Sometimes taking a chance on the rpgmaker games bin pays off.
This is one of those times.
Snares Of Ruin is an unexpected game. Its quality spikes are high, but its troughs aren't particularly low either. Honestly, the worst I could say about it, if I was genuinely trying, is that the tilesets look pretty rpgmaker-y, and occasionally that pulls me out of the action.
Everything else, however, pulls me back in.
Snares Of Ruin has you play as a detective in a fantasy-modern city, working alongside zombies, elves, vampires, etc to solve a complex case involving an epidemic. The world-building is surprisingly great, and the writing is mostly pretty solid, apart from a few awkward-feeling sentences and stiff characterizations.
Gameplay consists of walking from point to point, but also making critical decisions on how to approach problems and what to do with your spare time. There's even some Phoenix Wright style detective work, and a fairly limited economy where you can get cash from perfecting cases, and spend it on a variety of opportunities that can change your stats and the outcome of your mission.
You have three stats, Athletics, Erudition, and Charisma, and you get points to invest in them pretty frequently. Unfortunately, there's no real yardstick for how much is the right amount to pass checks, so I'm just going to tell you outright. Pick two to focus on, and don't take anything higher than twelve. Each stat is good, but Erudition punches a little bit outside of its weight-class by letting you pick up more stat boosts and knowledge unlocks (and even a twist to the final confrontation) via books in the city library.
Combat exists, but it's done through making decisions and using stats. Similarly, damage can happen, but what it does is impose a penalty on your stats.
Executed poorly, I think this would still be a decent design, but Snares executes it pretty well, and it left me feeling a bit like I was playing a very, very off-brand Deux Ex.
Snares has some dating-sim elements, although it's probably fairer to compare them to Mass Effect, since you get a good chance to know every character without being stuck in anyone's route. None of the datable characters' characterization is *super* deep, but nothing's unforgivably shallow either. You do spend more time with some characters than others (there's one who's not even in the title picture who shows up pretty late), but this didn't really bother me. Granted, I stayed professional and dated no one, so your mileage may vary.
Overall, I'd recommend Snares.
It's not perfect by any measure, but it's way better than I was expecting. It does have a short runtime (my playthrough is reflective of an average game clear) but it doesn't feel rushed, and there's apparently a prequel and sequel to follow it up with.
If you like diving into the rpgmaker bin, and if you prioritize decision-making and storytelling over combat, there's a lot of potential here and some decent fun.
Edit: I just looked at my achievements, and apparently the game does a pretty significant amount of branching. I think I got the best ending, but there seems to be a *lot* you can do to end up in a different position by the endgame.
2nd Edit: Snares of Ruin has its own song that plays over the end credits, and there wasn't a good place to mention this in the review itself, but the song seems to have been written for Snares specifically, and it references game mechanics in the lyrics. It tries maybe *slightly* too hard, but it's an impressive amount of extra effort to write and record a song for an rpgmaker game, and I think it's genuinely cool the devs went the extra mile.
