The Outcast Lovers

The game is maybe not even worth to be called a game. But it sure is an experiance. It forces you to a difficult decision, makes way for the next game. Plus its ♥♥♥♥♥♥ free people. Just try it.

Happy new year! - Feliz año nuevo! ╗╔╗─────────╔═╦╗─────╔═╦╗★✫★✫★✫★✫★ ║╚╝╠═╗╔═╦═╦╦╗║║║╠═╦╦╦╗╚╗║╠═╦═╗╔╦╗★✫★ ║╔╗║╬╚╣╬║╬║║║║║║║╩╣║║║╔╩╗║╩╣╬╚╣╔╝★✫★ ╚╝╚╩══╣╔╣╔╬╗║╚╩═╩═╩══╝╚══╩═╩══╩╝¸¸★✫★ ──────╚╝╚╝╚═╝★✫★✫★✫★•• 2021 ••✫★✫★✫

i had a wonderful time playing this! ;)

☀️

oh yeah? fook yeah

Trochę płaskie, ale sądząc po polaryzacji reakcji - potrzebne.

2020 était une année étrange qui a détruit beaucoup d'espoirs mais aussi engendré pas mal de nouveaux projets. Parmi ces projets il y a ce duo de développeurs qui signent "Far Few Giants" et promettait une courte fiction interactive par mois. Six ans plus tard on est loin du compte, c'était un projet de confinement après tout. The Outcast Lovers est le deuxième de cette série. Le graphisme y est du même ordre que dans The Night Fisherman, avec une palette qui est un choix artistique franc et qui bénéficie ici du soutien d'une musique vraiment bonne. C'est plus long, il y a plus de dialogue, ce n'est pas une scène célèbre réchauffée sans la moindre épice supplémentaire ; a priori ça a ses chances d'être une réussite. Ce n'est pas une réussite pour une raison qu'on sentait déjà dans The Night Fisherman : le duo Far Few Giants sait montrer des choses, mais ne sait pas du tout raconter des choses. La subtilité c'est pour les autres ; ici vivent les dialogues improbables qui font de l'exposition à la truelle, les faux choix dont on sent d'emblée qu'ils sont faux, et le déroulement narratif qu'on sent venir avec toute la finesse et la délicatesse d'un train de marchandises. C'est simple : l'écriture est tellement premier degré qu'elle en devient insultante. Un autre raté, dommage.

"The Outcast Lovers" is not a game, it's an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game. This garbage tier e-book differs from almost every other e-book on Steam, in that it is not about the authors imaginary anime girlfriend/waifu. Instead, this is a CYOA book about finding a refugee and deciding what politically should be done with refugees, which basically positions this as an e-book pushing political propaganda... certainly about as far from being a game, and as far from being an enjoyable experience for gamers as you could get. It's worth mentioning that this e-book "experience" features some animation and the ability to "look around" various scenes... but none of this changes the operative and crucial fact that there are no gameplay loops and that this cannot be "played" in the same way real games can be, it's a book that you read through, it's just that the interface for doing this reading is much worse than a book store paperback. And it's a "CYOA", but nobody ever read a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure and said "Wow, what a great game I just played". Whether we may or may not agree with the cause, it's my firm belief that politics of any kind has no place in gaming. It does no service to gamers at all for political or social agenda to be shoved down our throats, no matter which side is doing the shoving. We're here to have fun, not get indoctrinated. Because the primary purpose of this product is totally unrelated to gaming, this really just makes gaming worse, and does nothing to further the developers political crusade. This is one of those things that gives amateur developers such a bad name. Visual novels/e-books are tedious at best... imagine the best novel you ever read, be that Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Twilight (if you have terrible taste in literature), but then translate that to a format where the words dribble out and you have to click your mouse every time you wanted to read the next sentence, instead of just turning the pages. You'd think it was garbage. Now imagine that experience, but with much worse writing (because if these guys could write professionally, they'd be published authors and this would be on shelves in bookstores, and they wouldn't have to pay Valve $100 to self-publish this on Steam), and you have your average Steam e-book. One of the chief problems with failed authors polluting Steam with non-game E-books is that E-books can easily just be presented in a web browser... there's no justification for charging money on Steam for what might as well be a webpage. We don't spend thousands on buying a gaming rig to spend money on Steam for something Chrome or Firefox could do. Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the e-book peaked at only 7 concurrent readers... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. The funny thing is, if you wanted to print this book, you'd only need to print 7 copies to satisfy the entire world's demand for it. While this E-book is "free", you can get better quality, professionally written books and comics for free online (from places like Project Gutenberg) or from public libraries. Steam isn't a comic book store, neither is it Netflix, it's for games. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle. It's impossible for me to recommend things to PC gamers that aren't really games.