Siren's Call: Escape Velocity

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.