Y'all thought we were saving the cats by finding them, but they actually explode into confetti after you click on them. Also, these cats have crazy, sci-fi adjacent names. Imagine naming your real life cat "Ravager" or "Sentinel."

Basically an owlyboi kind of game without the futanari/femboy kink. Between the AI-generated CG art and the spirit in question having no real personality of her own, everything about this one is one big skip. Ran incredibly poorly in the menus, too, for some reason.

I first watched a playthrough of this game a few months ago and was hooked on the creepy atmosphere with none of the ever-present time-limited or survival-adjacent sequences, so when my friend Saku had a key on hand, I knew I wanted to play it for myself. VHS was already a dying medium by the time I was born, but my grandma still had a player and a sizable collection of tapes, so this was a relatable enough premise (even if obscure local TV channels like the one Amanda would air on aren't a thing to begin with over here). This is a rather simple puzzle game that has you interact with various episodes of the show to progress. My opinion is unfairly biased, because I did use a guide while playing, but I don't agree that all or most puzzles in the whole game are obtuse; just about every solution that comes to mind is featured somewhere within the relevant tape. Sadly, this game seems to be considered by some as "YouTuber bait", as it is just a step away from being merely "Chapter 1" or "Episode 1" rather than a standalone, considering how little information there is to digest regarding the lore. The sequel came out a little over a week ago (a year and a half after the first game), so I may reserve my judgment for when, if ever, I play that (and the inevitable further sequels).

This short adventure game has an absolutely gorgeous pixel art style and a great atmospheric soundtrack; it's hard to believe that it was originally made in just one month for a game jam. The story element, however, feels rather obscure - while some of it is right there and obvious enough, the rest is (to me at least) just kind of confusing. Recommended only if you don't suffer from thalassophobia.

As per the store page, this is just a spin-off story, released to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Bloody Painter franchise (?), which I don't know at all, so forgive me if I've missed anything. You play as a nameless girl, who wakes up in a mysterious room underground. You have been kidnapped by a mysterious, mask-wearing man and soon enough, you learn from him that you have to behave for at least seven days if you don't want your corpse to be left to rot after he kills you. It's a rather simple horror VN with a twist: if you make all the right choices, you'll get the guy to warm up to you ever so slightly, which is the prerequisite for all the good endings. You can't die later than on day three, which I found a tad disappointing; I love horror VNs that go crazy with it and let you die at pretty much every opportunity, but here this was underutilized and almost all deaths were identical. The character art is solid, same for the backgrounds. The music is generic, royalty-free stuff. The translation is okay (but still, bonus points for misspelling "hungry" as "hungary", I never thought I'd encounter that out in the wild). Interestingly enough, Bloody Painter is fully voiced, though only in English. Unexpected, considering it's a Chinese franchise? I'm not big on serial killers and other openly dangerous character types as love interests, but I don't mind a creepy rendezvous like this once in a while. If you played this one already, you might be able to guess that my favorite ending was the one where two years after making her escape, MC starts receiving roses from Bloody Painter every Halloween.

It was supposed to be another normal, boring night for Amy: come home from work, eat dinner, watch a movie or play some games until her friend Liv wakes up, chat with Liv, then go to sleep. However, she received a weird email from Blaise, whom she recognized as an old friend from school. Blaise claims to have sent out emails to all school friends, asking to join his new group chat and reconnect, hoping for a reunion in the near future. Soon enough, Amy will learn that the weirdest thing about the group chat isn't everyone being online after 2 AM…

This one has a simple setup and throws you right in. Amy's at her computer, listening to some chill, lo-fi-adjacent music and getting to know her new-old, old-new friends. Something I noticed people who reviewed the game didn't like was being forced to type out Amy's messages perfectly before they can be sent. At some point later, an option to have them typed out automatically was added. Personally, I didn't mind that one bit. In fact, that's the one thing I was really interested in; it's much more satisfying to type out an actual sentence than keysmash continuously for the message to show up, like in the Emily is Away series. That being said, Amy is quickly faced with an explanation for what's going on, and that's when the game quickly fizzles out. I noticed a review entertaining the thought that it would be more interesting if the people in the group chat were just regular people who lost their minds as opposed to ghosts that decided to target Amy in particular. This may have ended up much more chilling, especially because at least one of the three ghosts should have no desire to target Amy (she's currently lacking direction in her life and she doesn't seem to have any specific dreams). Still, this was more my speed than the other VNs I've played this month.

In this short horror puzzle game, you play as Lin Lixun, a newbie policeman who stumbles his way into a re-investigation of a peculiar murder case. I guess I could say that this gameplay style is easily one of my preferred for horror games specifically; exploring locations to piece clues together, interspersed with simple puzzles every once in a while. There was only one puzzle I couldn't figure out right away and I only solved it by chance. That being said, I think I was mostly out of it while playing, as it took me an embarrassing amount of time to associate the names with characters they belonged to. Because most of them don't have sprites, however, and are hardly shown otherwise anyway, I think it would be a good call if each speaker name had its own color, as opposed to the three or four colors being used at all times. I also made it worse for myself by pausing the game halfway and accidentally picking it back up a whole week after I initially started it. The first half is very loaded, the second one not so much. The translation is good, but every once in a while, some stilted or unnatural phrasing turns up, as it goes with Chinese to English translation. In the end, I wasn't really into it, but if you feel like a 2D sidescrolling horror puzzle game set in China with supernatural elements, feel free to try it. And because it's only about 3-4 hours long, do yourself a favor and set aside enough time to play it in one sitting.

It should have been a Halloween like any other, but ever since her father passed away four years ago, Elle has never been the same. Today, she tries talking to him for the first time and then, her fate brings her and a mysterious girl, Lucia, together. This was a wonderfully heartrending story of two strangers bonding over their grief, asking hard questions and giving painful answers. It's not overlong or preachy by any means, but if you happen to be coping with grief at the moment, you may want to wait until you feel comfortable reading. I hate to admit it, but I have recently been thinking about mortality to a degree that scares me, so I think this "fit the mood" somehow, so to speak. As per the credits, this story seems to have been inspired by real events and feelings of one of the devs, so I would like to thank them for putting such a vulnerable part of themselves out there. It's not often that a story acknowledges just how closed off we are from each other past the usual pleasantries without swaying too hard in the other direction and coming off entirely unrealistic.

What can I say? I noticed there was a Halloween-themed one and I bought it.

Already played one of these earlier in the month, but I figured there's no reason to keep it unplayed in my library until next year. This was big enough that it kept me looking. You can zoom in quite a lot, too. The capybaras are spread out enough and there's a few other things to find, which I also like. The BGM is a full on, upbeat, Halloween-esque track that doesn't loop every few seconds like the simple ditties this subgenre started out with.

Thanks to Inversed, for just 15 minutes, you too can assist a 19th century poet as she writes supposedly the most important work of her life. Although this VN was made for a jam with strict limitations, the main character is fully voiced, which I would never neglect to notice. The word choice minigame is likely not as robust as it seems on the surface, but that's not a big deal. The UI design is simply gorgeous. On its own, this didn't really wow me (been there, done that), but it's important to acknowledge that this is just a small part in a bigger puzzle ("The Purgatoryverse", a shared universe for all of Tymedust Games' works), which I suppose I've only just started piecing together.

This one did an okay job of setting up a dark and moody atmosphere. Half an hour wasn't enough to learn a substantial amount about the characters' circumstances, however, so it didn't do much for me.

A simple RPGMaker game where you have to help Jake find all the pieces of his Halloween costume before he can go to the party. To get all three endings: 1) complete the outfit and leave, 2) complete the outfit, collect all candy and leave, 3) complete the outfit, collect all candy and unlock the trunk in the bedroom. Both the environment art and character art are great, but the game is far too short to be paid (and judging by some reviews, it used to be), so I'm glad to have found it after it was changed to F2P. The dev claimed Jake's story would continue, but it's almost been a year and it doesn't seem like anything is in the works. Oh well.

A short kinetic novel about a witch who lives in the forest just outside a city (or was it a town?) and makes an unexpected friend. Inoffensive and rather bland. The choice between ADV and NVL-style presentation at the start was a nice touch, but I found myself wishing for more BGM variety.

Ever since I started playing Coloring Pixels, I've been hungry for more while they're busy working on new packs. I wanted to recommend this one, but even though it has its own aesthetic and a robust options menu, it's got to be running on spaghetti code. During every session, it would crash multiple times for unknown reasons (there was an info window for it, but it's not like I could have done anything to warrant the crash). The best I got was a suggestion from someone on the forum to turn off the particle effect, but in the end that was more of a placebo effect. To add insult to injury, if you barely started an image when the game crashed, it may not have saved at all. Some of the options wouldn't save either, I had to turn down the ambience SFX every time I opened the game up again. Play this one only if you're crazy for pixel coloring.