In DISTRAINT we play as a young man called Price who longs for a better life, one where he is successful and can afford a higher standard of living - because with wealth comes happiness, right? To obtain the desired recognition from his bosses Price has to work hard and complete given tasks of property seizure without asking, doubting, disobeying, showing compassion… but as Price isn't a heartless individual his first assignment shakes him to the core. Questions concerning ethics and morality of his work resurfaces with a growing urgency and his conscience gets exposed to horrid hallucinations. Each step he takes brings him closer to his desired future life… the question is - does he still long for it for such a price?

DISTRAINT is a pretty good little game. It's a little bit weird to say that I had fun with it, when we consider that it's a psychological horror, but I have enjoyed my two playthroughs and even had a few laughs. The graphic design is rather strange but very appealing, especially the color tinting in different scenes. Music is also fine and helps to create the right mood when you explore, run for your life or just wander drugged up through halls.
Everything in the game is rather simple and yet it manages to deliver disturbing and unpleasant feelings that are closely tied up to our society. Through the character of Price the game holds a mirror to our greedy souls and shows ugly things in it. Whole atmosphere of the game is heavy, unhappy and every time a flicker of hope shows up it gets stamped by an elephant to the ground. So, if you are not feeling well, wait a bit before playing it and go find some cute kittens instead. Otherwise I can recommend it to anyone who's not afraid of taking a glance in the mirror.

When the world find itself at the crossroad and the tension is slowly growing among the people, it's a high time for its divine protector to appear. Celestial elephant Yono is sent upon this world to help the people find balance and lead them into a peaceful and prosperous times. But as Yono is just a small, young elephant it's hard for him to see how he could help anyone. With newfound friends he travels around the world, meets its inhabitants, learns about their hardships and dreams… after all, it's not about solving their problems for them, but more about accompanying them through their life. And Yono has still time to search for his purpose on this word before he becomes a full fledged celestial protector.

Yono and the Celestial Elephants is very charming, relaxing game. Playing as this small blue elephant is probably one of the cutest things I have ever seen. Running around or splashing water from my trunk always brought me a big smile! Also can't forget about the fact that Yono doesn't have hands, so if you take some items you carry it on your head and as you move the item jumps on your head. :D Money that you collect can be spent on changing your appearance and there are a lot of possibilities!

There are three main locations with sub-locations that connect them. You open a quick travel after you successfully go through, so you don't have to walk through them again. But if you have missed a collectible core (that raises your health) you can of course explore some more, but I have usually collected everything without any problem. Another thing you will collect are letters. With enough letters you can restore ancient tomes and learn about your celestial predecessors and their deeds on this world. I have enjoyed reading about them!

Graphics are cute and colorful, the music is cheerful and fits the game well. As for gameplay I'd say it's a 3D sokoban. Most of the time you are required to push some box on a specific place for you to be able to proceed. Every location adds something new - like ice cubes, balloons, chili peppers etc. Most of the puzzles were pretty straightforward, some required a little bit of trying, but the overall difficulty is easy, which is fine as it doesn't disturb the relaxing atmosphere. There is also a little bit of fighting with simple enemies (snakes, rat bandits) and a Boss fight awaits you at the end of each location - you always need a right tactic on them which can be hard to realize (I look at you Dog), but they are overall fun.
I had some problems with controls (played on keyboard) and sometimes it was hard to position yourself on the exact spot required in some moments (when splashing water etc.), but it wasn't any serious game breaking element. I have encountered a bug (?) when I have solved a puzzle in the wrong way and leaving the screen didn’t reset it. Loading up solved it.

I have really liked Yono and the Celestial Elephants. It's cute, funny and heartwarming, if you want to cheer up then this is the perfect game for you. I'd say it's great for the younger audience, but even if you are far beyond this age range you can quite enjoy it. I know I did. :)

As is pretty clear from the game's name, this time we will follow Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to the dangerous moorland in an attempt to save Henry Baskerville from a family curse which haunts them in a form of devilish dog for several generations! In the old Baskerville manor we have to visit long abandoned rooms of Henry's predecessors in a search for clues about the curse and how to break it.

This is truly excellent HOG! I have really enjoyed the setting which is pretty dark with a few scary moments. Graphics are very nice and detailed, music creates a rather ominous atmosphere and suits the game. Whole game is dubbed, so we can enjoy our familiar duo from the main games, which is a big plus!
Game is taking place mostly inside of the manor and its many rooms and we are gonna visit some of them even in the past (yep, time travel)! We have a map so we can see in which room an action is required or which was completed. We can also fast-forward through it. That the room is completed is also shown right on the screen once inside (even on hard difficulty), so no searching for missing objects or hidden object scenes there.

Hidden object scenes are of good quality and with mostly easy finds, although few items required a bit of searching. There is also a huge amount of puzzles and I simply loved it! They were nicely varied, clever and of good difficulty spanning from easy to normal. But two or three puzzles were actually extremely hard and solving them on my own was a real challenge!
To get all achievements you have to play the game two times, because Completing the game in hard mode won't open achievement for Completing the game… yeah, silly. XD When selecting the difficulty at the beginning you are told that on hard are the puzzles and HO scenes harder than on easy difficulty. And let me tell you that it isn't true. I didn't see any change in any of them, the extremely hard puzzles were still extremely hard. But this time I could use the skip button as I already got the corresponding achievements, so no harm done. ;)

I wholeheartedly recommend this game to lovers of HOGs and detective stories with hints of the supernatural. Just beware that the standard rational explanation from Sherlock Holmes doesn't happen this time!

Postmortem: one must die feels more like a demo or a teaser for a bigger game. The concept alone is rather interesting - you are an agent of Death visiting a benefit banquet and one of the persons present is your target. Which life you are gonna claim is completely your decision. You can spend the night roaming around the house (one floor), searching the rooms for clues about this world and talking with the people. Like that you can learn more about the conflict that is currently happening in the country, about their opinions on it, about their future desires or hopes. By talking to them you can also influence them for the better or worse, you will know for certain after your task is done though. With this knowledge you may decide whose death would be most beneficial for the country and then take him. Or you can just enter the banquet and kill the first person you meet. That also works.

So I liked it, but it's over so quickly… there isn't any particular replayability, only if you want to see what impact on the conflict has the death of each person at the party. At the end you are given an article in the newspaper which summarizes what happened at the party and then final words about the conflict and its development. That's all. Maybe if there would be more stages? Like helping to shape the country in the long term through this supernatural selection? As I say, like this it's just a demo.

I liked both the graphics and music. It's also very well written, the lore of the world is interesting with many possibilities on how it could continue. But it's so short, and when I say short I mean like 10 seconds to be done with the game. There are no secrets to uncover, no different future (it all ends almost the same way with only small differences). After you are done you are given an option to compare your results with other players, sadly it didn't work for me. I don't know, if it catches your interest grab it during a high sale.

Starfighter: Eclipse is a BL visual novel game set in the same universe as Starfighter comics of the same orientation. Because of that it's highly advisable to first read the comics, as most of the characters in the game have made their appearance there. The comics are short and completely free on the web, from them you can also decide if you like this particular setting and if yes, you are safe to go with the game.

We play as Helios (code name, everyone has one), a fighter, who is newly assigned to an Alliance starship Kepler. As he barely connects with his navigator, Selene, they are tasked with exploring an alien derelict ship. Simple recon mission turns bad when a member of another team gets hurt by a short circuit. Everyone pulls off from the derelict to the safety of the Kepler, but before long weird things begin to happen on the ship. Could one of them be a saboteur? Well, that's what Helios has to find out. ;)

It's basically a standard visual novel game with many choices and five romantic/just for sex pursuable characters (Cain, Abel, Deimos, Selene, Hayden). The game spans in a horizon of four days, so there is no time for usual dating and most of the time the boys go quickly down to business… if you get my point. ;) Only true everlasting happy end can be achieved with Selene as Cain and Abel are main heroes from the comics and a pair. So even if you end up with one of them (or both) it's only for a brief moment, so enjoy it. ;)
I liked the story, it was nice to revisit the Starfighter universe again. The game is rather short and you can be quickly done with it (there is skip). But to say the truth getting on Deimos's route was pretty painful.

I really like the monochrome graphics with slight hues of other (mainly light blue) colors, in this the game stays true to the comics. Also even if the graphics are slightly different from that in the comics it's still pretty great and most of the CGs are exceptional and very erotic. Music is normal, nothing extra, but the opening and ending themes are pretty awesome and I have enjoyed listening to them very much. There is no voice-acting, but I don't take it as a problem.
My only complaint goes to the lack of save slots, for the amount of choices it’s just not enough… Also more often than I would like the menu interface stopped working - I couldn't get into the save/load menu, to settings, to main menu. Only way to make it work again was to restart the game.

But even with these little flaws I can recommend it to any lover of BL visual novels, you won't be disappointed. Also there are no hard fetish practices or non-consensual sex so it's perfect for newcomers to the genre.