developer's first big attempt at a visual novel, it's not surprising. I found the characters and setting to be very compelling, and you really do get to know all the characters, flaws and all. The background music is nice, and the sprites / background / CG do feel quite visually unique from other novels I've played through. The game has its fair share of spooky moments, and the developer definitely ramps up the tension. The rough areas are more in the UI and some gameplay features; it tends to feel a little gimmicky at times, notably the insight currency which I never spent at all. If you're looking for a short but solid narrative, this is an excellent choice. Spoilers for post-game: [spoiler]I also have a bit of a sour taste about the expectations set by chapter 1 (also seen in the demo). That chapter is very spooky at times, and is honestly what kept me playing. There's definitely many more spooky moments afterwards, but for it to all end up a melatonin induced dream is quite disappointing. Half way through the game I started theorising how perhaps this entire experience was a Siren induced delusion, where perhaps Violet / Judith was the Siren. Overall this feels like a story about a friend group having to say goodbye and learning to cope with that with horror elements to hook players in, rather than a horror experience like the demo led me to believe.[/spoiler]

Una novela visual muy intrigante y confusa en un inicio si no conectas los puntos generales de la historia, pero despues de jugar un rato le coges el ritmo, la novela es relativamente buena e intrigante, al momento de este reseña no eh terminado el juego pero por donde voy me da que creer que conocer mas de este juego sera una gran experiencia psdt: yo jugue la demo antes de que saliera el juego completo asi q ya tenia una idea de como seria el juego pero despues de comprarlo la historia principal mejoro increiblemente

10/10 absolute peaknacony, judith clears your favorite waifu \ in all seriousness, very compelling story with very strong foreshadowing elements all throughout. it took me and my friends theorizing about every potentially suspicious line of text for 11 hours while on the first playthrough to predict the flow of the game. even then, it was still filled with many twists that made the whole experience extremely enjoyable, and incredibly memorable, again, 10/10

Good ♥♥♥♥, denpa vibes that remind me most clearly of Harukuru, Spring has Come True (all ages version). Ignore the playtime, I just bought it on steam to support the dev. Solid recommend if you like moe-horror. Also, not an adult game despite steam apparently trying to classify the sequel as one (wtf). I'd be mad if I bought an "adult" game and there were no watermelons. Steam, get your act together.

Someday, i will write everything about how i feel about this game. But now? Thank you, Jacob. You already helped me changed my whole life with your beta version of the game, and i gained the courage i needed to reach Escape Velocity. Know i´ve grown as a person and in a bit more than a month i will be back to my personal Siren´s Call. But there are no lockers in highschool anymore, no more misunderstandings and i no longed NEED people. But i will come to my people because i learnt to begin from 0 and to move even when i was hella scared. And the new and final chapter? I love you. I love Violet and i love and understan Judith more than ever.

TL;DR Beta edition was good, this completed version is great. Story is endearing and engaging enough to make you somewhat invested in characters. Good elements of mystery and unnerving horror, also some though-provoking moments in regards to narrative and player choices. Replayability QoL and additional content encourage players to engage/explore the story a bit more after their first playthrough without being a chore, which is nice. Finally got around to playing it after buying it a while ago. It definitively feels more complete than the beta edition, which I thought was already engaging and interesting enough to warrant praise. Although the overarching plot remains mostly the same, I think the inclusion of some of the events, arts, and journal entries offers additional and important context, foreshadowing, and visualization that clearly upgrades the experience from the beta version. I'm not a literary expert, so I won't objectively analyze the story, but I think there's a lot that different people can at least somewhat resonate with, and the characters themselves generally seem worthy of some emotional investment. I don't recall if perspective shifts were used as frequently (or at all) in the beta edition of the game, but many of the scenes that were written from the perspective of different characters ended up being some of my personal favorites on my first playthrough. I think this contributed a lot to renew my enjoyment as someone kind of replaying the story of the beta edition. I'm not sure if I missed them in the beta version or if it's an addition, but Pages 26+ in the journal were also great reads that felt very rewarding as a player to receive. I think some of the new timeline menu and completion percentage breakdown are great QoL changes that definitely motivate me to 100% the game more than the beta edition. In addition, there seems to be some other stuff that was hinted at throughout the game and after the True Ending that looks quite appealing to dive into. I'm glad there is potential for a sequel, and I hope that game further explores more branching narratives with multiple endings now that the world of Siren's Call and its characters has been better established. Of course, I will also be looking forward to the continuation of the story in any form anyway. Great work!

Eu tenho um carinho especial por esse jogo pois o Siren's call base foi um dos primeiros jogos que joguei na steam. Quando eu vi que os devs iam lançar uma versão nova, mas paga, tive que vir apoiar pelo trabalho incrível no jogo original. Esse jogo é uma versão melhorada e com conteúdos extras da versão gratuita. As novas artes são maravilhosas, a melhoria das habilidades artísticas da equipe é notável e merece elogios. O conteúdo adicional da história é muito bom, tendo coisa nova pra se ver até pra quem jogou a versão base. A história é muito boa, os personagens tem personalidades e motivações realistas. É uma experiência que eu recomendo de verdade. Se você tiver em dúvida, jogue o Siren's call base, que é gratuito na steam!

I might not have left a review at all, but Steam has done The Steam Thing and flagged the sequel as having adult content (which it will not; Chaos;Head and The Expression Amrilato weren't safe from the mysteries of the Steam Inquisition either), so the team and writer deserve another thumbs up in the bank here. The spooky isn't as spooky as I'd hoped. While there are some good goosebump moments, this is more of a coming-of-age story mixed with a few visceral depictions of neurodivergent struggles and, more than jump-scares-and-monsters style horror, a lingering feeling of hair-raising "wrongness" that works as a good hook. There are moments throughout where a character lets a mask slip which I think might hit incredibly hard for certain readers, and I think a story that is clearly the story the writer wanted to tell is praiseworthy, even if it's not the story a mainstream audience might go for. In a world where so many games feel corporate, sanitized, or written by committee to appeal to focus groups, something *genuine* is always welcome, and the readers with which this story's themes resonate will likely find it to be a treasure. In addition the raw, authentic nature of the story, the foreshadowing is well executed. I have a screencap of a small detail and a seemingly important conversation that I saved as "Probably Nothing" and "Also Probably Nothing" which both turned out to be the exact sort of foreshadowing I expected. Sure, to an extent the foreshadowing's obvious, but it also feels natural. Rather than aggressively try to subvert expectations for the sake of it, the story gives you a couple breadcrumbs while also keeping you guessing by leaving a few red herrings to chase. Certain things are iffy - the pacing, for example, felt all at once rushed and too slow. It works well enough, though, and clearly the writer was aware of it. Just as I was pondering my feelings on how important events were going by too quickly and monologues were going on too long, the game directly acknowledged both points - there was direct mention of how weird it was that everyone had started monologuing and how the protagonist preferred writing poetry to narrative fiction because the latter requires too much setup work. I suppose I can give the cast a pass for delivering introspective essays as 18-year-old dialogue, especially because in-context there's more meaning to that, possibly on two layers, and because each cast member feels distinct and worth getting to know despite some occasional preaching or extended-literary-device-ing. My only REAL complaint with the writing is that I was getting cranky about the writer's overuse of bold+italics for emphasis on the words they felt were especially IMPORTANT, because light use of such emphasis can drive home an especially IMPACTFUL point but employing it FREQUENTLY, especially within a visual novel, can sometimes feel UNNATURAL, as I try to demonstrate with the use of caps here. Then, out of nowhere, the word "you" was bolded and italicized in a scenario where normally, the word "you" would have felt natural, as in my use of "gives you a couple breadcrumbs" or "keeping you guessing" above, but the bold+italics gave it a certain weight of implication that worked so well that I can forgive the writer's excessive fondness for thick slanted words. It's hard to say more than what I have without spoilers, and this is a story best experienced blind, but the game's definitely worth 10-15 hours of your time and $9 or whatever I paid for it on sale. Extra bonus points for the existence of Low-Level Florida Witches and some early dialogue that I can only assume is an attack on Persona 5. Small points deduction for one of the big twists being... well-foreshadowed but still inherently frustrating.

the music is peak big part of why i played

awesome