Recent reviews by Aquilla

I played this game when it first went out, when I was in high school. I even still has a box on a shelf so it was huge nostalgia trip for me. And the game is still good. This is an adventure game focused on logic puzzles. This is your first day in magic school, and you found it to be completely empty, except for a talking wolf with a weird backstory… The riddles are nice and aproachable, and if you have problem with them there are hints, and you can even skip the riddle completely (I did it with a couple near the end of the game, because they were getting really complicated). I also like that the game has almost metroidvania feel - with the progress you are unlocking more and more of the school, but this is still one big area (well - two areas - there is a second act in which you are in a different part of the building and you don’t need ever to go back). The graphics are suprisingly nice for such an old game. Characters look terrible, but the backgrounds are still holding up. The story is interesting, the voiceovers are suprisingly good… There are of course some problems - there is a lot of backtracking, the school is huge, so you need to walk some distances. I also had a few crashes, and because this game is from era before autosaving, some of them were painful. But i feel it is still worth playing, if you can live with some extremely uncanny valley character models and remember to save frequently.

It’s not a game, it’s a very short story with a few pictures and a few dialogue choices. The plot was quite simple, but the writing was good and I have a soft spot for noir stories, so I liked that. Besides it’s free, what do you want more?

If you remember American McGee Alice - Fran Bow is something like that but twice as messed up. It’s a bizarre and scary adventure game, with many “Alice in Wonderland” references (I even found a photo of Fran and her friend from school - Alice), and a bit of “Wizard of Oz” wibe. Very violent (cartoony, but not silly, if you now what I mean), and very opened for interpretation. I’m still not sure, what to think about its plot.
From a strict gameplay point of view - a solid adventure game - not to easy, not to hard, with some creative mechanics which lead to interesting riddles.