Recent reviews by SusuKacangSoya (No mic)

For a game by a Polish studio, it's really good..! The campaign isn't a very long one, but it and the game is high in quality..

Putting aside the enemy placement in the game.. This game is one of the worst in giving me motion sickness. It is difficult for me to even reach 3/4 of the level.. if I were to try to play it again, I'd have to reserve more free time so that I can take a breather

Although a little charming and unique, it's a game so tiny even bad flash games surpass it in content.

I was expecting some wacky Silent Hill-style ending at the end, but instead I just get a minor form of interaction with the rest of the community.

It's a great game to put online, but I feel it's too small to put on Steam. I look forward to the trio posting more games on here, though.

*EDIT* TIL you can slaughter the sheep with the knife and go back to the village

Although quite average, the backgrounds are well drawn, and it has a rather unique plot.

There is the annoyance of the extremely loud flashback noise at one part of the story, but that's kinda it.

One thing special about Dawn is that unlike many video games of its kind (3D university indie), it actually is complete, though small.

Unusually, it has a good offering of settings where you can actually tone things up and down to your computer's capabilities, instead of accept laggy conditions.

It also has a well designed set of achievements. This would normally be rather annoying to collect, but with the game's generous allowal of skipping scenes even from the start of the game, provision of a double jump even though it was never needed, as well as the ability to move back and forth across the map (no bridges burned as you move), it was far more pleasant.

Though the character's animation makes a player suspicious that the game was a crude product from a 3D engine, pretty much everything else in the game feels well designed. I personally like how the stones were used as level walls.

I personally can't identify a depth of meaning in this game, but I can see the depth of artwork and mood. There are no boring, sparse stretches of land, every island is topped with a selection of flowers and grasses, along with a few surprises.

By really living up to the 'Casual' tag and having a relieving relative lack of bad game design, this game provides a good hour of enjoyment.

Is it a must-play? No. But if you want to look at something new, and have some time to kill, I think you'll like this.

That aside, looking at the devs' social media, it seems that this is their first work, and they are very proud of it. It's too short to be a flagship, though; I'll be waiting for their next game, and I expect it to be bigger. And I think they know that.

-----

http://i.imgur.com/mNCecQe.png

Suck it, guys.

Though I cheated a bit. I looked at another person's screenshot as reference for 'When You See It', and I used True Steam Achievements for The Sound of Music (though, to be fair, I was on the verge of getting it myself in my first playthrough, but I stopped when the scale started descending, since I thought it would loop).

-----

>Achievement unlocked: Gotta Go Fast

http://i.imgur.com/XS5LK.gif

RIP me, this review got buried at the end of the pile

Old review (First three great lads who marked this helpful were referring to this): https://docs.google.com/document/d/117HxJL9jaug0POoRkpqshqMn5q8_GX1Tovp4DHkXWHc/edit?usp=sharing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNBMlPF7vEc
I've just finished the Satomi route for this game; I consider my playthrough done at this point.






srsly, this review is too long for almost literally everyone who will notice this




These guys put mirin in everything. I know it's minor and makes things taste better, but they've turned most dishes into an alcoholic one.

I don't think I have ever seen Mariko chill. Full time troll. She's like a child at times with her excitement.

Momoko is dangerous. I know she's not yandere; stay away anyways.

Why is the protagonist the only decent young man in the whole visual novel?

There are some rather cringe moments. Fortunately, it's not the kind of thing that I feel completely disconnected from; they're like... the cringe you encounter in daily life. They aren't unusually cringey, at least for me.




First, let's address some unsavory parts. This game has quite a collection of translation weaknesses and spelling errors. In my playthrough (Main storyline + Satomi route), I've only gotten one confusing translation, which made me pick the wrong option; the myriad of others were merely mildly distracting, and shouldn't be hard to correct for a native speaker.

There's a subtitles button where you can see the subtitles for the other language (English subtitles if you're playing in Japanese, vice versa), but it kinda blocks the middle of the screen. If you're sensitive to keeping an absolutely clear view of what's behind, it might be a bit shoddy of a placement for your tastes. It is still a useful feature, however.

Plus, although it's mostly sane, sometimes you have a confusing inconsistency in the length of the English text and the Japanese text. The worst offender is the Tempura recipe, where the text box shows a quick English sentence, but Satomi says 2 or 3 entire Japanese sentences. This wouldn't be too bad of a problem, if not for the fact that sometimes you have a Point dialog that comes after all dialogue is complete, which can be easily skipped if you get impatient and click the 'Next slide' button (This is a much bigger problem for me as a YouTuber instead of you guys, though).

Adding to the inconsistency is the difference in volume and tone between the episode and the recipe inside of it, as well as the occaisonal seeming voice actor substitution (I might be wrong). And speaking of inconsistency, it's not that the translator is bad. They seem like a native speaker in their presentation and words, but it drops sometimes.

Furthermore, there is a rather poor selection of options. You can't change your resolution, nor can you change the volume. This is a bit of a train wreck for recording the game because you get hit by a copyright dispute (monetisation claim) every single episode, unless you mute the entire game, because the music in this game is entirely from the NASH Music Library.

Sometimes you find that the sprites for the characters get unsafely scaled up, and they don't have enough resolution, so they look a bit pixelated. Furthermore, the selection of background scenes and characters is literally worse than a free Indie visual novel. It's rather embarassing.

Plus, a tiny issue; There's a rounded black bar at the top and bottom of the screen when you're in an episode or recipe, for seemingly no reason.




The game introduces two unique features in all the visual novels I've played. To finish an episode, you have to pass the Clear marker. You can progress by picking good choices that favour affinity with the Cooking Club members, recipe included. You can easily afford saying one or two neutral or bad options. However, if you be completely yourself and have the bad luck of picking all bad choices, you'll fail the episode after the recipe and lose all the Gochi Points you used to unlock that episode... which means you have to go repeat recipes to get them again. If you're ever panicking, just say your food is perfect after the recipe; that usually gives a massive boost.

And Gochi Points are the other mechanic. They're great for encouraging players to go check out unlocked recipes instead of just spamming the plot and running off, but it's a bit optimistic to expect players to read all of them through, let alone follow through in the cooking.




Now that we have all those silly negatives out of the way, let's get into what's good about this game.

I like how you aren't block from skipping anything, and this is useful for collecting Gochi Points for unlocking episodes. Many preparation lessons also won't begin unless you say "Show me how", so you can easily spare yourself from the repetition. However, it's nice how the different characters occasionally have different ways of doing things, or at least to different recipes. Hearing two different characters recite the same lesson is nice.

The subtitles button is a boon for English players if you want to keep track of what they're saying, and/or learn Japanese. Of course, it's the more advanced kind meant for native Japanese speakers, but if you're at that level, give it a shot.

But what kept me going in this game is the plot. It's not magnificent, but you do get to see each character have different personalities. You recognise their voices and their signature interjections. You do genuinely feel like you're a part of the plot (although you might have to intentionally remove yourself and see it in third person if you disagree with the protagonist's choice, like eavesdropping in the bath scene). I felt engaged enough to react to what's going on. I laughed at the jokes and occasional roast.

And although you couldn't favour anyone in the first storyline, I liked how you could choose your own route towards which club member you like, in complete violation of the club's rule, and it was something I looked forward to when I spotted those routes, locked, while doing the first storyline.

Considering that in Satomi's route, you get her as a romantic interest at the end, I'm guessing the other routes have the same. It isn't all part of some connected universe where every route is inconclusive; they are genuinely separate. Also, I saw somewhere that you get to meet Mariko's dad, so try her route out.

And of course, the VN is rather good if you're a complete noob in cooking. It has the flaw of not expecting you to screw up massively, but past that, it teaches some new things. I didn't know about buckling and drop lids before playing this (though drop lids are a Japanese thing).

Protip if you find the VN too static: Try to imagine the scenes yourself in your mind, like you're reading a book. Let the visual novel just initialise the environment for you. It helped me past the post-cooking conversations that usually were uncomfortable.




I got this on a sale. It was worth the money.

Out of sale? It's up to you and your wallet. I'm giving a sort of neutral review, considering that it can only closely compete with top tier free VNs. This VN isn't at the level of quality of Nekopara or Hatoful Boyfriend.

But if you're warm to the idea, play this. It deserves more players and coverage, and I'd support the developers for their next project. They've already finished the Shoujo version of Gochi-Show.

For my standards? 7.5/10, would play again.
For everyone's standards? 6/10.

The AI can be frustrating at times. For a game that practically forces you to delegate most of your possessions to the AI, it's not nice losing because your "allies" are running around doing their own thing and recklessly getting more provinces than they can handle, instead of trying to help defend against the behemoth of a magically united enemy army pummelling your core.

And even if you're not dead, trying to reorganise the leadership for your provinces so that everybody will shut up about getting a daimyo title even though they're the ones preventing you from giving them one is a nightmare. In anything short of a perfect game, which probably includes giving provinces only to your own lineage because they are less noisy, you will have some person harassing you for a new province every 2 turns. They also whine and get angry at you if you refuse their ridiculous, incessant request.

Paradox, with their great hindsight and playtesting, decided to use dialog popups for this mechanic, along with other minor events. Far more important events, like diplomacy, are delegated to minimised icons that can easily and accidentally be automatically declined because you had the game at maximum speed. It really should be the other way around.

These kinds of nuisances, which are slowly being solved by the community through mods, are the kinds of things that Paradox should've noticed and fixed after playing merely 8 rounds or so of their own game.



With that aside, if you're not a topkek n00b like me and can get a hang of all the games mechanics, including ninjas, ronin recruitment, terrain modifiers, and access to nearly every character in Japan, then you can find this game enjoyable. The game mechanics are also a bit unique compared to other games, even to CK II.

I know it seems contradictory to my other game reviews that I recommend a game that I review so harshly, but this game can actually be great if you're the right player. I just assume that I'm not the right player.

I don't know why so many Steam games like $5.49.

But it's a good number. It's a tight bracket that generally lets players know what to expect; quality, small-scale games.

Okyntt is one of them. Well polished, interesting, and atmospheric. It also comes with achievements and trading cards.

It's a complete game. It's quite long.

There are times where the puzzles were a bit frustrating to solve. Some were easy, some were difficult, some were solved quickly through luck. Some recipes didn't really make sense. Sometimes you'll have to go online to the walkthroughs. They're sufficient, and you can consult other ones whenever the one you're using has some sort of mistake or isn't clear enough.

But if you're the type of person experienced in this genre, then you won't have many problems.

Get it on a sale like I did, and it's a steal.

This game should probably only be enjoyed through a VR headset.

Before I elaborate on why, let's talk about the game. Difficulty is added to simple gameplay by having a ridiculous time system where in Level 2 and beyond, if you go quite literally anywhere slower than maximum speed, the virus comes faster than you and drains your clock immensely with each stage.

The only way you could win is to either have perfect runs, or barely make it by using the organelles' abilities to slow down the virus. And in Level 2 and beyond, it becomes difficult to make no mistakes, as you need to pay attention to how you've aligned yourself on the route and aim for shooting the protein balls carefully. Those things get destroyed at contact with speed boosts and rows of protein, often making only one ball reach the Great Wall of Obstacle. And if you find yourself in the bad luck of being moderately away from the opening, you can't even turn fast enough to dodge.

Furthermore, protein as a currency in the game isn't really used save for paying for using an organelle's abilities, which sometimes are free anyways. This, along with other game mechanics, makes it a bit like a flash game.

With all of those things, comprehensible only to a player of this game, said, I can now elaborate that it's difficult to enjoy the visuals of this 3D game with such annoying tension in the game. You can't admire the beauty of the organelles and the cell membrane when you have to focus on not dying... Unless you can turn your head quickly enough like how you can enjoy the scenery abruptly when you're driving a car. And that speed is provided not by the mouse, but by a VR headset.

All of this harsh criticism aside, it was still surprising to find a game mechanic and a plot to what seemed like merely an environmental VR preview. It's also great that you can enjoy this game without a VR headset; the graphics, though seemingly a bit dated, are still unique. It's not some 2D circuit either; playing on a 3D cylindrical route is pretty nice. Add the fact that there's actually trading cards in this game, and it makes it a generous gift by Luden.io and Nival to the Steam community. Free money and a unique experience.

However, as you can see, I've played for an hour, with multiple attempts, and still haven't got any trading cards.

If you want to spend some time, come inside and enjoy the scenery in Level 1, which is actually easy and gives you plenty of time to look around (Hold right click for that). If you're the kind of person that doesn't mind, or likes, trying many times trying to get the best score, to pass the level, or simply to get the trading cards, then you should probably play this game.

I'm giving no recommendation because the game mechanics are a bit unsophisticated; that for the same price (i.e. free), you can play other games that are better. But there's more to Incell VR than just the game, so if you can enjoy the other aspects, it's probably a game for you. Furthermore, at the end of the day, it's free, so there's not really anything to legitimately complain about.

Also, take note that I played this without a VR headset. Reviews coming from those playing with one state that the game's 3D effects look great. I'll trust those guys.

Great art, but the engine feels dated, with its jump-scrolling text that looks and feels like lag.

The way the novel is written makes it hard to understand at times; there were quite a few points where I just skipped over instead of tried to read carefully. Of most trouble for me were the dreams, which didn't even have any scene transition, further adding to confusion.

Furthermore, this is merely an introduction to a series of VNs. The length it provides is more like a demo than a free VN.

That aside, the art is great, and there's a sufficient feel of animation despite the low amount of visual changes.

If you want to read a new story and don't mind paying for it, then, sure, jump into this and see if you like it.