tia.sav

Neat little game that I'm sorry hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserves. It's sort of similar to The Hex in that you experience several different game genres -- although I do enjoy the simplicity and sweetness of this story a bit more. The opening of the game takes ~30 minutes with very little (no?) gameplay so I was starting to think this was a short visual novel that I'd be done with in under an hour. However, it turned out to be much more fleshed out than I was expecting, which was both a positive and a negative. Just like The Hex, it's neat to play different genres within a single game, but also like The Hex, when a game offers a variety of styles, it doesn't exactly specialize in any of them, and they sometimes begin to drag when you're about halfway through each of them. One feature I've enjoyed is having your character work to earn money so he can buy video games, heroes, items, and summons from the game store -- and then the stuff he buys can be used across each of the video games he plays, with the heroes retaining their levels and the items remaining in your inventory across each game. I definitely recommend this game, but with the caveat that some of the mini-games might play out for a little longer than might feel natural. Update (3/1/22): I retract what I said above about "sweetness" -- this game has some gruesome horror and some kid-on-adult assault. Last comment to go along with what I said before -- While I enjoy each of the side games to varying degrees, I think the reason they drag is because they're not advancing the actual plot of the game. I suppose you're getting some perspective about the main character's state of mind, but it's mostly stuff you can deduce from his interactions in real life. Again, I really enjoy this game, but if the minigames were shorter, or if there was a way to incorporate them as sort of side missions, or even if they somehow advanced the actual plot of the game while you're in them, I think the overall experience would be more solid. Update (1/27/23): After completing the game, most of my opinions still hold, but I wanted to mention that the ending was really touching. I'm glad to have played through to the end. Great game, devs!