Update Three Hundred and Fifty-Eight: 7 December 2019

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

This was a pleasant surprise!

I’m not a Woodsy Studios fan - I find the artwork dreadful and the writing clunky. I quit Quantum Conscience unbearable because of how abysmall the thought reading mechanic was, and their penchant for working game mechanics into their VNs to be ill-begotten. They’re not elegantly made, either, with poor UI and more than a couple crashes that lost me progress over my time playing (which is ridiculous it’s a fucking VN, VNs shouldn’t be crashing!!)

And yet. And yet…

I liked this one. I tried playing Serafina’s Saga before, but I stopped because of the above reasons. Serafina’s Crown, however, opened on just enough court intrigue, and was set up in just a certain way, that made me actively enjoy continuing to play, if only to explore the different routes. You play as Odell Perin, a noblewoman fleeing responsibility until she’s brought back to the Head High Bitch Castle and, surprise, is made Regent until she can discover who killed the Queen. The VN+ mechanic in this game is debates, symbolized by a number wheel and a dial. It’s relatively simple - you pick the highest (or lowest) number out of those given to you, hoping its higher (or lower) than the number your opponent chooses. You gain votes based on how much higher (or lower) that number was (or lose votes by the same magnitude). It’s juuuust challenging enough to light some synapses in my brain, but not too hard to be discouraging (or, actually, really being that ACTUALLY important in routes).

This falls just shy of making it onto my VN Masterlist - it’s still clunky, it’s still wonky, and it’s not a shining example of the genre - but I enjoyed playing it and in this, the year of Luigi 2019, that counts for a lot.

Next up: I can hear the clock ticking. Can you?

See you soon!