The Game of Fourtune

can't wait for Game of Fivetune

(Updated review at the bottom!) So I played the demo of this game on stream right before the game came out, and now I'm finally getting around to playing the game proper. I'm only maybe a fourth of the way through the game, but I have been enjoying it endlessly. Between the overall plot, the characters and their motivations, and the intrigue, it's really keeping me hooked on finding out just what the heck is going on with everyone. The one thing I worry about is the freedom of the routes in the full game. I feel like I'm appreciating the game really well because I was forced down a particular path when playing the demo, which felt like a good "starter" route for me, but with the full game being so free a player could go down a route that takes a lot of the intrigue out right away? Idk. In any case, if you like Visual novels, intrigue, and death games, you'll definitely love this game! <3 UPDATE: So I finished this game over the weekend and it was a real treat! All the characters are so interesting, and the final storyline(s) were so intense I didn't know what was going to happen! Everything ties up so well, and the epilogues are an extra great perk for people like me that are always hungering for more story. I listed my worries from above *right* before I hit a locked route, so I think they did well in that regard to make sure that we kept the mystery of some of the players. I did accidentally still go down the last route loop (and stopped myself before finishing that for cohesion), but maybe with the latest update it's locked? Along with the new update, can I just say how much I LOVED the indicator for missing CGs and Achievements??? That was so helpful because I really wasn't trying to guess and reremember where CG groups and games were, so thank you so much for that yall! In any case, great game, and good job to all the Devs for such an entertaining game!

I'm impressed with the length of this game for the price. I've played for about 30 hours and reached 6 of the 16 endings (at the time of editing this review, 10 endings in 49 hours). The plot and characterisations are quite well-done. The pacing of the plot is excellent; at no point did I really feel "bored". The flowchart system makes it very easy to navigate previous choices and go for specific endings. I like how each of the endings clearly builds towards a larger picture that leaves the reader always wanting to know more. If you like psychological thrillers, you'll probably enjoy this game a lot. (If you want to tell if it's your style, there's a free demo! It lets you go for two full endings so gives you a great idea what the game is like). 999 and Alice in Borderland fans will no doubt enjoy this too; plenty of references made to those here. Another interesting feature is that there are so many choices within the mini games (death games). I have tried replaying some of them out of curiosity, and some had two or three different variants with dialogue that revealed more background about the characters. It is impressive that the author added this attention to detail. I agree with some of the other reviewers that some endings give a lot of information on what will happen on other routes. There do seem to be a few routes that are locked until the end (I've encountered three so far), presumably to prevent major spoilers. I still enjoyed reading through all the routes regardless and seeing how things played out.

This game is nearly perfection to me. If you enjoy Zero Escape, Dangan Ronpa, Phoenix Wright, or any sort of character-driven mystery games, you’ll be in for an absolute treat. You won’t regret your time with this one. I was hooked from the very beginning with the fantastical death game setup, but what kept me going through this (very long) game was how animated and fleshed out the characters were (Ignore my hours played, I had to play in offline mode, but my playtime felt like it was over 100 hours). The main 16 characters all get a thorough amount of character development while also maintaining their own individuality which is something MANY games fail at with such a large cast. Even the side characters are fleshed out well. You’ll absolutely fall in love with multiple characters, and even the dislikable characters you’ll love to hate. One of the only downsides I found to the game is the multiple path selection. The game allows you to pick most paths from the start, which the freedom is great at first, but several of these paths spoil each other (or you can make a very educated guess what happens on another path). I’d just say, depending on your preferences, you might want to look up a route guide to play “in order” if this is something that could potentially bother you! For me, even if I felt spoiled, I still enjoyed going through the multiple paths for the characters alone, so it wasn’t a dealbreaker by any means. The art/UI/music are all great and help elevate the story even more. There are also a ton of different death games within the main death game, and it’s really fun to theorize what you’d do in the main character’s shoes. And while this game leans heavily on its influences and references, it absolutely feels like a unique story. The dev group is super responsive to any issues and they’re constantly making quality updates! When the game first came out, there were quite a few typos, but those were fixed very quickly. It’s really great how quick they are to fix anything and listen to any feedback. I can only hope they’ll make more games in the future!

Top tier game with sixteen amazing characters and an also amazing intertwined story that'll keep you engaged for hours on end!

This is a really well done visual novel that has a fairly unique take on the death game / branching timelines concept. Most of the characters are well done (Richard and Theresa in particular are consistently interesting and entertaining when they're on screen and have a number of really memorable moments), and the protagonist duo (who have genuinely different personalities and interact differently with the rest of the cast) is a clever way to both maintain narrative tension (in most branches one of the two dies, and sometimes quite early in the timeline) and just provide solid content. The basic story structure is that the game starts with 16 people alive, and they split into groups of four to go into a door where they play some form of game where the winner(s) move on and the loser(s) die. Then it's 12 people and 3 doors, and again 4 people die, until finally they reach the end where one single winner emerges from the final four. And every story node is a unique game, such as social deduction, trivia, physical challenges, gambling contests, and more. A few of them feel like they have really high stakes, even if as a player you're just selecting options on the screen. Overall it's just a really well executed story with great characters, solid dialogue, a story that makes sense, mysteries that get solved and then lead into more layers of mysteries, and a conclusion that wraps up most of the storylines while leaving clear room for a sequel or sequels. There are some quibbles I'd make: the graphics are inconsistent, some of the characters are weaker than others (Grant in particular is pretty much never interesting even when the story focuses on him), a couple of the games / story nodes weaker than others (I really didn't care for Evolution in particular), and the game really could have benefitted from more active gating (i.e. forcing players to finish at least most of the early story routes before going into the later story routes - if you select routes out of order, and the order isn't obvious, some of the dramatic tension can be lost). But for an indie game those are pretty minor critiques. Overall it's very high quality and I'm really looking forward to seeing the next chapter in this saga.

Okay I know other reviews said it was long, but I still wasn't entirely prepared for the length haha. I played offline on Steam Deck but I think my playtime reflected in the review is accurate. The game's characters had to grow on me but I started enjoying it more and more as I progressed through the routes. If you like meaty flowcharts, then you will have a blast. This death game is BIG. I really liked how everything came together at the end too! I thought it was very strongly written with very compelling characters. All in all it's a definite recommend if you already like the death game VN genre, and I even think it's good fun if you're not familiar with the genre yet :)

This was a very long ride, but in the end absolutely worth it. ~ I fell asleep playing this several times, but that's no fault of the game - I play late at night after work. Some parts of the game dragged a bit, could have benefitted from some additional skip patterns because occasionally some pieces of information would be repeated too much between sections. Overall the characters were interesting, the plot was reasonably enthralling and it was fairly light-hearted fun. In terms of cost-to-gameplay value, no question, excellent value. It felt like a labour of love. Seemed like there was more of this world that was thought out than w,e as players, got to experience. I wish I could see Bell and some of the other characters again in another VN! I would be VERY VERY hyped to see a sequel of some sort in the future!! Good Luck and Good Fourtune!

This has to be the longest visual novel I ever played, and I would overall say it mostly pays off at the end. There are 16 different routes and each of the routes are fully fleshed out and unique. The characters and the storytelling are mostly engaging, and even if at times it felt like the game was starting to drag on, it would find a way to pull you back in. There isn't any gameplay other than a few choices you can make however I found the choices could lead to interesting outcomes adding small variances in each individual route rather than just being a straight forward start to finish select the right answer to proceed type of story. I don't want to talk about the story or characters too much as I think the fun of this game is trying to figure out what is happening and learning more about each character along the way. One thing I do thing that can hurt your experience is that it is possible to get a route that essentially spoils a good amount of the mystery. I think that this specific route should have been blocked off as it is a 1/4 chance you get that run your first time. Other routes are progression locked so I have absolutely no idea why this one wasn't. Another thing to point out is the art style of this game is hit or miss. The sprite art doesn't match the CG art and sometimes the CG art doesn't match each other. One CG with have Laura with light hair and another CG will have her with dark hair. The Game of Fourtune is not a perfect game but it is a very ambitious experience that I do believe is worth not just your money but also your time.