What Happened Here?

I'm honestly surprised to see how unknown this game is - there are literally little to no reviews on it.. like... Hello?? </3 Personally, I think this game deserves more attention, the art style is cute and the game itself is entertaining. The gameplay might seem slightly dull and/or boring from the given pictures but rest assured - that's not the case. There are multiple (relatively easy) puzzles which you have to complete to get fragments of the lore. At first.. nothing makes sense but as you clear out an area or two - things start getting together and you get invested. But of course, this review is spoiler free :) I got one of the endings but I'm sure there's at least 3 different endings, since the game *is* short (but it's intriguing nonetheless). Overall, I hope this game gets the recognition it deserves. Truly a gem, especially since it's a free game!! I heavily recommend giving it a try - you got nothing to lose (quite literally..) <3

rly cool, i love women

A warning for photosensitive folks, there's a lot of screen shaking moments! --- It's a fun silly game with enough content to unpack for a full story, and I wished there was more.

What Happened Here? Is an RPG Maker styled-horror game/”whatever anime fandom terminology insert here” simulator developed by Muna Games Studios, specifically a person named NoelTugly. The previous history for this game studio that I managed to find basically involved a visual novel named “Fluttering Lust”. From the screenshots I managed to see on their old Twitter account that they haven’t touched since 2019, it can be assumed that this was a dating simulation of sorts. From then they went and created a RPG Maker styled horror game, this one in fact. Now from what I understand, they’re just kinda doing their thing and posted the game trailer on their official Youtube so I don’t know if it would be cool to post that but from what I understand, this game is a follow up to a novel called “Love in the Dark”, which you can actually buy on Amazon. As for how I found this game, one of my friends wishlisted it and when I saw “horror” in the categories I just kinda added it to my library for free since it was free and I was collecting short and free horror games for Spooky Month. So how is this game? Is it spooky? If I were to give any positives in terms of the game itself, I would say that the sound design is excellent and the art design shows that the developer has a lot of talent. We both thought the art style was cool, characters were expressive and me? I'm a sucker for pixelated old looking ass games of many kinds so I can’t really say there was anything wrong in this department. The sound design was probably my personal favorite, as there’s a series of satisfying pings when you scroll through the menus and the soundtrack. While it didn’t hit me much I remember it wasn’t really bad. However I’ll say that the plot on the other hand didn’t really strike me much, and I feel that a particular reason for this is that the game is the follow up to the aforementioned novel on Amazon. While the developer themselves stated that you didn’t need to understand the novel in order to play the game, I felt going in blind that there was a decent amount of characterization and story elements that I missed out while playing through it that just didn’t really strike me as well as much as I would like it to. All I remember from the story is that you play as a twenty year old woman named Elly who [spoiler]somehow got transported to an alternate dimension and was summoned by Noel…the name of the developer. Is this a fourth wall break?[/spoiler] I don’t know, but truthfully it didn’t really resonate with me all that much without any context. I could also probably admit that a lot of the genres that this game took place in might not have been my cup of tea altogether so I’m probably biased to be honest. The actual gameplay of “What Happened Here?” for the most part is as said in the intro: it’s an RPG Maker styled game where you can explore the manor, solve some puzzles and partake in some minigames. Is there combat? No surprisingly, but it does have multiple endings and a couple of puzzles that can rack your head if you don’t know what you’re doing. The main puzzles include [spoiler]time loop garden stuff (which is rather easy with a bit of exploration), a cleaning and cooking puzzle (involving racing to clean up the kitchen THEN gathering ingredients, taping up the recipes in a very easy puzzle then remembering what ingredients to put where first) and a chess puzzle. The chess puzzle I’ll be straight up and say I needed a guide as I’m quite chess illiterate, maybe I’m dumb or something but I could never really get those sort of puzzles.[/spoiler] That would probably be your hardest puzzle to be honest, but other than that it’s a rather simple gameplay loop for a small 30-45 minute experience. My overall opinions on this game are that it’s fine, it’s alright even though it’s clearly not my cup of tea in terms of actual art design, and as such I wish there was a “middle of the road” review option instead of JUST positive or negative for Steam. I’m not an anime guy and I feel like I’m one of the only people on the internet who are still kind of clueless on the meaning of terms like “Tsundere” and such so I had a bit of context filled in for my friend who I was streaming it for. Out of this game, HELLKIND and CANINE, would I say this is my least favorite game out of the bunch for this weekend? Sure, I could say that. But I’d also say that it’s fine for the most part, it has some cool ideas and the whole J-RPG horror aspect does shine in a little bit here and there. If you were to ask the friend who I was streaming for, the Manlybadasshero stuff was a bit cringe but I mean I guess what you can do, to each their own. I’m unsure as to what the future of NoelTugly is in terms of actual game design, but hopefully they’ll continue to use their talents to build upon this stuff for games in the future. As for me? Would I play through it again? No. Would I play any games from this developer again? Probably not, but if you’re looking for a decent RPG Maker styled game with hints of spooky stuff going on then it’s not the worst thing you can play. I mean it’s free if anything else so honestly, vibe with it how you want. Links: https://www.amazon.com/Love-Dark-Speedrun-AshLee-Lee/dp/B0CWDM9PXF/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0 https://www.facebook.com/munagamestudio/?locale=et_EE https://noeltugy.itch.io/fluttering-lust https://noeltugy.itch.io/what-happened-here https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3532563308 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG3mx4bVyj4

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I had so soso much fun interacting with everything :)) I was not expecting the game to have as many humorous remarks as it did, but it was very welcome ! The dialogue and story is engaging and the characters are awesomesauce

Neat little game that shouldn't really take more than an hour to get through. I love the visuals, and there was enough allusions to a bigger picture that I wish there had been more. A few inconvenient autosaves and a translation that sometimes felt off were my only problems. But really. It's gorgeous.

This is a really fun little game and clearly a labour of love. I was really impressed with the variety of mechanics in such a short game, and the pacing of the story too. And the music and art style are incredible.