[i]The Thing From Nowhere[/i] is a short visual novel paying homage to classic 1950s era creature feature B movies, where we get to play the part of either Miss or Mr Sam Booker (selectable from within an early stage conversation), returning to the small Alaskan town of Joy following mail received from June, a town resident and friend.
Sam's previous visit, with cryptozoologist parents during childhood, had raised interest in the Inuit legendary Qalupalik monster, and upon receiving a report of a sighting along with other, seemingly corroborative writings, (s)he is keen to return and investigate personally.
This leads the player into a nicely realised 1950s small Alaskan town with townsfolk ranging from friendly to suspicious to completely disbelieving that there could be a threat to life lurking in the nearby wilds.
It is up to Sam to prove that the monster – or whatever else it may be – is out there, to find evidence, and possibly even bring a stop to it.
[h1]Positives[/h1]
Choosing your gender in the early intro conversation results in your character being addressed accordingly through the game. As the MC is not depicted visually, this works nicely.
Both graphics and sound score very highly. The audio is befitting of the time and enhances the atmosphere nicely. Backdrops are excellent and carry most of the burden in comfortably justifying the very low price for the game.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3759116849
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3759118510
The story is concise, allowing just enough narrative to give personalities to the characters and to create an atmosphere within which the short story sits comfortably without the need for any filler.
There are a few choices along the way which, although they do not ultimately change the outcome – do provide some alternative scenes, with new characters and locations to see. The extra backdrops are certainly worth the view, so there's a little additional value in quickly replaying (or saving at choices, there are plenty of save slots) to take different options for the extra material available.
[h1]Negatives[/h1]
The novel is also loaded with “non-choices”, in other words, pauses while the reader is presented with ONE option in order to continue the story. This is completely unnecessary and serves as a means to require a click for the sake of it. It may not matter [i]much[/i] on first play through, but it certainly becomes an irritant when re-running for alternative scenes.
There is no backstep, so if you accidentally miss a caption, your only recourse is the history log. In fairness, this works perfectly and is fine for purpose; but if you like to backstep to try another choice, what you're going to get for rolling your mousewheel or sliding yout trackpad is this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3759117332
A static “clock face” type icon which sits in the middle of the screen and inhibits functionality. It is not possible to go back to an option once you have made a choice, unless you have saved ahead of it.
Curiously, I experienced this [b]exact[/b] issue when playing the spicy otome [i]Bunny Bond[/i], and what makes this a point of interest is that both games were created using Unity in 2023. Maybe this is a unique-to-Unity problem, or even just for the version of it which was current at the time? If anybody knows the answer to this, please leave a comment under this review to that effect.
In [i]The Thing From Nowhere[/i], if you accidentally trigger this situation, you can get out of it by saving where you are, backing out to the main menu, and reloading your save. The game will continue as normal without the icon still front and centre.
Loading a saved game is a little odd, in that instead of restarting exactly where you left off (if at a player choice, where I saved exclusively), your loaded position returns you to a couple of captions earlier. Not a deal breaker, but, strange.
[h1]Experience and verdict[/h1]
My initial play through was between two and two-and-a-half hours, and I found the story quite enjoyable and unchallenging, making it an ideal free evening filler. Its consistency of portrayal of the time, location, characters and attitudes is almost as big a plus as the quality of supporting graphics,
There are a few, very small, typos scattered here and there, though not sufficient to be off-putting. I'd raise the spectre of the one negative review on Steam currently present in order to point out that what is given as an example of text quality there [i]is not representative of the overall quality at all[/i]. I am known for being demanding of the English standard in published literature. If you're still reading this and I assure you that the text is plenty good enough, then that [b]is[/b] all the assurance you should need.
I did find in a second quick run through that some of the later sequences did not identify as previously read, so the skip refused to operate as expected, which was a minor annoyance, but again, not enough to be a deal breaker.
I don't know what this “Amiga It Came From the Desert” was, so there may be some obvious comparison missing here, but for a brief visual novel with an entertaining and era-appropriate story, [i]The Thing From Nowhere[/i] performs perfectly adequately, so if you like some B-movie sci-fi in your visual novels and don't bristle at the absence of Steam achievements, there is easily fair value to be found here.
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