In this game we assume the role of a young lady bored to death by her daily routine. To change it she quits her job and moves to a quieter city called Greyfox. It's actually a retirement place for all of the bitter, crazy and hateful old people you can find. First exploration gets her in touch with some of them and shows us their great hospitality. Not discouraged by it at all she rents a room in the hotel and visits a local pub where she meets a mysterious women who ask her what if she could live their lives?
This sets things into motion as we are going to influence the last day in the lives of four miserable old citizens of Greyfox. They all have their own storylines filled with serious problems that haunts many families over the world. We are presented with moral choices which will shape our own life for the better or worse.

So, not really sure what to say about it. It's rather short, you can rush through it in under two hours for sure. I like to explore and click on everything I see, so I took my time. There are many things you can play with, which I liked, because I usually miss it in other RPG maker games. Your "playground" is only the city with a few houses and local buildings - pub, hospital, grocery shop, funeral home, retirement house and hotel. Not all of these places are accessible right away, some will open only in certain stories. Graphics is average, mostly standard RPG maker assets. The story is linear without any deeper development, you can only slightly change the ending outcome. Also we know nothing about our heroine, can’t connect to her properly then (thought it was a guy to be honest).

The idea is interesting, but it needs to get developed some more. I don't know what the message of the game was - that lives are not black and white, that people should talk to each other more, that we should value what we have and enjoy our lives? With some additional work it could be a rather good game, right now it's just like some demo or a teaser for a bigger game.

So this game is basically a younger sibling of Merchants of Kaidan and, even though it was released a year later, there are a lot of its features missing in 16bit Trader, which is strange and sad. I have played Merchants of Kaidan in 2019 and have rather enjoyed it, here is my final report.
The story is pretty much similar to Merchants, your father gets scammed by his trading partner and ends up dead. As you are stripped of money and status you have to slowly rise in ranks to be finally able to exact a revenge on him.

I will first mention the positive things. The visuals are nicely colorful, they are also simplified in comparison to Merchants (which is not a bad thing per se). The music is also very charming. And that's probably it, all other things about the game are bad or very bad.

16bit Trader is a trading game (surprise). You have to ride through the cities and sell low bought stuff for the highest price. But it's almost impossible. You will barely make any profit as the prices are rising with your travels… example: city A - you buy food for 10 coins, you will be able to sell the food for profit in city K, all the other cities in between had the price of the food constantly rising. It works even the other way around, when the prices are dropping they are dropping in line, so for you to make profit of a higher valued stuff you have to travel far far away. Here comes another problem though - you have to pay for your travels. You can't just ride around the map to wait for a good price as you would just go bankrupt. Solution is to not concentrate on trading as your main income in 16bit Trader. This wasn't a problem in Merchants really, each city or village had a different price set and although the prices were developing over the time, you had no problems sustaining your income with trading. Also you could see the price history 7 days back.

Your main income in 16bit Trader is going to be diamonds which you are going to find in old mines. For you to be able to find more than one diamond you need a map. And a lot of mercenaries. You can find both in larger cities. In the tavern you have to find the right guy and buy him a drink, he will then sell you the map (I have noticed that usually only the guy in white had the map for sale, so if he wasn't there upon my arrival I would have just reloaded my save). Mercenaries influence your diamond income, other than that they are good for nothing in comparison to Merchants. So, if you have a map and a lot of mercenaries you can find a true fortune in the mines. It's also random based so you can try your luck with reloading. There is no limit to the number of mercenaries you can have. Only limit is your money, as you pay much more for travels when you have a bigger squad. As the mercenaries are useless and only good for mine searching, it's advisable to hire them in the city before the mine, travel with them there and then kick them out. Important note, you can buy and kick out 5 of them at once, so it's a lot of clicking. Really, a lot of. Also, when I realized that I need only diamonds I thought about going to mine, back to the city and then back to the mine. But even though you spent days on your travels the mine wasn't restored and upon my return nothing was found. You have to be constantly moving and visit different mines regularly.

In Merchants you could enter the mines and let your mercenaries fight with the monsters hiding there, if you were successful, you reestablished the mine and had a stable income. Another possibility was turning an old ruin into a winery, again for a stable profit. Oh and mercenaries were not useless, they were also protecting you on your travels against thieves or angry animals. In 16bit Trader you don't have any protection, even if you have thousands of them, you will still get robbed. The thieves are pretty greedy and when you make some nice profit they will jump on you on your next move, only protection is to load up your previous save until your road is clear.

Another possibility to make some income are side quests, which you can obtain from characters in larger cities. They consist mostly of “go there”, “grab something” and “come back”. Your reward isn't that high though so you can't win the game by doing only the quests. Also, on your travels a lot of things can happen and you can be delayed on your route. The good thing is that the merchandise is not deteriorating so you can go around with the same food you bought on your first day. There are only bad things that can happen to you in 16bit Trader. On the other hand in Merchants there were a lot of good things too, like you could compete or bargain for high valued merchandise and this way you could make a fortune. There was also a luck system which influenced what kind of situations will most likely happen to you.

As you can see you have to save a lot, because the luck based chance is working mostly against you here. There are only four save slots (have seen some discussion that only two of them are working, but I have used all four without any problems). You can save whenever you want, but beware that the game automatically saves your progress on your city (or village, mine, ruins) arrival. The game saves it on your last selected save slot. So, if you don't relocate your save slot, you can't load it up after being robbed, because it will be saved after it. What you have to do is to always save two times in the city you are leaving. One will be your safe spot which you will load up when things turn out badly. The other one will be rewritten upon your arrival to the next city. And like this you have to do it the whole game if you want to win. You could work it out with just two spots, but I found it safer with four, because like this you can try for bigger income from mines. ;)
There are achievements, all of them working. Some are tricky, also beware that if you raise enough money to win the game in one attempt, you will skip all related achievements for rising in ranks. You will then need to reload your progress and make smaller profits (you can't divide your diamonds, so if you have thousands of them you will sell them all. Wait for their lowest price and pray you don't overcome the 1 million mark, that's what I did anyway) or start again.

All in all, 16bit Trader is missing so much content of it's older sibling that one has to wonder why it exists exactly. There are no season changes, no helpers or advisors that can raise your stats, no artifacts or other items you can sell for profit. Story is rushed without any proper progress. There is no point in trading as you can't make any money from it and you can exploit the mines for diamonds…
Merchants of Kaidan is definitely a better choice, because even if it's not perfect, it's not punishing you on your every step and it was rather enjoyable.

Have to say that I was rather disappointed by Shadwen, although the game isn't per se bad. My expectation is to be blamed for it, because I thought it will be something more like my favorite Thief… only similarity is that your main objective is to remain unseen.

Most distinctive part of the game is the time control, when you are able to rewind all your actions. More precisely you are required to use this feature, because you will get in tight spots sooner than later and the only way out of them is gonna be the rewind. Also the time is frozen when you stop moving, if you are waiting for the guard to go away you have to hold a button to make the time run or you need to move. Like this you can freeze even in the air. Ledges too far away from each other for you to jump on them? No worries, just jump, freeze the time and then pull yourself forward with your rope. Need some adjusting to this system as the constant motionless can be somehow frustrating.

Game begins with a little girl Lily making her way through a city full of guards towards an old cemetery where she finally finds something to eat. As she stuffs a few apples inside her pockets she gets accused of thievery by a grumpy guard. Before something terrible can happen to Lily, a mysterious woman rescues her. She has a mission, a vendetta against the king, which now gets more complicated as little Lily decides to accompany her.

So, the game is divided into 15 stages and your main goal is to get to the end of each stage with both of the girls without raising any alarms. You can control only Shadwen, Lily will act on her own. You can select Lily's behavior in the main menu - she will stay on the spot until you command her to move or she will follow you all the time (could be problematic if you aim for everyone dead without letting Lily know). This doesn't have any particular disadvantages, because only Shadwen's presence can make guards suspicious. If some guard gets in Lily's way, she just turns around and runs back to the nearest safe spot, so you don't have to be overprotective of her.
As Shadwen you can sneak around on the ground, hiding behind barrels or staying basically invisible in haystacks or bushes even if the guard is almost standing on your toes. Most sneaking games make hiding rather ridiculous, but this is just too much, see my screenshot. But the best approach is from above, like this you can easily observe moving patterns of the guards and wreak an havoc among them.
You are gonna meet only two types of enemy - a simple unit with the same look all the time and an armored one. Shadwen has two possible ways of dealing with them - kill or let live. Guards can be killed directly only from behind or above. You can also push some boxes on their heads or lure them near an explosive barrel. The other way is more complicated as you can't just stun them, you have to lure them away by making a noise or moving some boxes in their field of view. After their suspicion calms down they return to their previous spot, that means that you can move with Lily only by short sections as she wouldn't be able to run for so long uninterrupted.
Shadwen has only a dagger for her protection and rope with a grapple with which she can attach to any wooden surfaces, like that she can get above guards or use items for distraction. You are able to build deadly traps or decoys from items you find in chests hidden around in each stage, if you want to spice things up. Truth is that I haven't used it, not even once. If you are making a peaceful run most of the things will be useless, when on a killing spree I found it quicker to just jump or drop something on them. There are also no achievements for trap kills that would inspire you to play with them a little… and as you have to make two full playthroughs, which are completely the same… I just wanted it to be quickly over.

As for the story… there is some. There are short spoken intermezzos between each stage, also the guards talk among themselves about the events that were leading towards this night, but it's not enough. Later in the game they also repeat quite a lot. I thought that there would be hidden messages or some lore that we would uncover, sadly not. We won't properly learn Shadwen's background story too, it's all said only in hints. For me it wasn’t really satisfying.

All in all, the game isn't really bad and I liked the scenery, there is just a lot of wasted potential. You basically have 15 logic puzzles of getting an object from point A to point B with the same mechanic all the time. There is no real cooperation between Shadwen and Lily besides the necessity of being together at level checkpoints, where you need to open the door together (only twice will Lily actually help you to progress as she can squeeze through small spaces), this could have been developed so much better. Enemies don’t offer any proper challenge and they move horribly slowly. There are no extra challenges or time limits, no hidden secrets or collectibles, the story is rather shallow. If you aim for 100% achievements you have to play it one more time without any difference except for the fate of the guards. Same stages, same tactic… sadly it can quickly turn into a chore instead of fun.

As Roseangela Blackwell scatters the ashes of her recently deceased aunt Lauren and says her last goodbye, her life loses one of the few certainties she has. She returns to her home, unrecognized by most of her neighbors, where just the broken television and plastic plant are waiting for her. Her mourning has a short duration as she gets commissioned by her chief editor to write an article about a young student who jumped to her death from a dormitory roof. Even though she tries to be strong, all the stressful events of the day resurface as a painful headache. Instead of a well deserved rest upon her home return she is greeted by a ghost. His name is Joey Mallone and he is a spiritual guide of her family.
As Joey isn't going anywhere and is deeply connected to Rosa, she has to quickly find solid ground and start cooperating with him, because there is maybe something more to the suicide of the young girl… and as a medium she has the ability, and duty, to help lost souls to move on.

The Blackwell Legacy is an adventure game focusing on investigation and combination of clues more than on simple item using (there still is some). Rosa makes notes about important facts in the case and to proceed you have to correctly combine these notes which will then open new talking options. Sometimes you can get stuck, because you tried to combine them too soon and later you didn't think about it again. In the end it works the same way as in any other point-and-click adventure when you get stuck - talk with everyone and try everything on everything. ;)
If you want you can learn more about Rosa's family from Joey. He won't share much though, as he has some painful memories on them too. His silence arouses my curiosity even more. :)

Highlights of the game are the well written characters, especially our main duo. I love how Rosa is an introvert, unsocial and somewhat lost when dealing with others. Her little smile when trying to play it nicely is just precious. Joey is more complicated and shows us the many sides of his personality, even the unpleasant one and I have to say that in some moments he gets rather scary. The voice acting is perfect and brings the characters to life.

The game won't take you long to finish, for 100% you have to play it once more with a commentary though. Totally recommend playing it after, because you can spoil yourself (surprise, right?). The commentary was also great fun, especially how the author apologized for many things in the game that he would do now completely differently (long talking sequences without anything happening etc.). I didn't really mind any of it. The only thing that bothered me a little was the loud music at some points where the voices got muffled by it. Sadly, you can’t change it. Anyway, the commentary offers a great insight into the author's mind and shows us what kind of decisions were made in the creation of the game.
I have enjoyed it very much and can't wait to see how the story develops for Rosa and Joey.

Nairi is a small girl from an upper cast of Shirin living in seclusion from the outer world. That comes to an end as her house gets suddenly stormed by city guards and her parents are thrown into prison. For her protection she gets smuggled out of the city. Caravan taking her to a safe place is overrun by bandits though and she ends up as their hostage. As Nairi is a clever girl she manages to escape her captivity, not far mind you, but with this courageous act she earns the respect of the bandit group. They accept her among themselves and although she enjoys their company and new found friendship she is still haunted by the fate of her parents. It's decided then, Nairi has to return to the Shirin!
With the help of Rex, friend of our bandit group leader, she has to find a way back to the upper district. It won't be easy though as there are many obstacles on her way - a poor district full of gangs fighting for territory, guards searching for her, a mysterious masked man hiding in the shadows. And to spice it up some more there is also a dark prophecy about the city and mysterious powers manifesting within Nairi!

Nairi is a cute little game with charming graphics and music, well written characters and interesting lore. The city of Shirin is very lively and you are going to meet a big cast of characters, some minor and some more important. There are both humans and anthropomorphic animals (and they are really cute). It's mostly a visual novel filled with logical puzzles, hidden objects and classic item combinations. Puzzles are of a good difficulty and are pretty straightforward, yet some of them offer a good challenge too. The mood of the game is pretty much cheerful and positive, although some darker themes resurface from time to time (which honestly surprised me a little as one wouldn't expect it from such a game).

It all ends pretty much on a cliffhanger, luckily sequel should be released this year! Can't wait. ;)

It's hard to rate this game as it's definitely not for everyone. You have to be a rather empathetic, open-minded individual with a feeling for modern avant-garde art. And you also need to be on the same imagination and experience line with the creators, otherwise all of the symbolism and hidden meanings will just pass by you. As I am nothing like mentioned above, and apparently not enough clever to connect all the dots, my experience with the game turned out to be pretty much painful.

Whole game is divided into 5 chapters with 4 interludes and an epilogue. Your main goal is to help Conway make a delivery on a mysterious address which isn't showing on any maps. Only way to get there is by Zero, a hidden route running somewhere beneath Kentucky. At first he has only his truck and an old dog accompanying him, but as the story goes on he will join with other strangers searching for Zero. Their route wouldn't be without any problems and a lot of the events will uncover hidden secrets of their past. Nevertheless they have to keep moving on and persevere, after all there is a delivery to be done.

Kentucky Route Zero is basically a text game and there is a lot of it. Really a huge amount and every bit of it is filled with philosophical, rhetorical, hypothetical and existentialist talks that don't offer any kind of outcome. Even though most of the main ideas of the game could have been said clearly and straightforwardly, they are all instead wrapped in tons of meaningless words. All of the mysticism and eerie feeling in the game that fills you at the beginning gets drowned by it and all that remains is the aftertaste of pathos.
Another problem of the game is that these texts are taken out of the context, but context is rather important for you to make an opinion about the problem and then make some decisions. Here are choices tossed at you randomly under the premise of freedom and false player ability to shape the heroes. You are walking on a predefined line and the outcome of your choices is mostly cosmetic and doesn't carry any deep impact. Kentucky Route Zero is most likely meant to be played a few more times as you can select different characters and view some situations from their perspective. But, honestly, I can't imagine playing through it a few more times (it was enough to play the fourth chapter again). After the first chapter it quickly becomes boring and tedious. To tell the truth I don't care about the other characters, I don't even properly know why they are there… it wouldn't make much difference without them there. I was truly interested in Conway and his story, but all you get is a disappointment.

So, the graphic design is pretty interesting and I really liked how they worked with the lights and shadows. Images were also intertwined in some scenes and it was truly imposing. There are few songs and they are pretty good, but most of the time you get silence or static sounds. You can drive your truck on the map and find some events there, the only problem is they don't add anything to the story, so if you miss them you don't lose anything… you actually save some time. In the last chapter you get to play as a cat and she is truly adorable, so I have enjoyed that.
But other than that it was just full of long and painfully boring uninteresting stuff to read. Interludes are also pretty weird and only managed to raise my stress. They say this game is more about you (the player) than the characters in game… if that's true it just prove that I really don't understand an experimental alternative art.