This free to play visual novel with adventure and roleplaying game (RPG) elements by NLB project features two short stories in Am I a Monster and Return of Red Riding Hood, New Adventures. In Am I a Monster, it features an unnamed male protagonist who has suddenly turned into a wolf and is hunted by fearful townspeople and police officers. The protagonist (the player) must decide what to kill and to eat as he gradually becomes more attuned as a wolf or retains his human form.
In Return of Red Riding Hood, New Adventures, it continues with a parody of the classic children's fairy tale where the mother of the same unnamed girl in NLB project's earlier game Return of Red Riding Hood Enhanced Edition tries to tell a bedtime story of Little Red Riding Hood to her daughter to get her to sleep at night.
As a young teenage girl Little Red Riding Hood, she lives with her mother and receives a task by her mother to gather ingredients to make a basket of sorrel, ham or cottage cheese pastries to deliver to her grandmother who is a forester and lives alone in a cottage inside a forest. After making the pastries, the game will transition to the visual novel part of the game where Red Riding Hood or her mother will deliver the pastries to their grandmother and encounter Wolf and/or woodcutters along the way.
Having played this game for over an hour to get all endings and achievements, the RPG elements in Am I a Monster is a highlight of this short story where the ending and a few encounters will turn out differently depending on whether the protagonist becomes more attuned as a wolf or not.
In Return of Red Riding Hood, New Adventures, the funny and imaginative scriptwriting in this short story is the main highlight of this entire free to play game by itself. It retains the same amount of comedic humour from Return of Red Riding Hood Enhanced Edition that can be ridiculous and funny. Having played the earlier game Return of Red Riding Hood Enhanced Edition, there are less tragic endings this time, possibly because the mother knows better how to get the girl to sleep without making her cry, unlike the girl's brother. As such, I have also decided to shorten the Big Bad Wolf to just Wolf as there are fewer bad endings involving Wolf actually devouring Little Red Riding Hood or any member of her family.
All the endings and achievements are easy to obtain where a published community guide is available at the time of this review. Hope this game will have a higher confidence metric in future.
Among the cons, in Am I a Monster, it feels too short and doesn't give enough variety in the form of having more differences between being more attuned as a wolf or as a human being. This leads to a bit of wasted potential as an RPG which could possibly keep readers interested in the game longer. When comparing the number of endings in Am I a Monster with Return of Red Riding Hood, New Adventures, the former has much fewer plot branches and endings. The plot and storyline is still interesting enough to read through in any case. In Return of Red Riding Hood, New Adventures, due to the large number of plot branches and endings, the short story only has 5 save slots available, it would be nice to have more save slots for this game or short story.
Recommended as a free to play game with nice artwork, classical background music and for those who like a short visual novel featuring wolves in two short stories, one of which contains many comedic twists to the classic fairy tale.
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