Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest

I really wanted to like this game, but I can't. I’ve had many great moments with the Werewolf: The Apocalypse tabletop RPG, but this game doesn't come close to those past experiences. Let’s be clear: I have no issue with the "eco-warriors vs. corporate greed" cliché – that’s the DNA of W:tA. I also genuinely appreciated the setting. Placing the story in the village of Białowieża, amidst the ancient, primordial forest of Poland, was a brilliant move that promised a unique, local atmosphere. The plot features some strong, gripping scenes, and the branching narrative genuinely respects player agency; your choices and World of Darkness stats significantly impact the story's direction. However, I felt the game consistently nudges the player toward aggression and combat rather than peaceful solutions (a pattern I noticed even after multiple playthroughs). While the mystical visions are visually stunning, the rest of the narrative is riddled with tired tropes. The biggest letdown, however, is the writing. The developers are painfully clumsy and crude when delivering their political message (yes, "literally Hitler" is used as a conclusive argument in a discussion). The portrayal of the local community is particularly jarring. Every resident is depicted as either bigoted, greedy, or dishonest. This one-dimensional caricature feels like a form of liberal condescension, where the provincial setting is treated with nothing but disdain rather than any real nuance. On a positive note, the game remains very faithful to the World of Darkness lore – I managed to find only one non-canonical intrusion: the "Vanir's Wrath" tribe (what is that supposed to be?). Most NPCs are bland and one-dimensional. There are two pack leaders – one aggressive, one peaceful – and other members with unique biographies, but they don't particularly stand out. Even your traveling companion feels like hollow cardboard cutout. Some illustrations are great, especially those depicting mystical visions, but the images representing social situations are a bit repetitive. The music and ambience are excellent, with the exception of a terrible closing song that reminds me of the worst 90s hard rock. Final Verdict: You can easily find something similar and much better.

After 4 hours of playing I felt like I was finally getting to something worth playing, but instead the game was over. Complete waste of my time. As a fan of WoD I'm incredibly disappointed to never actually play anything interesting in this game.

- dialogue feels like it was written by 12 year olds - you can't choose your tribe - characters are very uninteresting

If you like Visual Novels with character sheets and choices what matters, like on tabletop games, you definitely have to play this one. I would claim this game as an mystical horror game which has a very surprising and very good written story. Because your choice matters you have to play it several times for sure.^^ I also can tell that i love the very immersive sound effects. The developers itself are from poland not necessary to know, just wanted to mention it.^^ I think this country has a lot of good developers. :3 Sooo dont waste your time! Buy the game and start your adventure! :3

VERY GOOD RAUUUUUUUUU

This game was played in its entirety on a MacBook Air M1 8gb ram 7c gpu running MacOS Sonoma. There were no bugs or crashes throughout my time with the game. All achievements unlocked at their appropriate times. This is a fantastic visual novel (or perhaps choose your own adventure is more apt). The story takes place over the course of three days in the real-life Polish location of Białowieża and references factual events that happened there in 2016 (the non-supernatural parts, of course). Since most of any player's experience here will be reading, I'll focus most of the review on that. It's outstanding. It's extremely well-written and compelling. It pulls you in and demands that you turn the next page. The prose is excellent and displays a mastery of the craft that I have not encountered before in the visual novel medium. It greatly helps that there are almost no errors in the entire text (though I can't be certain I have seen it all). I counted only five spelling and grammatical errors throughout, and they did not detract from the experience. The game uses a decent amount of Polish in the game, but the text has a great hypertext system where anything of note (including all of the Polish words) can be selected with a pop-up and detailed explanation. Depending on your choices, the path you will take can be *wildly* different from run to run. And that difference is noted in the text. Even similar scenes will be written very differently based on how you arrived there, with varying emotions, people, actions, and consequences taking place. The prose follows along too: it can be whimsical, intense, scared, casual, or all of the above, as the situation requires. The artwork is similarly outstanding. The characters are (I believe) actual people that are rotoscoped into the game. I can't tell if the backgrounds are painted, computer graphics, or similarly rotoscoped. But they are all gorgeous, and sometimes grotesque. The audio is just spectacular here. It is, I assume, mostly of Polish influence, and it frequently tends towards a melancholy tone. There are also two full-fledged songs in here, and they are both fantastic. One minor nitpick is that, even if the game is muted, the songs will still play. The choices you will be asked to make are a bit different from most other games of this type that I have played. We're probably all familiar with the fact that, regardless of our choice, the character doesn't do "exactly" what we've chosen, but we are merely a guiding hand. Still, in most games, the choices are fairly straightforward and action oriented. Here, however, your choices are which of Maia's thoughts will come to the forefront of her mind. It's a unique approach and I really enjoyed it. You can't really be sure how Maia will react, based on the thought you have chosen, but you generally choose it because it's how you would feel (or how the character you're currently playing would feel) in that exact instance. I want to see more games use choices in this manner. The story itself is intimate and contained. It's fairly short (both in time: three days, and also in reading length: a few hours), but it accomplishes much. There are a few set pieces which you are forced to hit regardless of your choices, but the way those set pieces play out can be quite altered. It took me six play throughs to get all of the achievements, and in my final run, I thought I would be familiar with most of the characters, settings, and situations in the game. To my utter shock, I encountered NEW characters and new artwork, and solved things in a completely different way this time. I have no idea how much of the game I have not seen yet. That neatly leads into really the only negative: The quality of life features for the game are not the best. You have some good options (including a font change thankfully, as I did not care for their default), but you're missing quite a lot. Most jarringly, a game where so many choices must be made has almost no save system to speak of. The game autosaves with every location change, but other than that you have no control over it. You CANNOT make manual saves in this game. Nor can you load anything other than the autosave. It seems strange, and I do wish we had an actual save system here, as it would have allowed me to try even crazier things in the game. I'm sure you can make backups and swap them around ad nauseum but I did not want to make that effort, and I was happy just running through the game and making my choices. Some of the achievements seem very difficult to get, as you might have to perform actions that seem counterintuitive to the achievement's goal. Still, that's pretty accurate to life too, so I won't complain! Thanks for reading this far. If you did read this far, you probably like reading, and I highly recommend this game to you!

A group of one-dimensional they/them hipster protestors argue about the best way to protest the deforestation of an ancient wood while the main character flounders around trying to untangle her mysterious family tree and the weird dreams she keeps having. I do like that your choices sort of create your character sheet as you go, but I'm like halfway through the story and the MC still doesn't know that shifters exist, let alone that she is one. Dropping.

Унылая графомания.

I only launched this because I had some time to kill. Turns out, it was one of the nicest surprises I've had in a while. It's short, but the story is compelling enough to keep you invested from beginning to end. The gamebook format works beautifully, the art direction is gorgeous, and the soundtrack deserves a special mention—especially the song during the credits. And then I discovered that parts of the story were inspired by real events. Well... that hit a little harder than I expected.

it was my first entry to World of Darkness visual novels. I only played vampire the masquarade made by troika and i loved it. I was very excited to try some visual novels, because i genuinely love this setting. But i don't want to try them anymore. I don't mind eko-activism, i don't mind showing me how capitalism is bad and how it destroys the local enviorment. I don't mind having non-binary characters, and i don't mind getting political agenda being thrown at my face - because games and writing in general is something, that is made by people, who have their own believes, viewies and experiences. What I do mind is one-dimensional stories in a genre, that is only about writing. I do mind, when this agenda is being thrown at me in such uninteresting manner, that i want to puke. In the game made by troika, factions were about their believes, how they approach the problem, how they see it and the most important part - what their flaws are. Here, every tribe is about how they approach humans, except the funny "only strong lesbians" tribe. Oh, well , you think, maybe the tribe of your family is cool and strong and mysterious? nah, funny lesbians said that your family tribe is literally Hitler and fascist. What the ♥♥♥♥? What am i supposed to do with that information? How is that supposed to impact the story and my own choices? I liked mgs, i liked both tlou series, i liked playing both as a communist and a fascist in disco elysium, i enjoyed LiS at some point of my life, but this. This is something i can't take seriously. Maybe people with the same beliefes will find this wrting fascinating, but i simply can't.