The Crossroads

Author: Seraphinite
Availability: Free, Download
Format: Visual Novel
Genre: Supernatural
Rating: Teen

Found at seraphinite.itch.io

My Scores (Out of 5):

Writing: 3
Art: 4
Gameplay: 3
Romance:  2.5  (“Simple fare, but not bad.”)

Summary

In The Crossroads, you are Tiana/Insert-Name-Here.  When your life starts crumbling around you, you suddenly get an opportunity to make a little money by house-sitting a mansion in the middle of nowhere.  Apparently, the mansion's ownership is in dispute, and this fact seems to have the mansion's only two staff members – the gardener and the steward – on edge.  But, what does any of it have to do with you or your presence here?”

Review

The Writing

One thing that sticks out about the writing is its use of sensory details.  While the prose in What's Your Name? tries to do the art's job for it by describing visuals, the writing in The Crossroads complements its art by describing things like taste, smell, or feel: things that the art can't really convey.  The result is a fuller, more rounded experience.

The story itself is simple and straight-forward: while the nature of the house and servants is concealed from the main character until the end, I wouldn't call its revelation a twist.  There are also no clear stakes until that revelation, and even then, whether those stakes seem high or low just depends on how you feel about the men's situation.  It's about as low-tension as Nacira, and whether this makes it calm and relaxing or dull and boring depends entirely on the player and their mood.

My only real complaint about the writing is that even though the guys have clearly defined and differing personalities, some sections of dialog are obviously copied and pasted from one character to the other.  This is most glaring at the end, when the PC's chosen suitor gives her the exposition.  Even their actions, before and after, are mirrored with no variation.  While I wouldn't describe either of them as being out of character in those moments, it still feels unfair to have them suddenly become interchangeable; a little flourish or two to remind us of their personalities would have made it better, and having the events unfold completely differently for each would have been best, I think.

The Art

It's wonderful to see hand-drawn backgrounds again, and both the backgrounds and the characters are beautifully done.  The art style here is more naturalistic, which is also pleasantly surprising.  I don't dislike the more anime/manga style that most of these games have, mind you; but after so many of them, it's good to be reminded that other art styles exist.

The music and sound effects were nice, but there were many points where all the sounds just ended, leaving dead air. It was a bit off-putting.  Also, the game uses an instrumental version of the song “Donna Nobis Pacem” (literally “Give Us Peace”) quite a bit.  The first time I heard it, it seemed thematically appropriate for the conversation being had; by the fifth time I heard it, I realized it was just “pretty harp music” for the game's score.  Ah, well.

The Gameplay

The Crossroads lets you customize your character's appearance a bit, with choices of skin tone, eye color, hair color, and freckles.  These choices show up in the CGs as well as your sprite, although the art gallery only displays the default version.

There is some shaping of the PC's personality, too, throughout the game.  Most of the choices seem to be about establishing your character's inner thoughts, which in turn affect how certain conversations unfold and how the suitors describe you.  While there are some obvious decisions on who to spend time with and whether to leave, I suspect the subtler ones are only for flavor and have little or no impact on the ending: you can be praised just as much for being optimistic as for being blunt and straight-forward.  Overall, this game seems to be more about the journey than the destination.

TL;DR:

The Crossroads is a nice little story with a very relaxed feel to it.  The art is lovely, though it doesn't indulge in any grand vistas, and the gameplay is satisfying with a lot of room for customizing the experience.  The experience is sweet, cozy, and doesn't overstay its welcome.

As usual, this is only my opinion: you may think this game is worth being cooped up in a house all day, or you might want to leave it and never look back.  Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

Spirited Heart

Author: ?

Availability: Demo/$19.99 Full Version, Download

Format: Raising Sims

Genre: Fantasy

Rating: Teen

My Score: 2.5 out of 5

Found at: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/ OR http://www.winterwolves.com/

Summary:

Spirited Heart is a raising sim, much in the style of Princess Maker. You play a girl in a fantastical setting, on your own for the first time. Work jobs, take classes, and see what you end up becoming.

Review:

First of all, let me just express my appreciation for the art; it’s clean, it’s professional-looking, and I quite like it. The layout’s nice, too. All in all, I give the art a 4. It is anime-based, as many of these games seem to be.

The writing is decent, and I like how the creator justifies the stat changes in-story. I particularly like how you can tweak some of your character’s stats by reliving “past events”, ala Choice of the Dragon. As an aside, why is it that fantasy settings have silly-sounding place names? I can’t really fault the game’s creator here, but it’s something about the genre that struck me while I was playing.

So, we have nice art and good writing, and then it all gets shot by the gameplay.

I HAte the gameplay here, with a capital ‘H’, and an ‘A’ for good measure. On the one hand, it’s cool that you can pick one of three races, choose her general background, and then further tweak her history if you like. That part is great. But as for the game proper, everything is much too random.

Want to work a job? Roll a die to find out if you did well enough to raise stats and/or get paid. Want to find romance? You have six potential suitors: Just keep hacking away at certain jobs and hope their associated Random Events eventually show up. Repeat until your health is low and your spirits are crushed, then waste your time and money resting so that you can start all over.

Granted, it’s fairly realistic to meet someone randomly. However, once you’ve become aware of that person, it should be easier to intentionally track them down to initiate interaction; especially when you know what places they frequent! In other words, if Elf Boy really does sing at that bar every single day, then I should be able to just click something like “Go Talk to Elf Boy” or “Invite Elf Boy over for beer”, instead of just mashing the “Work last job” button over and over until the game’s D20 (or whatever it is) finally lands on Elf Boy’s magic number. The problem with having every aspect of a relationship left up to chance is that it is, though statistically rare, entirely possible to roll an entire string of 1s, which means that no matter what you do, the relationship won’t progress at all. That. Sucks.

All in all, this game had some good ideas; and the addictive nature of multi-ending games means that, if the full version were free, I’d probably have played through it a few times despite the frustration. In my opinion, though, it’s not worth paying for. I don’t even know* what the price of the full version is; but as it stands, I wouldn’t give a dollar for it.

Of course, all this is just my opinion. Others may find the game more enjoyable than I did. Feel free to try it out and discuss your experiences in the comments.

*ETA: After writing this post, I looked up the price for the info section at the top.