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Recent reviews by darklordbambi

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6 people found this review helpful
3.4 hrs on record
One of, if not possibly the best choose your own adventure game I have ever played.

As a person who loves choose your own adventure book style games, I didn't know what to expect from Tiny Bull Studios in their first, and at this moment, only title on steam. I don't even remember how much I paid but it was worth every single cent, and I don't think I've seen a game with mechanics as in depth and thought out as this game.

You play as a doctor turned soldier who finds himself in a conflict with an ancient eldrich inspired cult and a mysterious disease. The game has 5 stats you can upgrade throughout the game with points you earn. However, in contrast to most games, instead of the 'use a skill, succeed, get better at it, repeat' formula, you choose your areas to improve as you progress in the plot, learn new revelations, and make certain encounters. You also soon find that simply leveling up your skills and using them whenever possible may not be the best idea as the game goes on and challenges become greater, depending on how you've allocated your skills.

The writing and plot are incredible, and great in bringing you into the world of paranoia, the music and sound effects are brilliant, and there are tons of illustrations to go with each scene. You find yourself questioning your choices at each turn, trying to decide the best option, questioning the intentions of everyone you meet, and just when the plot starts feeling predictable, you're thrown a twist or turn you didn't expect. If you want to be immersed in the paranoia of Eldrich Horror, this game writes that wonderfully.

The game's pacing is wonderful too, not dwelling too long in any one area, but keeping steady as the story expands on massively from one setting to the next.

There are occassional grammatical errors, but I rarely noticed them. The game is also a bit linear, as it states you cannot die early, they do keep a feeling of suspense as you go through, and your actions do feel like they have consequences. You may see characters die and wonder if you could have saved them, if you could have done more at some point, especially as you reach the latter end of the game. However, it may become old or you may feel like you've figured out the all the trick's up it's sleeves once you reach the end game, which is where it started to come down for me. However, the journey itself was mindblowing.

While it may stray from the formula, that's part of what makes this great, combined with it's unique, more 'risk/reward' based skill system, amazing sound effects, illustrations, and writing, it should definately be part of any 'choose your own adventure game' fan's library. Numbers are arbitrary, but I'd put this at roughly a good 9 out of 10 for it's innovativeness and obvious effort and passion put into making the game immersive for fans of choose your own adventure games and Lovecraftian Horror alike.
Posted January 9, 2019.
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2 people found this review helpful
3.2 hrs on record
Playing through this was at first not what I was hoping it to be, and I thought I was going to be disappointed. Luckily I stayed up late playing through and realized that the way this is written is actually one of the more unique experiences I've ever had playing a text adventure game, and I love the dynamics of it.

What I think is the biggest thing for me is that in this, you jump in to play as a villain, obviously, a hero fallen from grace. From a previous text adventure I thought this would be more silly, but this game forces you into the mind of a hero who's failed, the things that haunt them, their regrets, emotional turmoil, and inner conflict. In this game you'll find yourself wanting to be the hero, but not able to. Normally, this would be a total failure in that in conflicts with the point of choice, but the truth is, you chose to play as the villain. You less choose if you're a villain, but why, how, and what kind. It makes you get into character, try and understand your backstory and build and immerse yourself.

In that choice of what kind of villain you are, lies a depth of psychology and archetypes. Perhaps you have fun playing a full on bad guy, perhaps you have no trouble looking heros in the face in one identity and brutalizing and antagonizing them behind the scenes. Perhaps you're begrudging and reluctant, simply wanting to be respected. Or perhaps you're a fatalist, who's been driven mad from battle and despite how much you want to, you can't be weak again, you have to become the villain to be free. I feel this makes it so much deeper than a comedic story where you're just an anti-hero with a villain coating, this actually makes you ask "Why am I doing this? What made me this way?" It's not about evil laughs and monologuing, it's about vengeance, and a broken hero trying to find what's missing.

If you're a fan of text adventures, I heavily recommend this game. I'd give it an 8.5 out of 10 if I were to grade it. It's not your typical text adventure, and there are some areas that are lacking, but I feel like the unique immersion into the cause and consequence of your actions and the world you build for yourself more than make up for it.

(By the way, this looks like it will have at least one sequel if not become part of a trilogy, and I look forward to see where it goes.)
Posted January 4, 2019.
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12 people found this review helpful
3.2 hrs on record
I'm a big fan of text adventure games like these, and this was the best I've played in while. I haven't had a lot of time to play games like these, and recently bought a bundle over black friday weekend sales. This is the first I've played of the bunch and it really blew me away.

At first the story seems a bit odd (being in what's essentially a werewolf internment camp), and you're even given a romance option very early in the game which feels a bit out of left field, but don't let that first impression fool you. Once I got into the story, I started to get immersed and buy into the story. Things weren't too predictable either, when I did something right or was commended by a character I cared about, the dialogiue made me feel I /earned/ their agreement through my choices, and when I fell short, it reaffirmed the feeling that I wasn't just some 'chosen one', but that I was actively making choices that got me to where I did in the story.

As for the themes of government oppression, specifically against a group, it didn't feel like a hamfisted allegory or like it had an agenda. While it started feeling like an allegory for the Native Americans, the natural urges and rage of werewolves arose, showing that this was more of a 'what if' than a direct apples to apples comparison. It also did a good job of escalating the tension and creating characters with three dimensional views of the plight of the werewolves, recognizing the feelings of hopelessness and never making you feel like you're being encouraged to be violent or non-violent, which is refreshing in stories in themes of fighting oppression.

Overall, I'd give this story a solid 8.5/10. It has it's hiccups here and there in the writing, and it feels awkward at the start, but once you get into this story, it'll probably be one of the better ones you'll read and/or play. I 100% recommend it if text adventures are your thing, and even if they're not, it's worth a shot.
Posted November 27, 2018.
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7 people found this review helpful
16.8 hrs on record
Spent hours and hours and hours loading all the files. It then proceded to change my screen resolution, once I fixed that, it left me on a loading screen for ages.

Not worth the time unless you're desperate to play this MMO and wanna look up fixes to get it to work on Windows 10.
Posted July 20, 2017.
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4 people found this review helpful
1.3 hrs on record
I wish I could write a neutral here. This game wasn't bad, but compared to most choose your own adventures, it's a bit short and could be seen as disappointing. I give it a thumbs up simply because I still personally enjoyed it.

If you enjoy anthropomorphic characters, that'll probably be the thing that'd bring you to this, as you have a lot of species options. The plot itself seems intruiging, though it's a bit rushed in execution. The romance system, or lack thereof, is probably my biggest complaint, even though in many choose your own adventures romancing a character is as easy as not being a ♥♥♥♥ to them, deciding you like them, and they automatically requite your feelings, other games mask this better, drawing out your time with the character to make it feel more fleshed out and excusable that they just happen to feel the same way. This game pretty much made it so that as soon as I decided I was interested in the human reporter I saved from thugs, went to her apartment and flirted with her, I was quickly in her pants and got an acheivement for it, twice in fact, though that might have been a glitch.

The premise is fairly decent, you have to investigate gang activity, a lunatic cult, and terrorism in a future where humans experimentation on animals has resulted in a future with sentient, anthropomorphic animals. This becomes an aspect of society with racial tension between humans and non-humans, as well as having a fleshed out exposition that shows how these anthropomorchic people, or "moreaus" live their day to day lives.

The one thing I really felt rised above some other choose your own adventure games, despite the bad pacing, was the ending. My ending, without too much spoilers, made it apparent I could have made some other choices to bring a better outcome to Moreytown had I made better choices. It made the endgame at least feel like it was important, where a lot of games you can fool around the whole time and still get the best ending by clicking the obvious correct choices. Here I got a bittersweet ending, that didn't punish me too much for bad choices, but still made me feel like I could have done better, making me more curious as to where I made my mistakes.

I'd recommend buying this game on sale if you like choose your own adventures and find the premise of anthropomic animals and humans living together in a world of high racial tensions, and measuring your moral choices in society fighting a cult threatening your neighborhood. If money is no object to you, however, or you have a lot of games you want to try out, I would pass on this game for something with more bang for your buck.
Posted June 28, 2017.
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18 people found this review helpful
1.5 hrs on record
I wish I could write a "Neutral" review of this game, but Steam sees this in a binary, so this is what I have to say;

If you're looking to get into choose your own adventure games, this is not the entry point.
If you are into choose your own adventure games, and don't mind some difficulty and odd writing, this might be for you. It's fairly decent in terms of a choose your own adventure for the most part, on par with the rest, but it suffers from a couple big flaws;

1. Some choices might instant kill you anti-climatically, and if you're not a fan of that, this game might piss you off. I died on my first playthrough, and I felt all my hard work had been wasted.
2. The author refers to any character that doesn't have an pre-mentioned gender as zhe/zheir. While I applaud being progressive about non-binary gender identity, it feels forced and irritating at some points, especially considering they/them/their works just fine, and it seems the author goes out of the way to not assign gender to characters, ranging from important characters that you see a lot of, to guards that you might see once or twice. Instead of feeling like a smooth and refreshing vacation from gender norms, it feels like it's trying to push the message down your throat far harder than it needs to and just becomes jarring and awkward.

If the two above things don't bother you, then go ahead and try this out. However, if either of those sound like they'd ruin the experience for you, I wouldn't waste my money.
Posted June 24, 2017.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
1.0 hrs on record (0.9 hrs at review time)
"Monster Loves You" is a sort of choose your own adventure game where you play in a unique and creatively designed moster world.

The premise is cute and fun to play through, and makes you think about what kind of moster you want to be. Though it's not too difficult to get your ideal ending if you want (Bringing peace between humans and mosters), it's still a fun experience to go through.

I can't speak to it's replayability as I've only gone through once, but I feel I made a good choice in this purchase. If you're tight on money, I'd recommend buying it when it's on sale, as while it's fun, I can't guarantee it won't gather dust and be 10 dollars out of your pocket for what would be at most maybe a 5 dollar deal for you. However, I felt like it was fun enough that I might pick it up again, and I don't feel sour having spent 10 bucks on it.

Overall, I'd give this game a 7/10.
Posted June 24, 2017.
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41 people found this review helpful
7.3 hrs on record (6.3 hrs at review time)
Black Closet is a strategy manager/mystery game with some visual novel elements that you can skip (though I recommend not doing so as the diologue choices are well fleshed out and make you feel like what you choose to say and do actually make an impact and give you a view into the characters.

Where to start with all the pros of this? Each mini mission is a little mystery of it's own, which while they each follow a set formula that you eventually get used to after seeing the scenario enough times, still is interesting to see if you can solve the mystery in time and who's behind it. Each of your 5 minions has stats that help them stalk, intimidate, interview, and persuade students as to not cause trouble and reveal important secrets that might jeapordize the reputation of the school. You'll sometimes have to expell or suspend a student (which so far I don't see much of a difference in game), though you can try and use detention or persuasion, but sometimes even then a student simply won't listen, and you'll have to discipline them.

There's also a lot of mystery involving the 5 main characters, your minions, or fellow student council members under your leadership, and the school environment. The characters each have their own unique personalities, and one of them is randomly selected each game to be a traitor in your group. They each have their own motivations, and it's up to you to find out who's the one sabotaging the council's work, earn their trust, and deal with them how you see fit. But the story doesn't end there either, that's only the beginning of the rabbit hole, the plot goes far deeper, even I haven't fully unraveled the mystery yet, but I'm hoping to when I get a full playthough.

The game also has a custom mode where you can design your own 5 custom minions with randomized stats, change their looks, and play the basic investigations for up to 16 weeks. While this mode has no traitor, it's fun if you like challenging yourself to solve the common issues that plague the school with your own custom designed and named students.

For negatives, my only negative is that the rules aren't always 100% clear, it took me a while to realize the symbols on the left of an option were your stats, vs the one on the right which were theirs. For example, stalking isn't about having a higher stalking score, it's about having a stalking score higher than their perception, and part of questioning a student is about your perception against their stealth. This could have been made clearer with a tutorial, but after a little while you get used to it. You eventually start to get the hang of it.

I'd definately recommend this game for any fans of visual novels, strategy games, or mystery games. If you're not sure, wait for it to go on steam sale, but I personally found it was high quality, full of replay value, and kept me on my toes every time I played. Worth every penny to me.

Overall, I'd give it a 9/10.
Posted June 24, 2017.
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9 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
3.6 hrs on record
Do. Not. Buy. This. Game.
I paid 20 dollars for this game expecting a fun dating sim where you controlled a girl who could date one of 4 guys, solve a mystery, and even possibly end up dating the wrong guy and be in for an interesting plot twist. I got none of that. Every cent I spent on this game was money wasted. Not a cent of fun was found.

What I got was annoying task-managing, boring as heck characters with choices, and even the kidnapper is obvious. There's no mystery to it, he's only the kidnapper to add shock value and intrigue to his character. The endings are all pretty much drivel. You even at one point end up having a romantic route with the kidnapper, who by early on you should have ditched, making it a romance in the league of that of Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey, to say creepy and shallow.

The other characters are bland, and even the "bad" endings aren't even bad, just disappointing. You're wondering what horrible things might happen to Nicole if she dates the kidnapper or is kidnapped, but in reality, there's nothing much to it.

All this game consists of are clicking and doing tasks, and occassionally making text choices to get the right guy. And here's the thing, if you don't reaaaally work on getting the stats he likes /and/ say ALL the right things to him, you don't get the guy. It's literally an entire semester's worth of busy-work and clicking.

FINAL VERDICT; 1/10. Worst 20 bucks I ever spent in my life. You're better off playing freaking Sakura Clicker, at least that garbage at least gives you half naked women to gawk at while you do stupid fetchquests forever.
Posted December 28, 2015.
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Showing 1-9 of 9 entries