February '21 Play Log

This has the potential to be an enjoyable game for anyone who enjoys games like House Flipper. Unfortunately in its current state I cannot recommend it.

Pros:

• Variety of stations for renovation
• in addition to the usual ‘clean up garbage and add appropriate furniture’ each station has other unique goals to complete, which I like (and which could be expanded on)
• A scanner helps you find any trash you’ve missed, making it much easier to get 100% completion
• There’s some leeway - you can get 100% completion even if you’ve missed one or two pieces of trash

Cons:

• Controls could be better - they don’t feel as natural and as easy as House Flipper
• It was in a Humble Choice bundle despite it having numerous bugs that made it largely unplayable
• The bugs rendering it unplayable have been fixed, but there are still numerous bugs
• Achievements are broken
• Levels can’t be replayed, so you can’t go back and get 100% completion on previous levels without restarting the game
• The furniture/item requirements for various areas frequently don’t make sense
• Once you put trash in a dumpster it can’t be moved, which can be an issue with the recycling dumpster if you get a piece stuck at the front, forcing you to pay to have it emptied before putting anything else in it

Verdict: 6/10

There are definitely some good aspects of this game, but unfortunately I can’t recommend it. The way it’s split into 2 parts is… different. It definitely has the potential to be an interesting game mechanic, but some other unfortunate design choices prevent me from being able to appreciate it. The biggest flaw is the mechanics. It’s built purely as an FPS. There are a variety of unlockable weapons, melee takedowns are lethal, and apart from crouching there are no stealth mechanics to speak of. Given that you are supposed to be stealthy and kill as few people as possible, this is a very big problem.

Pros:

• Very good voice acting
• For most of the game you have a phone which shows you where enemies are as well as their field of vision, which partly compensates for the lack of stealth options
• The idea of the story taking place in your memories was a really neat idea
• All chapters can be replayed
• Cutscenes are still unskippable during subsequent viewings
• Despite the difficulty getting to it, the good ending is very well done

Cons:

• Previously mentioned lack of stealth mechanics are a problem if you want the good ending
• Most of the ‘evidence’ you can collect seems entirely pointless
• The asylum sections felt like little more than padding
• Until you’ve beaten the first part of the game, not all chapters are replayable
• I found subtitles kept turning off for some reason
• The story failed to keep me interested, though was due in part to my frustration around the game mechanics
• There seems to be little to no difference between the two difficulties

Verdict: 5/10

Entertaining point & click game with plenty of funny moments.

Pros:

• Excellent voice acting
• Good artwork
• Very funny
• Decent story

Cons:

• Has several moments where I restored to using random things together to see what happened
• The last chapter was difficult enough that I ended up using a walkthrough for most of it

Verdict: 9/10

Very cute adventure game with a very good art style that’s well worth playing for point & click fans, though it is perhaps a bit expensive given the short play time.

Pros:

• Beautiful art style
• Very well voice acted
• Puzzle difficulty is very good
• Had quite a few funny moments
• Good story

Cons:

• I wasn’t a big fan of the ending
• Most P&C games have a double-click to run/instantly move to the next screen feature. This doesn’t. While I definitely appreciate the very well done scene transitions, there is enough back and forth that the speed of the scene transitions can get unfortunate.
• Mutually exclusive achievements despite no replay value

Verdict: 9/10

Honestly I was disappointed in this game. It was more depressing than I expected, and not as humorous. My main complaint though is that the puzzles were quite difficult.

Pros:

• I liked how the story was told
• You can interact with the AI to get hints
• The space station the game takes place on is very ‘busy’, there’s lots of stuff lying around and it generally looks realistically lived in

Cons:

• It’s not obvious you can get hints; I found this out by accident
• I found the hints were often just ‘how to get started on the puzzle’, rather than helping with specific parts I was stumped on
• Most of the humour fell flat for me
• The down side of there being so much stuff on the space station is that there’s so many things you can interact with that it’s very easy to miss the one or two things that are actually useful
• The puzzles really are technical, but the in-game technical manual doesn’t always do a great job of explaining systems, some of which are quite complex. It’s easy to get intimidated/frustrated.

Verdict: 6/10

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. It was a wild ride, with lots of unexpected twists and turns. If you enjoy VNs and a good story, I recommend giving this a try. My biggest complaint was the grinding required to get all scenes etc. As much as it’s tempting to ignore this, it did reveal some interesting parts I’d missed and answered questions I had with the story.

Pros:

• Interesting story that has lots of unexpected twists, keeping you guessing until the end
• The characters were well done and all had their own personalities that came through well
• I didn’t come across any translation/grammar/spelling errors with the translation
• Repeated playthroughs using different options can reveal different parts of the story
• I was impressed how well the different parts fit together. With such a complicated story inconsistencies wouldn’t be surprising, but this game did not have any. Even the small details were well done.

Cons:

• It felt like there were a few too many bad endings
• Unlocking all of the tips, scenes, etc to get all achievements is a nightmare, especially if you don’t follow a guide for your first playthrough (which I highly recommend)
• I had a hard time with SSS. I found it often wasn’t obvious how different values would affect the outcome. There were times were I wanted to get or to avoid a specific outcome, and even after finding the correct values via trial and error it still wasn’t obvious why those values worked. Answer mode had the same problem.
• Most of the tips seemed a little pointless since it just repeated explanations given in game
• I came across some points where skipping didn’t want to skip scenes I’d seen before. This was especially true in the xtend episode.
• This game is supposed to be set in the near future, but I found both of the male characters sexist, as well as some of the writing. For example, some of the girls being ‘naturally frail’, but not having any health concerns? That’s just BS.
• The skipping is not fast enough given how much you have to skip when doing repeat playthroughs. I’d often start skipping then go and do something else while I waited.

Verdict: 7/10