The Game of Fourtune is stunning. The review count being at 100% positive is no mistake. I want to go into all I love and a few nitpicks in this review because it deserves an in depth honest look that hopefully can sell some more people on the game. NOTE: I originally played this after buying on itch and loved it enough to buy on Steam as well, my actual playtime is well past 100 hours with a little over 80 hours for 1 playthough.
Plot: The Game of Fourtune takes a base of "characters forced to play random games with deadly consequences" and squeezes tons of value out of it. There's a huge variety from action scenes, to puzzles, to trivia games with lore reveals, to normal games turned deadly, to drama setups. With direct references to things like Kaiji and Mario Party within this, that matchup describes this well. You have a constant loop of "plot setup and info, death game, character backstory or plot reveal, death game, serious plot forwarding scenes, repeat". Early on you are engaged because of the constant foreshadowing and intrigue and worldbuilding, and later on you are really hyped to get the last few pieces of the puzzle and finally get to see what it's all leading to in the finale arc.
Writing: Naturally the writing is one of the most important aspects of a visual novel, and The Game of Fourtune nails it. The death scenes are constant, the tone is kept light enough with lots of dark comedy, the emotional moments hit the right chords, the horror is scary, the action is intense, and there's even romance mixed in. You WILL have to make some hard choices to get onto certain routes, and the game knows how to make you feel like a monster for it. The characters all feel distinct and have their own goals and personalities, and the way the game matches characters up in different groups with different "games" gives them all many chances to shine and feel like actual people bouncing off each other and not just a list of tropes. The few characters I was iffy on at first grew on me fast especially when learning their backstories.
Choices: This is where the game shines brightest. More than 50 "death games" across 16 routes with hundreds of tiny "bad end" stubs and thousands of choice options. Let me paint a picture of 1 "game" that made me realize how deep this goes: The characters are forced to play deadly "Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes", but each of you will be given a disability: blind, deaf, or mute. Most games would just give you 1 of these, this game lets you personally pick 1 which gives 3 distinct puzzle sets. If you are deaf, you get no dialogue and puzzles based on picking up on visual cues through narration text. If you are mute, it's a puzzle about conveying the right info without giving room to be misunderstood. If you are blind, you can't see the bomb CG and have to pay close attention to dialogue to nitpick inconsistencies. All 3 variants give you 4 "puzzles" (of which you need to solve 3 to survive) and you can mess up any of them, so there are dozens of scene variants. The amount of content if you want to see it all is staggering. Thanks to the flowchart scene descriptions and character reference sheet it never becomes overwhelming either.
Structure: I want a full section to talk about this because the game does this quite well for how unique the setup is. Your 1st route is going to be a bit wild as you're going in blind, but the more routes you complete the more you will understand both the characters and plot. The game locks off a few routes early on to avoid you getting too many frontloaded spoilers, but every character has a route associated with them that delves into their personal circumstances, so you never really encounter a route that adds nothing to the overall plot and narrative. While this game does have fantasy elements, it doesn't rely on them as asspulls and does a great job of worldbuilding and explaining the aspects it needs to in order for the plot to have weight and meaning.
Art: This is the weakest point for the game by far. I don't think the art is bad, in fact I love the sprites and backgrounds, but there are a few different CG artists and their styles are not cohesive. In particular one artist seems to get the animal scenes because their art of the animals is detailed and great, but when they draw humans they always have angular thick features, which just looks off-model compared to the rest of the art. There's also a minor nitpick I have with character sprites holding props, which I'm guessing is a lazy way to convey who the character is just by looking at them. For example the skateboarder sprite sometimes holds a skateboard that doesn't actually exist and never comes up in the story, despite how useful it would be to have one. I have to give the game credit for having a ton of art, but can't help but feel that part of the reason the visibility for the game is so low is that a glance at the steam previews is enough to tell the game isn't consistent with the CG art.
Misc notes: The music is pretty good, it fits the tone and never hurts a scene, but I wouldn't give it heaps of praise like I do the writing. Feature-wise the game respects player time well, the game is extremely long but the flow chart lets you jump to scenes and makes going down alternate paths easy. The flowchart will mark which scenes you need to revisit to earn CGs and achievements so you never tear your hair out. It has all of the basic features you'd want in a visual novel like a backlog, CG gallery, music player, ect.
TLDR: This is worth experiencing for yourself. The variety of the individual game scenes is fantastic, the plot and characters and twists are done extremely well, despite minor flaws this is one of the best in the genre at telling a compelling story with good consistent pacing. If the steam preview screenshots aren't a complete turnoff, you won't regret buying this!
