Wojdan is a visual novel game about a boy named Jawad and his sister Sara. Jawad has an illness that seems to be a curse and the kids try to solve the mystery of his curse/illness. While I find the concept interesting this is only the first chapter of what was probably meant to be several chapters. I don't know if there will be any further releases so as it currently stands this is a relatively short game with a very unsatisfying ending.
Taken as just a chapter I think the story was interesting and well written, for the most part. I think the characters are engaging and the story, though it starts a little slow, has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, I do feel there are several issues. First, the game is only available in Arabic. My limited skills with Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Dialect let me muddle through this, but even my husband who is a native Arabic speaker seemed to struggle with some of the some of the dialogues. Some of the words used seem particularly obscure or oddly used. My second issue with it is that it's only the first chapter and just as you start to actually care about the characters and invest in their plight ... the game ends. It isn't a satisfying ending and it leaves you feeling frustrated with the abrupt stop.
The gameplay mechanics are very simple. Mostly you just click through the dialogue and then there are small puzzles or screens you can interact with. None of the puzzles are all that difficult, one is a small logic puzzle, another is just clicking on things and looking through them to find some flowers and items. The only one that was somewhat challenging involves a sort of sliding puzzle where you need to make the key match the pattern. I found it difficult as the key's edges don't match up nicely with the clues. I found it a little odd that the game has an inventory you can look at and lightly interact with but you can't really utilize the inventory. You can't take an item out of the inventory to physically give to someone or combine with something. Maybe those were features to be utilized in future chapters.
There are some parts of the game that you end up skipping if you for example don't do a puzzle correctly. However, the ending of the chapter is the same either way. There isn't a real difference in the story other than you may miss a few character interactions or peripheral background information.
I enjoyed the graphics of this game. The style is an anime-cartoonish style and is well drawn. I found it rather visually pleasing. There isn't any actual movement or real animation in the game, all of the scenes are just still images, but when a character's image is on screen "talking", they will show a different emotion displayed to match the tone of the current dialogue.
The music in the game isn't bad but it's a little slow and quiet. Even in moments when there should be more intensity the music just doesn't help with the ambiance. Instead there are time when it takes what should be an exciting moment and makes you feel a little drowsy. Not that I thought it was boring, but the music is just too calming throughout the game.
There aren't a lot of achievements in this game and they are all easy to get, but you can miss many of them. If you don't think you'll want to play again you may want follow the achievement guide. Even if you don't speak Arabic you can actually follow the guide and click through it in line 5-10 minutes with all the achievements. I'm not sure why anyone would want to as you get no satisfaction out of the game that way, but if you've already played through once and just want the missing ones it doesn't take long to go back and get them.
Despite its shortcomings, I liked this visual novel even though I don't usually play them. One of the things I really appreciated was being able to see positive representations of Muslim women. It's very difficult to find games with hijab wearing Muslim women in the first place, but to get this in a main character who doesn't embody the multitude of negative stereotypes is something special. I think that native speakers could probably play through this in maybe 30 minutes or less even though my limited Arabic took three times that. I don't feel that this game has much replay value, especially without any further story and a good ending. Though normally, I might feel that the current full price is a bit much for what you get, I feel like it's reasonably priced because of its representation, especially if you want to support development of even more games and positive representations from the Middle East.
