The Fernweh Saga: Book One

Very good writing. Interesting plot. Look forward to what the sequel has in store for the characters.

I wasn't sure about this game to begin with: soooo many choices, and did they make a difference? This time they did! I've only been down the one LI path, twice, and each time a lot has been revealed. As you can see from my time, there is a fair bit of reading, though the 18 hours does include time I forgot to shut down the computer for a short while. If you want mystery and a slow build up of horror and a bit of yuck factor, then this series of books (provided they are written) looks as if it will provide it, with some love interest thrown in, though whether the characters are friends or frenemies has yet to be revealed and I have no idea if the LI has to be of the opposite sex. Its certainly a solid start, plenty of reading, lore to absorb and calculate, and lots of choices that can reveal important facts to be considered, and if the rest of the books the author has planned are written, it should be good series and well worth reading or keeping an eye on. The story ends on a cliff-hanger, but this first episode is more or less neatly finished off, even if it was very predictable and is well worth playing. I don't normally like following a series as often they are not finished or tend to get a bit wordy without the plot advancing, but I look forward to the rest of this series, it has great potential!

Amazing story and very detailed characters which I can't get enough of! The writing is very concise and the author does a great job of setting the eerie mood! 10/10, can't wait for book 2. Make sure to support the author on Patreon if you can @ Lacuna Fiction! ❤

I didn't want to play it because it's only Book One of idk how many, so I simply wanted to check it out briefly. That "simply checking it out" turned into 20hours for a single run and I'm obsessed.

Cute. It's a little like Vampire Chronicles (if you've read that) in the way that it sets you up for the following books, but it's self contained enough to feel satisfying. Romances (5ish options & you can choose any gender for them) are just budding, but it's fine since it adds realism - this all happens over the course of a few days so it would've been jarring to have fully developed romances. The author planted little seeds here and there of subtle details regarding choices you make, though you can't really tell unless you play several times. For example, halfway through the story, one character mentions drawing on your hand something relating to the room you choose to sleep in at the start (even though they're not supposed to know that). Pretty cool. Stat-wise I must admit it wasn't always very clear to me what stat my choices were supposed to be based on, though most of the time it's quit obvious.

This CYOA is pretty good, has a good atmosphere and the characters are written well and made distinct. Definitely recommend it however there are a few issues, I'll try to keep it spoiler free to detail some. 1. The pacing is VERY slow to start, the first 10 or so chapters take a while to build up to the moment and this may turn people off from it because of that. It tries to keep things interesting but at times it feels like you set out to do something and achieve nothing. 2. The latter half of the story goes way too fast, its weird its either one extreme or the other. But the last few chapters feel very rushed, like the creator had a time limit and was quickly running out so churned out the finale as fast as possible. It really hurts it, especially during the big fight scene as the characters do not seem at all perturbed by what is going on even when an enemy is charging them. Seriously they stand there and talk for an unusual amount of time as though they are under no threat and then just walk off. Its really weird and jarring. There's no build up either it just sorta...appears. 3. The 600k words feel less than that, a lot of the writing looks copy pasted with very little variations in them, not all of them mind but enough to notice. For example one lot of choices have the same paragraph with one word/sentence changed or added, but a majority of the text is the same. Its a little weird as they could've had it set differently so the additional text that's added because of a stat or choice could've been put into a variable to show it with the paragraphs rather than having the ENTIRE paragraph copied into the choice to just have the additional text in it. But because its done the other way it feels like artificially adding up the word limit to make it bigger. 4. Spoiler territory so I'm gonna use the words the game uses to keep it vague enough. So you have these 'Skills' that you choose at one point in chapter 6 or so that dictates what you main 'Skill' is. Then when a scene comes up the 'Skill' comes into play. You know how many times that skill comes up? Once. Yep, only one time in the entire game as far as I can tell. You'd think something this important would come up frequently, even if it doesn't add much but nope. It feels like its just set up for the later games but it really needed more here, like maybe at the start it has the different skills show up in minor ways, to give a glimpse of them. So when chapter 6 comes up the player is like 'Ohhh so that's why that happened!'. I can only hope the next book uses them a lot more. Now in spite of these negatives I still really like this game, I'm just frustrated that it could've been great if a little more care or time was put into it to really get it going. The latter half really dampens the experience but I still can't wait to try the next book, which I hope has things refined and amped up. Especially considering as not much was explained in this one and everyone seems perfectly fine with what they do come across even though its a completely alien concept. Regardless I do recommend this game. Overall score: 8/10

It's a great story, very well written. The characters have quite a bit of depth as well, so much so it's impossible to completely understand them with just one book. I very much look forward to eventually reading book two.

非常优秀的文字游戏，剧情张弛有度，并且很多选择都会有后文，不再只是单纯的喜好测试，我对这一点特别满意（看到剧情中有对衣品和瞳色的描述点评真的非常惊喜），几个可攻略角色的性格特点也挺鲜明的。有很多谜团尚未解开，衷心期待第二部作品。

A weird mystery tale, are you in a loop in a village where you've inherited your gramps' home? Are you an inheritor of strange powers? And who do you want to date, anyway? It's tropealicious for the genre, but fun and well written.

I'm gonna start off by saying I can be a little picky when it comes to IF games, if only because I'm picky when it comes to books in general. the prose needs to slap, the characters need to be unique but not fit trope-y archetypes, and the setting/world needs to feel lived in. that being said, Fernweh scratched all of those itches in a wonderful blend of small town horror meets found family. There's a lot of flexibility when it comes to the approach of romance and relationships -- you can choose the genders of the other characters as you play, and there is even a poly route. This was one of the few IF games that has stuck with me for awhile even after playing it, and I've been chasing the same high ever since lol. I recently signed up for Aelsa's Patreon and am eagerly reading my way through the alpha build of book two. Definitely a game I would recommend to fans of IF.