Recent reviews by 🍒 Lilly (🌸◠‿◠)

Purpose 1951 is a short and linear walking simulator narrated by a medical practitioner who reminisces about the hardships of being a surgeon during the post-World War II period.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243101544
Set in the United States in the 1950s, when medical equipment was scarce and the possibilities of performing thorough medical check-ups were very limited, the surgeon faces a life crisis after a failed surgery on a patient with strong political ties. When a certain chain of events beyond his control leads to the death of his patient, he is wrongfully accused and condemned to resign from his job, resulting in his beloved wife leaving him. While the narrative has a strong dark realism aspect as the doctor reflects on how his entire life fell apart, the overall direction is a positive one, with him finding the strength to move on in the end despite his misfortune.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243100935
When it comes to creating beautiful environments for his walking simulators, Tonguç Bodur never disappoints. Purpose 1951 even managed to exceed my expectations, quickly becoming my favorite game from this developer in regards to the scenery traversed. The colorful autumnal forest and the dance of violet, blue and pink colors of the sunset sky completely mesmerized me throughout the entire game and strongly reminded me of the gorgeous sights from The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Each frame is a work of art of outstanding beauty, a stunning painting in itself.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243101275
Sadly, this experience only lasted for an hour and at the end of it, I was left wanting more. Purpose 1951 is perfect to play during a relaxing, contemplative night and the few achievements that the game offers are very easy to obtain. They are awarded for finding eight collectibles, commonly placed outside the main road (yet still close to it) inviting the player to explore this beautiful environment beyond the leading pathway.

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Sanya is a nostalgic slice-of-life story set in post-Soviet '90s Russia. It’s a short and warm point & click adventure about Sanya - a young boy who moves into a new apartment together with his family. We’re shown the day after Sanya arrives at his new home when he discovers a friendly dog that he adopts as his pet, makes friends with the kids around the block and embarks on small childhood adventures with them.

The game succeeds at conveying these childhood memories as the best time of Sanya’s life: when innocence and curiosity intertwine, when ghost stories become real adventures that you have to brave as a rite of passage, or when a simple bike trip turns into a race. A rather subtle education aspect is also present, as Sanya learns to lock the door behind him after leaving the apartment, or choosing between unpacking his toys, as his mother asked him to, or completely ignoring her request. Other times, the game will tug at your heart strings, as we see Sanya being left alone while his parents go to work, with his father being deeply absorbed into his job, thus being able to come home rather rarely.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3219231017
Just like in classic point & click games, interacting with the items in the game world will either produce a flavor text or allow Sanya to pick up an object needed for a future puzzle. Additionally, a few interactions trigger some simple, yet fun minigames. There is one exception in which the minigame is extremely frustrating, namely a platformer sequence with the most horrendous controls ever encountered in the history of gaming. Not only are they unresponsive, but it’s also very difficult to control the character and stop its movement at the right moment to avoid various traps. One of the achievements will require you to explore all areas of this minigame and collect the star found at the end of each zone, which could take over an hour of repeatedly dying, despite the minigame being only a few screens long, just because the controls don’t respond to your input. This struggle-inducing sequence doesn’t fit in any way, in an otherwise a very casual and relaxing game and since there is no skip option, the only thing you can do is to endure it until you manage to traverse it. The frustration I had after beating it fully was almost enough to turn this review into a negative one. What saved it from that was the overall bright and cheerful atmosphere of the game, outside this particular bit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3219230902
The rest of the achievements are a mix of story-related ones and missable ones, the latter being awarded for performing some specific actions. There are also two pairs of mutually exclusive achievements, thus obtaining 100% completion will require you to start (not necessarily complete) a second playthrough. There is no chapter selection and no manual save feature. The game does save from time to time, yet this is not indicated in any way.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3219230756
Sanya is a nice game (with the exception of the dreadful platformer minigame), but an extremely short one for the asking price of $14.99. It’s true that its art style is sweet and its simple story is calming and might even bring you a smile or two, but considering that one playthrough takes around 1.5 hours at a relaxed pace and that there is close to zero replayability (aside from obtaining those mutually exclusive achievements), I would advise waiting for a deep sale before diving in.

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Clean The Sea is a short and very casual sandbox game in which you navigate a ship to collect floating macro-waste and debris, then dump the cargo at a nearby drop point where you can exchange it for money. With the money earned, you can expand the area that needs to be cleaned and eventually move to a new location, upgrade your ship by increasing its speed or the garbage capacity that you can scoop in one go, or hire workers that will automatically help you pick up individual trash items.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3181112819
It’s a relaxing game with very simple mechanics, albeit a tad repetitive. It has infinite replayability, as new waste items keep being generated in the already cleaned areas. This happens at a very slow rate though, slowly enough to not make it seem like your cleaning efforts are futile, but fast enough to allow picking all of them up in one trip around the zone.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3181112947
As you collect the garbage from the surface of the water, the pollution slowly starts to disperse and the aquatic life gradually comes back to inhabit the clean area: you can see fish swimming, turtles and penguins playing in the water. As soon as most of the areas from the current location are clean, you’ll be able to travel to a new one. In its current form, the game offers four different locations of around 8 zones each, with more locations planned to be added in the future.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3181112909
While it’s by all means not a deep game and can’t be compared in quality with similarly-themed games like Loddlenaut, it can prove to be a cute distraction for one hour or so. It also has the advantage of raising environmental awareness in a way that appeals to both younger and older audiences. It offers 18 easy achievements which are unlocked naturally as you play through the game and clean the areas one by one (currently, it takes roughly 30-35 minutes to obtain all of them).

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Nova Hearts is a visual novel that manages to seamlessly integrate a turn-based battle mechanic into the genre. The game is planned to be released later this summer and will have three or more chapters, totaling around 12h of gameplay. The first of these chapters is released as a standalone free-to-play app: Nova Hearts: The Spark.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167387764
The game impresses through its outstanding art direction. The CGs are exquisitely drawn and unlike most other visual novels where only the facial expressions change according to the current dialog line, here the character models are fully animated. This provides fluidity to the story and allows the player to fully immerse themselves in it.

The story itself is also a bit of a treat. You are Luce, a young girl who comes back home to live with her mother, ten years after her parents divorced. While she focuses on rekindling old friendships with two former schoolmates, strange occurrences start to happen in town, which makes the trio undergo a sudden and surprising Sailor Moon-like transformation, becoming superheroes to fight off evil.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167388209
The story unfolds through lengthy dialogues and chats on the phone. There is a good amount of choices, but most of the time these deliver only a few extra lines of dialogue. However, they will positively or negatively affect your relationship with the other characters, which in turn can lead to potentially having some additional scenes at the end of the chapter. The way your choices influence a character is visually indicated on the screen through a very pleasant rain-effect of symbols: heart for the romance route, crown for relationship increase, dagger for relationship decrease. There are several characters to romance and the game is gender-fluid, allowing you same-sex relationships. There are no explicit erotic scenes (and according to the developers, there won’t be any in the full game either), but there are kissing scenes even in the first chapter.

The turn-based battles occur while the trio is in their superhero form. The enemies and heroes alternate turns, each of them being able to cast only one ability per turn. While enqueuing their abilities, you also have the possibility to delay them so that they get cast at the same time as one of your teammates, creating combos for added damage. The XP points gained in battles can then be used to upgrade your character's abilities or to unlock new ones.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167387627
The game was developed using the Unity engine. Unfortunately, this comes with a couple of flaws. In its current form, you can neither skip nor have a history of previously read lines. You can’t go back and pick a different choice to see how it develops, and while a manual save is possible, this is available only at specific points during the game (otherwise, there is an autosave feature, but it’s not clearly indicated when the game decides to autosave).

Overall, Nova Hearts: The Spark is a very promising title. The first chapter alone got me all excited to see it fully released and experience the full story. If Nova Hearts sparked your interest, give the first chapter a try!

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If Stardew Valley and Pokemon had a baby, that would be Moonstone Island - although a lot of people prefer to compare it to Slay the Spire rather than Pokemon. The game is an adorable pixel-art farming sim / life sim, in which you adventure in the wild to engage in pet battles and collect spirits instead of fighting off enemies.

As a life sim, Moonstone Island has all the mechanics that you would expect from the genre. You plant seeds, tend to them and harvest them for consumables to be used in pet battles or sell them to the general shop in town. You can also mine and chop trees, whose resulting resources allow you to craft building stations and furniture items or upgrade your items and home. The little town has plenty of interesting characters that you can build your friendships with, or even romantically pursue. The universe of Moonstone Island offers 100 uniquely-generated floating mini-islands for you to explore at your own pace and a nice cozy story, closely guided through quests, with a good mix of easily reachable objectives and long-term goals.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3162740026
As a creature collector, Moonstone Island provides a really entertaining experience through its card-based pet battles, where the decks of your active pets are put together. This allows you to combine these cards for fun combos, as long as the cards drawn are suitable for that. The designs of the 70 spirits that you can tame are full of creativity, one more adorable than the other. Also very cute is that your pet team follows you around like little ducklings when you move on the map, although sometimes they tend to get in your way, especially when farming; however, there’s an option to make them stop following you. The pets that you don’t bring into battle can be stored either in a barn or in a research center, the difference between these two being that the latter does not require any maintenance on your part. The pets stored in your barn need to be fed constantly and in return, they drop items required for quest completion, for crafting or which can be sold for some extra income.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3162739898
Each of these two aspects of the gameplay has its own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, the crafting part is very straightforward, requiring only a couple of steps even for more complex items. The tools don’t have that annoying durability mechanic that requires you to always craft a new one every few days. The plants require daily watering (aside from rainy days), but the watering can doesn’t ever need to be filled and besides, you can just craft sprinklers to water your plants automatically. There are plenty of basic resources to gather (although trees and grass don’t automatically respawn) and the mines that you can open on each island are rich in minerals, chests that drop blueprints, and spirits to tame. On the other hand, a lot of the items required for progression (such as the barn or essential flying items) are gated behind the acquisition of Moonstones. Up until close to the endgame where you get a blueprint to mass-produce them, likely for transitioning into a sandbox kind of gameplay, these are extremely rare: each island contains only one per season, and very few bosses or chests drop any. Due to their scarcity, the progression is extremely slow, and exploring as many islands as possible quickly becomes your main goal. This in turn requires you to be able to fly greater distances (to reach further islands) and to be equipped to fight any enemies that you might find there.

In regards to the deckbuilding aspect, you get to expand your deck by one random card (chosen out of three possible ones that the game offers) every time you level your pet. Upgrading or removing a card is possible, however you will need special tokens for that, which are also quite rare (you can find one every few islands). Thus, while the battles are really fun, the deckbuilding mechanic is rather restrictive, as you don’t have full flexibility in customizing your deck. Moonstone Island also offers 30 rather lengthy, yet very exciting dungeons, where you get to solve little puzzles, uncover chests and fight higher-level spirits.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3162739334
Like pretty much any other game belonging to the genre, Moonstone Island is quite addictive. There’s always something to do or explore, and your stamina bar allows you to perform enough activities to keep you hooked throughout the entire in-game day. The game keeps things really fresh by throwing this mix of mechanics at you, which offers endless possibilities. However, keep in mind that the farming aspect is not the main focus of Moonstone Island. Instead, it’s used only as a support system for the pet battles, which is the actual essence of the gameplay.

Note: I played this game on a different account, hence the low playtime here.

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Noxia Somnia is a pixel-art horror game that tells an emotional story through a peculiar combination of several game mechanics. At its core, it’s a side-scrolling adventure in 2D, in which you sometimes fight enemies and bosses, other times you try your best to run away from invincible ones while being chased, and yet other times you solve puzzles or ponder about the deeper life aspects that the dialog cutscenes bring up.

It’s a game about facing your deepest fears and controlling your negativity and sorrow with hope and luminous thoughts of self-forgiveness. While it does touch on sensitive topics such as depression, bullying, and self-harm, the overall direction of the game is a light-hearted one, aimed at giving you constructive advice on how to overcome these emotional struggles.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3158363608
Gameplay-wise, you will control Tristan and guide him through his nightmares to fight off “harvesters” - these are monsters who feed on people's fears, pain and despair, hunting them with the goal of harvesting their souls. A central hub where you can shop for consumables, items, or cosmetics and upgrade your talent tree with the currency you earn from defeating monsters can be visited between the three acts that the game consists of or when the level offers you a portal to the hub. The levels are fairly lengthy, having several doors that lead to other rooms, some of them exiting in the same screen, others leading you to a different segment with a new set of doors. Without a map available, the navigation was pretty difficult for me, especially since the enemies reset every time you come back to the same room. I got lost multiple times, and each time I had to defeat all the monsters again, which on the positive side gave me enough currency to fully upgrade my talent tree. Each level has one invincible enemy that starts chasing you when it detects you and one of the main gameplay mechanics is to manage your detection meter by hiding in other rooms to avoid getting caught.

The game can currently be played on two difficulties: a “story mode”, in which the enemies are more forgiving, and a “nightmare mode” of considerably increased difficulty and extra bosses. There’s no median option between “easy” and “hard”. Additionally, one extra difficulty mode (“Ultra nightmare”) is planned to be released soon. The game has Steam-integrated achievements, but to obtain 100% completion you will not only need to gather all collectible items, weapons and cosmetics and defeat all the bosses, but these have to be done in nightmare mode. Additionally, there’s a speedrun achievement and a no-death run that have to also be done in nightmare mode. Even if the game is rather short (the ending can be reached in ~5 hours), achievement hunters will have to spend a considerable amount of extra effort to obtain that sweet 100%.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3158363466
For me, Noxia Somnia is a mixed bag. I really liked the story and how relatable Tristan (the protagonist) is. Among the many slice-of-life episodes that we get to see from his past, each of us can relate to at least one of them: being called a failure / nobody (or feeling as such), regrets for things that remain unsaid before a loved one passed away, finding out that your friends are not honest towards you, etc. We see Tristan rise above all these situations, finding strength in himself to accept his flaws and work towards bettering his negative thinking, or simply forgiving himself for his failures. The resolution of each of these scenes is uplifting and brings a most-wanted peace of mind.

On the other hand, I am not the biggest fan of the struggle that the game gives you. It’s likely symbolic for everyone’s lives, yet for me, the added frustration of the difficulty mode decreased my overall enjoyment, and not even the outstanding retro pixel art was able to make up for it. The enemies hit hard, the navigation is cumbersome (although it does leave space for a lot of exploration), and your consumables (like the medikit) are limited. However, one thing that I liked about the boss fights was that the cooldown of the next boss's ability is indicated on top of its health bar so that the player can plan ahead and prepare to dodge it. Despite that, the boss battles are rather long and difficult (on “nightmare” mode). There is also no manual save feature, and the checkpoints are rather scarce, which means that the built-in autosave often makes the player replay a lengthy segment.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3158363540
A lot of love has been put into creating this little indie game and this is rather obvious while experiencing the game. However, Noxia Somnia is not a game that could easily satisfy a wide range of players. It’s meant more for those who like challenging story-rich / emotional games and don’t get easily frustrated by repeatedly dying.

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Much like its predecessor Crystar, Crymachina is a story-driven action RPG with great visuals and flavorful anime characters, and overall a game with lots of emotion and personality. Some say that Crymachina is a much-improved version of Crystar, but as someone who played through both games one after another, I beg to differ. Each of them has its own strengths and weaknesses, and picking a favorite among those two is rather difficult.

The two games have unrelated stories and can be played individually from each other. While Crystar’s story is a personal one (the protagonist journeys through purgatory to find her younger sister's soul and bring her back to life), Crymachina’s narrative takes place on a grander scale in a futuristic setting, even if it's not quite a space opera. Crymachina’s core message is also deeply impactful: humanity is not given by being born as a human, but by having a heart, a soul that loves and protects the ones that it cares for.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3149539941
Two thousand years ago, an unknown disease with a 100% fatality rate and a mysterious cause wiped out more than 20% of the population. Because of resource scarcity, the rest of the population engaged in a war and eventually went extinct. In their last moments, the remaining surviving humans created a gigantic space structure (called "Eden") in hopes of preserving their species. Eden was equipped with eight Dei ex Machina (machine gods): self-evolving, artificial life forms whose only purpose was mankind's resurrection. The game’s storyline starts with the sudden disappearance of the first Deus ex Machina, which leads to a war for control among the other Dei ex Machinas, causing havoc on Eden. To overpower the machines, command them back into order and install peace, a "Real Human" is needed, as to machines humans are gods. For this purpose, the eighth Deus ex Machina (Enoa) revives a young human girl (Leben) by encasing her soul into a synthetic frame, essentially transforming her into a battle machine. The team led by Enoa and otherwise consisting of Leben and two other girls, (Ami and Mikoto) will try to make their way through various virtual areas of the space structure, fixing the corrupted machine code and overwriting it with Enoa’s, while also trying to gather enough ExP for Leben (the “chosen one”) to become a "Real Human".

Both games use the same formula of alternating between individual missions and story bits. However, Crymachina’s story is much more ample than Crystar’s, covering most of the gameplay. The missions, which in Crystar took 30-45 minutes each, were spawned over several floors with lots of side paths and had dozens of enemies to fight, are now squeezed into very short and linear runs that usually take less than 10 minutes and end in a boss fight. Barely any enemy is encountered and every mission is basically a straight and quick path to the boss, with some of them having an optional micro puzzle that unlocks a high-level miniboss.

This 180° turn in the design might have been a response to the complaints about Crystar that the gameplay is too repetitive or boring. Personally, I find this decision to strongly downgrade the fun of the game. While the environments are extremely spacious and beautifully crafted, they’re not meant to be explored. You’re not even expected to spend much time traversing them, because there’s almost no one to fight (Crystar has at least ten times more enemies). The boss fights are rather lengthy, thus most of the “action” part of the game will be spent in the boss room. I love the visual novel aspect of the game and that roughly 75% of the time goes into reading through the story, but during the action parts of the game, my fingers were itching for some quick hack-and-slash action and unfortunately, Crymachina failed to fully satisfy this itch. It’s considered a hack-and-slash game, although… there is not nearly enough hacking and slashing.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3149539195
In each of the missions, you will play as one of the three girls, with you being able to freely pick which one of them to bring into battle only during side missions or in the additional content that you can unlock after the main story ends. Unlike in Crystar, where all four playable characters were always available and you were also allowed to switch between them mid-run or even mid-fight, here the main missions are usually locked to a specific character. This means that you will have to equally level up and gear up all three girls to be able to overcome all levels / boss fights, which will require a bit of grinding.

In between missions, the girls gather for a tea party in a virtual garden, where they will chit-chat about their progress or plan their further actions. Most of these cutscenes / dialog sequences are mandatory for story progression, but there are some optional ones with some extra dialogues that add flavor to the game and help build up the characters, all of them being fully voiced. The virtual garden also acts like a main hub for the game, allowing you to transform the items collected from missions into pieces of gear (using the same “cry” mechanic from Crystar), organize your equipment, upgrade combat abilities, consult the encyclopedia of enemies and story concepts, etc.

The combat in Crymachina retains its simplicity from Crystar, which for me is one of the most enjoyable aspects of both games. Your basic melee attack and your ranged attack will fill the damage gauge of the enemies. When it’s filled, you can perform a heavy attack that downs them, followed by a finishing attack on already downed enemies. Rinse and repeat this sequence until the enemy is killed - that’s pretty much all there is to it. You can also dodge attacks by dashing away or sometimes counter them by parrying and additionally make use of three extra abilities (a heal and two damage-increase skills) that can be upgraded with the currency gathered from your runs. The difficulty of the enemies depends heavily on your level: being 2-3 levels lower makes them pretty difficult to kill (requiring lots of attacks) while being 2-3 levels higher can kill regular enemies even with one hit. The bosses hit very hard, and often you can even die after a couple of their hits even if your level matches theirs, and even on the easiest difficulty mode. It’s a game in which you have to constantly dodge the attacks, but fortunately, there’s a pretty clear visual cue that shows you when you're expected to do that. The required reaction times are also very decent, the enemies allow you enough time to dodge their attacks as long as you're not stunned.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3149540022

Crymachina is more of a Yuri visual novel rather than an action RPG. It’s a decent and enjoyable game, but it won’t scratch that itch of mashing buttons and seeing enemies drop dead. The visuals and the music are top-notch, the story is immersive enough (as long as you enjoy lengthy reads), and the combat is fast, fluid and to some extent effortless. Given that it’s a ~20-hour game, with around five extra hours of grinding for 100% achievement completion, I’d say that the asking price of $60 is rather steep. It’s certainly a game worth playing or wishlisting if you’re into some casual, laid-back hack-and-slash action, but it’s advisable to wait for a sale.

You are invited to read my review of Crystar if you want to find out more about it.

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Gods of the Twilight, even in its Early Access stage, manages to deliver a thrilling narrative in which the supernatural, modern technology and the Norse mythology synergize in some unexpected and exciting ways. At the moment of writing this review, two lengthy seasons of this saga are planned to be released on Steam. The first one will contain twenty chapters and is expected to be fully available in 2025. Out of these twenty chapters, just the first five are currently playable, totaling around 100.000 words or ~10 hours of playtime.

In an apocalyptic world in which the Arctic melted, causing the water to cover pretty much the entire planet, humanity resorted to living on synthetic islands and is highly dependent on technological advancements. On one of these islands, New Reykjavík, a strange chain of events appears to prophesize the impending Ragnarök (also known as “The Twilight of the Gods”) - a catastrophic battle where several Norse mythological figures are deemed to perish, bringing the destruction of the world with it. Still unaware that they are gifted with superpowers or that they appear to be reincarnations of Norse gods, two teenagers, Farkas and Althea, find themselves in the middle of a war between several secret factions, some of which send warriors with ability-enhancing exosuits to kill the two protagonists before they awaken, while others try to protect and help them discover the role they’re expected to play in Ragnarök.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3126271822
The narrative takes a while to pick up and the current content is oriented more towards shaping the personalities of the main characters rather than towards deepening or expanding the plot. It’s certainly enough to get a hang of the story, but it’s quite impossible to predict at this time what will happen next (especially with Chapter 5 ending in a massive cliffhanger) or what the actual essence of the plot is. The story has plenty of filler scenes that build up the characters and the relationships between them nicely. The writing is so catchy that you won’t be bored reading through it, even if it doesn’t add any noticeable plot progression.

Gods of the Twilight is a choice-heavy game with consequences that are passed on to subsequent chapters. Some of these can add extra dialogue lines or even entirely lengthy scenes. Additionally, the characters react in various ways depending on the options you pick, this in turn opens new dialogue paths. While at the beginning of the game, you are presented with a choice between playing as Farkas or as Althea, this ultimately has no relevance to the story, as it’s used (at least for now) solely to determine the order in which the scenes are shown. The story alternates between individual scenes shown from the perspective of Farkas and scenes narrated from the perspective of Althea, but regardless of what you pick you will end up seeing all of them in a single playthrough. There are romance options for both Farkas and Althea, and same-gender relationships (or even poly ones) are also possible. Although the game is R-rated, there is no explicit depiction of erotic scenes.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3126271792
The VN is fully voiced and the actors that give life to all these characters are excellently chosen, some of them having previously worked on blockbuster titles such as Baldur's Gate 3, Genshin Impact or SMITE. Gods of the Twilight has a mixed cast of characters belonging to various nationalities, each with individual personalities. Respectively, the voice-overs also have distinctive accents that represent the cultural background and the spirit of the characters. Farkas is a rough guy with a very kind heart which makes him go to great lengths to protect his friends. His voice actor delivers Farkas’ lines in such a perfect mix of decisiveness and softish-sweet voice that it’s impossible to take any offense from Farkas’ foul language (encountered in pretty much any of his lines). On the other hand, Althea’s tone blends politeness and naughtiness, quite representative of her character which is sometimes flirty, sometimes a bit condescending (due to her intellectual upbringing in a rich family), yet modest most of the time. The rest of the main characters, as well as the secondary ones, are equally well-voiced and the musical score is on par.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3126271769
Gods of the Twilight is a VN that certainly deserves more attention, especially since the content currently available only scratches the surface of what seems to be a story of great complexity and proportion. The really good writing combined with a slow-burning narration, an interesting setting, catchy music, excellent voice-acting, animated character sprites and beautiful CGs are what makes this VN truly great. As it uses RenPy as its engine, it has menu options for auto-skipping seen (and unseen) text and auto-advancing to the next line. It also comes with a gallery of CGs and a pretty big codex of concepts used by the narrative.

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Crystar is a casual action RPG whose hack & slash gameplay is fused with ample story snippets, just like dialogues in a visual novel. It’s the kind of game that some people, myself included, love because of how relaxing and uncomplicated the gameplay is, while others complain specifically about its simplicity and repetitiveness.

Crystar tells the story of Rei, a 15-years-old girl who finds herself transported from the living world into purgatory. When the soul of her younger sister is destroyed, she signs a pact with the two demon-overseers of the purgatory to collect 7 “Ideas” These are special crystals that contain the condensed tears generated by the self-consciousness of the purgatory souls reminiscing about their past human life. Rei wants to exchange them for the revival of her sister's soul. Essentially, this means cleaning up the purgatory of restless souls by defeating them in combat, absorbing their memories and thoughts, then purifying them into Ideas.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3118978215
The game is split into several sequential missions, and completing one of them will automatically return you to Rei’s room which acts as a game lobby. Here you’ll be able to purify the essence of the purgatory specters into shards of armor and combine them into pieces of gear that you can then equip. You can also improve them with passive bonuses, check the diary that describes the story events in a condensed form, or visit the codex of discovered enemies and read fragments of their backstories. You can also interact with the adorable Samoyed dog that guards Rei’s bed, or have phone calls with other characters (when this is required by the story).

As the game progresses, Rei gains three other allies (all of them being playable characters), and you will be able to switch to any of them during combat anytime. One is a ranged character, while the other two, just like Rei, are melee, but have different fighting styles and abilities, making them more or less suitable for certain boss fights. The missions are straightforward and usually spawn over several floors, which are sequentially visited. There are different paths to take for each level (all converging to the common exit) and extra rooms to explore harboring a mix of regular enemies and more difficult ones. The map makes it very easy to navigate the levels, as it shows you a top-down schematic of the rooms and the connections between them, together with undiscovered areas or paths.

In terms of the combat mechanics, these are extremely basic. Rei has a light attack and a heavy attack, together with four out of eight possible spells (for each character) that you can discover by progressing through the game (some being upgraded versions of the basic ones), and which you can freely choose to equip. Parrying is not a thing in Crystar; instead, you’ll avoid attacks by dodging. The enemies are very slow and there’s a huge time window (several seconds) from the start of the attack animation to the actual hit, thus you’ll have plenty of time to avoid the damage - although this becomes somewhat more challenging in bigger groups of enemies, as you need to keep track of all their individual timings.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3118978151
Getting hit is not a big problem though, as the enemies do rather low damage. Hitting enemies will recover your SP, while HP can be recovered by eating consumables. These can be configured to be used “automatically”, meaning that whenever you reach a certain HP level an HP consumable will automatically be used. You don’t even need to monitor that, as the game literally makes you invincible as long as you have consumables in your inventory - which can be bought from the peddler at the start of each level, and they’re even very cheap. Attacks will also replenish your “tear” gauge - this is a mechanic that acts like an “ult” (ultimate): when it’s full, you can unleash a very powerful attack that lasts several seconds. There are no attack combos aside from a 3-times light attack, but there’s a hit counter that tracks your successful hits, which is broken if you don’t perform an attack in a 3-second window. The higher the hit count, the faster the “tear” fills.

Four different endings are available in Crystar, the first one reachable after playing through the entire game once, and the rest by replaying the last few chapters. Each of the subsequent playthroughs reveals a new aspect of the story, adding new layers to the plot that are built on top of what was previously revealed during the previous endings. Despite the innocent vibe given by the casual banter exchanged between the cute anime girl characters, the writing often deals with sensitive topics such as suicide, depression, abuse, and regrets but the final revelations have a pretty different vibe and are rather unpredictable because of how random they appear to be.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3118978266
While most reviewers find the repetitive and simplistic combat to be the weakest point of the game, I personally think that the story is the one that lacks cohesion, complexity and clarity. It’s certainly enjoyable as it is, but the characters don’t appear to be consistent throughout the whole game. At times, this disappointed me, but other times they brought in an element of surprise. Another weak point is the lack of diversity regarding the enemy types. Even though the compendium lists 99 enemy types that one can encounter throughout the game, aside from sixteen unique bosses there are only eight categories of enemies, and in each category the enemies are just reskins of each other, otherwise having the exact same set of attacks.

Crystar is a very decent game that will keep you occupied for around 40 hours of story and another 20 hours of grinding if you want to reach 100% completion (max level, all entries in the compendium filled, all missions completed, etc). There aren’t any missable achievements, thus you can easily play it without a guide, although you might need some help after the main story to complete the creature compendium.

However, if you’re looking for an action RPG with a complex battle system - look elsewhere, this isn’t one. If on the other hand, you’re looking for some casual hack & slashing or a hefty story to read - then look no more, you just found the perfect mix of both.

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Created by Animation Arts (the same studio that developed one of my favorite point & click series “Secret Files”) comes Monolith - a classic point & click adventure that dares to break some of the old stereotypes of the genre. The game was announced more than a decade ago and a teaser trailer was released two years after (in 2014), but it was actively developed and reshaped only during the past three years. As such, Monolith combines old-style conventions with newer trends.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3082784959
The story follows Tessa Carter, a research expedition leader whose ship crashed on an unknown planet, causing her to exit the cryosleep she was in. The game starts with Tessa waking up from a coma, with her only immediate memory being about the crash. She then tries to recollect the events that happened during the past days in an attempt to uncover what her team's mission was, where the pilot disappeared to and why the ship's computer didn't perform a safe emergency landing. She slowly remembers seeing a rhythmic light in the distance and deciding to travel there together with her sidekick flying robot, in the hopes that she will then be able to transmit a distress signal to be picked up by a ship that might travel on one of the surrounding flight paths. The mystery deepens when she reaches her destination only to find an abandoned intergalactic station, overtaken by wild vegetation. As Tessa tries to understand what happened there, strange and unexplained occurrences begin to take place, and the player starts questioning what is real or not. Monolith’s storyline is not only a sci-fi one but also one about self-discovery and personal growth. While the plot is overall well-written and deeply engaging with its multiple twists, I found the ending to be its weakest point. It does answer all the questions and wraps up all storylines, yet the final revelation is to some extent predictable and another extent disappointing.

Monolith’s puzzles are somewhere between easy and average to figure out, with only a couple of them being on the unintuitive or obtuse side. In comparison to older point & click games, the locations are rather contained in one-chapter areas and with one exception in which the locations are a maze to traverse, the rooms / scenes are positioned in a way that allows efficient pathing. I also really liked the fact that all the objects to be picked up were distinguishable from the background yet still perfectly blended into it; no pixel-hunting was required as they were in most cases clearly visible. On the other hand, I would have preferred if the items were automatically discarded from the inventory if they had no further use. As it is now, the inventory is often filled with non-relevant items that were previously gathered.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3082784787
The aspect in which Monolith shines is the enigmatic atmosphere that it conveys and the strong cinematic component of the game. It’s probably one of the most cinematic point & click experiences I’ve had, filled with beautifully hand-drawn video cutscenes and ample dialogue snippets. Unlike in older point & click games, where a certain character has multiple dialogue options of which the majority are rather irrelevant to the story, Monolith transforms its dialogues into lengthy cutscenes that will always add something new to the plot or reveal some important piece of information for the story. The game is also fully voiced in both English and German and overall has some decent voice acting (with some small exceptions when the lines voiced by Tessa’s robot companion don’t flow smoothly). Judging by the German demo video, the English voice-overs are much better than the German ones.

For those that prefer a more casual approach at point & click games, three important features have been added to the game: a hotspot button that reveals all interactable items, an in-game walkthrough with only the relevant section visible for the room you’re in, and all minigames can be skipped. Using any of these will not prevent you from obtaining 100% completion, however, all 14 achievements are missable. As there is no chapter selection at the moment, you’ll need to rely heavily on an achievement guide if you want to obtain all of them. The game does have a save feature which is helpful if you want to replay certain bits. It comes in handy for those achievements that require you to solve a minigame in a certain amount of steps / in a specific way, or under a time limit (don’t worry, the latter is very easy).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3082784835
While I deeply enjoy playing point & click games, I dislike certain aspects of the core gameplay of the older games, such as pixel-hunting, lots of back & forth between scenes and illogical puzzles. Monolith successfully managed to avoid pretty much all my pet peeves, while also providing enough verbal guidance for puzzles (during world interactions or when examining inventory items) as well as through the hotspots map and the in-game walkthrough. The game’s difficulty is just about right and it doesn’t interrupt the immersion given by the generous amount of movie-like cutscenes. The story was engaging and kept me on my toes until close to the end. Both Tessa as well as her companion robot are likable characters. Their dialogue exchanges are fun and filled with snappy remarks. All in all, Monolith was a very pleasant experience.

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