An excellent quick read that features rage-inducing bullying and satisfying yet sickening revenge.

Bad Faith is a rather short, approximately 3 and a half to 4 hour long kinetic visual novel set on an isolated island, home to a strict, all female community. Early on it is made abundantly apparent that the island operates under very strict rules and deviation from community standards results in very harsh punishment. The story follows a girl named Magda, someone who once violated the community's standards and was very nearly received the harshest penalty one can face, exile from the community.

At its core, this is a story about the darkness of human nature. It is a reflection the damage that can be caused from a variety of different ways. The story presents instances the harm one can cause when one physically harms another person. The damage and negative perception that can result when one uses their authority and status to bully another. What results when one changes with time and breaks their trust in a significant way. Even if one does not directly do something that is harmful, but refuses to be supportive and is indifferent to the troubles that one is going through, when they refuse to be there for you and are bothered by your issues. All these various forms of harm can ruin people's lives. They can lead to depression, anxiety, and can leave lasting emotional harm that some may never recover from.

Bad Faith has fantasy elements and deals with existential threats and horrors in the similar vein of Saya no Uta. It is very Lovecraftian. The game, at parts, creates a very atmospheric setting that truly is quite creepy. At times, I felt the dark atmosphere (along with the backgrounds of nature) reminded me of the feel of Higurashi, another dark story. However, I do not feel the story always excels in this aspect. While the writing is good overall, I do not think it is exceptionally great. I felt like Magda had some great dialogue but some of her dialogue felt mismatched with her character, like some lines were written for filler without any real substance.

While I write about how the story is a reflection of the darkness of the human ego, I do have to ask myself at the end of the story, "What really was the point?" What I mean by this is, there is no real explanation as to what is up regarding the mysterious being that is introduced into the story. Without spoiling anything, the mysterious character has a big impact on the story towards the end and I do not really understand the significance of it. I suppose perhaps the being represents the human subconscious which is a cool interpretation. I suppose the ending can represent the damage careless people can cause. But I just don't understand how the rest of the community suffers as a result of the actions of a few. I suppose further that this can be a result that one who experiences harm may lash out at others beyond who hurt them. To me, this just felt like a typical dark story. The End. If that's what you want, then that's what you will get. It isn't bad per say, I just don't know if I would consider this a "great" dark story that is good for the sake of just being a dark story.

I struggle to find a deeper meaning in this story. The story is cool but I feel like it lacks a lot of depth. The story sets up a lot of lore but a lot of it is hidden and never revealed to the player. A lot of the sprite work felt very animated and was overall, really good, but the game barely uses them and I feel like the characters were pretty underutilized. I would have liked to see more of the world, but really all that is presented is a small carve out of this tiny isolated community.

Overall, I liked Bad Faith and I can certainly recommend it for its cheap price tag. It is an entertaining read that depending on your preferences, may provide you with a really satisfying ending, the reasons for which I will not hint at to prevent spoilers (although many other reviews have sadly hinted at it a little too strongly in my opinion). For their first visual novel, I believe this is a solid start for Mado and I hope to see more works from them in the future.

a) compatibility. I tried playing it on catalina 10.15 and it worked fine! so don't let that little tag deter you . If you are playing on catalina 10.15 or above though save frequently in case your os makes it glitch out on you. Only happened to me once but was enough to make me save more often

b) I expected a game with player choice but this isn't that kind of game; at least not so far, although i'm not quite done. It really is a "visual novel" in the more literal sense, and i've been super compelled by it. The behaviors of the cult in the game feel like apt metaphors for the way that artists and writers in small internet communities get dogpiled for "problematic" content. The art style is unique and evocative, the character designs varied and lovely, their personalities more nuanced even than necessary.

c) love me a game with a wlw main character, even if this is not at all a focus of the story. No homophobia, even.

All in all, a very tense game, i love the music and sound effects like the whining of the microphone before the Assemblies. It's not voiced, but every use of sound helps to heighten tension. Well worth your time if you like slow-burn horror. The gore waits till the end to show up, but be assured, it's there!

I like this VN a lot, and I think more people should read it!

Bad Faith is a solo developed VN which was made in under a year. It oozes charm from every single aspect, from the dynamic character sprites with numerous poses and facial expressions to the evocative use of sound effects to the impressively eerie soundtrack.

The presentation for this VN is also worth praising. All of the main heroine, Magda's, thoughts are depicted in a standard textbox, but the dialogue for the other characters is displayed in speech bubbles, which makes the VN look kind of like a comic book. It makes the presentation that little bit more lively and dynamic, and the speech bubbles help break up the text into bite-sized chunks that makes you want to keep reading.

I'm very fond of aesthetics of this VN in general. It uses filtered photo backgrounds, rather than hand-drawn backgrounds, which is something I've always liked. It makes me feel nostalgic for the When They Cry VNs,. The frequent use of the NVL textbox, meanwhile, and some of the text effects (changing fonts and font colours for certain characters, text that progresses faster/slower based on the speed a character might be talking, text which auto-progresses to the next line when a character gets cut off mid-dialogue, phoenetic screams and some repetetive sequences as Magda's mental state deteriorates) reminded me a little of Fate/Stay Night.

I haven't really touched on the plot, but I found that very enjoyable too. The main character, Magda, is a failgirl who is very anxious and #relatable. She's trying her best to be good, but she's stuck living in a cultish commune on an island that's full of girls who despise and mistreat her, and her true feelings will often slip through the cracks despite her determined attempts to be 'normal'. Magda's inner narrative goes between thoughts of "I just want everybody to be happy, I just want to live a peaceful life" to "I wish all of these horrible girls who keep tormenting me would die horrible deaths" in a way that feels very believable.

There's some pretty unpleasant bully characters in this story (as Magda is a target of bullying, she needs people to harass her), but even these characters are fleshed out. While we mostly see the story through Magda's point of view, there are a few scenes that depict the bullies away from Magda, talking to their own friends and generally living 'normal' lives. During these interludes, we discover that these bullies aren't one-dimensional charactes who exist solely to torment our troubled heroine: they are multi-faceted characters who are capable of being kind and compassionate to their friends...

They just don't regard Magda as being 'worthy' of their kindness or compassion, which makes their petty cruelty towards her hit even harder.

The world building in this story is pretty light, but it doesn't matter. The cultish world the girls inhabit isn't really the focus here: it's the interpersonal relationships between the characters. The main plot details Magda's slowly unravelling mental state, and it focuses on how prolonged mistreatment and ostracisation from one's peers can damage a person and lead them down a dark path.

The atmosphere is very unsettling, the story moves at a fast clip, all of the characters are nuanced and interesting, and the presentation is good. I can't recommend this highly enough. The VN does have a few technical problems (hovering over the quick menu can result in the menu labels like 'save' and 'load' being stuck on the screen until you hover over them again), and I think the third act wraps up a little too quickly after the slow and carefully constructed build-up in acts one and two, but that's not enough for me to mark this VN down.

I've read all of Mado's VNs on Steam and this one is my favourite for the characters and the atmosphere. If you like pscyhological horror and Very Damaged female leads who are Trying Really Hard Despite the Horrors, then I think you'd enjoy this a lot.

couple hour revenge fantasy, feels like the creator just wanted to draw bloody anime girls and whipped up a quick bit of boring bullying to justify it, but the big climax doesn't even feel good due to awkward emotional conflict of the mc and then there's a weird useless epilogue too.

"... and that's why you don't bully people"

great premise and start but I felt like it kinda flopped halfway

This review may be a bit bare bones but I'm not much of a review writer and also try to avoid spoilers.

It's a good, well crafted game. It's quite an engaging story, but also really dark. It's about bullying, ostracism and sects (and also moral hypocrisy and self fullfilling prophecies), and what effect they can have on people. It's themes are heavy, but the game does them justice and delivers them without pretentiousness or banality. Situations and emotions portrayed feel real. Bad Faith also delivers the atmosphere of anxiety of being judged very well. It's also not a very pleasant story - it is grim and can be very brutal, but it does serve it's purpose.

The overall writing quality is good. Dialogues and internal monolgues feel natural, descriptions flow well, pacing is good - we get quite an ammount of details to get immersed, but not too much so it doesn't drag. Characters feel alive and are characterized well. They do feel like they are actual humans living their lives and forming a community. What the game does well about bully characters (which are usually portrayed over the top comically evil all the time) is that we can actually see them being somewhat likable from other peoples point of view (which is what makes them effective as bullies).

The art is very pretty. Common and creative usage of CGs and sprite shenanigans also makes it feel more dynamic than many other visual novels. There are some minor visual glitches, but it's nothing too serious. As for the sound effects, sometimes they work TOO well.

Worth trying out!

please disregard my playtime. I've played most of it on a different version than the steam version, so the 1 hour of playtime isn't representative of the actual playtime.

This work excels at creating a very eery and scary atmosphere as it follows the protagonists experiences in the cult she's living in. It's a very raw story that doesn't pull punches at depicting what ostracization feels like and what it does to the mind

Bad Faith is a story about Magda, a girl living in a place called Haven. A community where girls of pure heart and soul live in harmony in an island separate from the rest of the world that is considered insane and evil. A community that enforces that all girls must remain pure with dire consequences if they stray even just a bit...you can see where this is going, right?

The game's 1st half does a good job in showing us how horrid the haven is, the first scene is punishing a girl for bringing unregulated books in the haven is banished as a result in one of their culling meetings. Magda has already experienced it before and was saved from that fate but now has to suffer from isolation and bullying for being a person who 'stepped out of toe', no matter how hard she tries to be a 'good person' under the Haven's regulations. In this story she meets a being in an abandoned looking lab which ends up being the cause of her 'downfall'

I'd say the game had a very strong start, it shows how horrid purity establishments are, how they can just be a different brand of evil while claiming to be 'good', how bullying, evil acts are ignored if the perpetrator thinks their justified and are ultimately blind to their actions. But I feel it ended up being too rushed in the end. It had a satisfying end for anyone who wanted those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ getting their deserts. But I feel a lot of things could have been spread out before ♥♥♥♥ hit the fan for Magda.

Either way, it was a nice read.