Recent reviews by charlotte

Really adorable stuff. Hard to think of a more succinct way of summarizing my feelings after playing through it.

The battle mechanics aren't exactly anything flashy, but they more than get the job done. It's satisfying building up your skill tree, even if realistically speaking, you won't be using much more than the standard slash and, occasionally, the Flinch or Sleep spells by the later sections and even during the final boss. It's all a pretty good foundation to build off of if the devs decide to work on another turn-based RPG at some point in the future.

Story and art direction are the strong suits of Grimm's Hollow. Very endearing setting, with lots of great character designs, and I'd definitely love to see more work from the artists involved. The story itself was very sweet, even if there was more telling than showing than I care for at points, and after getting every ending, I've been left pretty smitten with the protagonist. The one sour note I can think of is that it was a noticeably short experience (I got all of the endings in about 3 hours), but considering that it's entirely free, that's hard to complain about at length.

Very solid all in all. Hope the developers make more games in the future,

Baba is Me
Brain hurting is also me
Good game is Baba

I don't think I've ever encountered such an 'outside the box' puzzle game, one that rocks its simplistic visual style really well. Definitely hope to see more from this team.

To speak briefly on this game's flaws, it is buggy, to say the least. But with time comes improvement, and I'm certain the next entry in Daedalic's library will be more mechanically sound.

The writing of this game is where it stands out more than anything, having charmed me in an instant with the level of thought put into the examinations and conversations Edna gets into. Though it did suffer the obvious woes of being a directly translated game, it's a rare exception of this pitfall in being written so well that the occasional canned line didn't detract from it. A proper localization team would be recommended for future projects, though.

Visually, we're not talking about a home run, but it gets the job done. Simple art styles are perfectly fine with me, and Edna's character design is still one I'm fond of. More frames for animations would have been nice, though. Maybe it would have felt less...cardboard-y.

But, in any case, it's a very fun point-and-click, worth its pricetag. Go for it.

Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel constructed from the depths of a very twisted mind, and is traumatizing in all the best ways. So often you see egg-white wimps crying about disturbing themes needing warnings and censors and oh, someone PLEASE think of the children-but watering down this game's ability to work you like a puppet would be an injustice. Between its fantastic soundtrack, its masterful visual demonstration, and writing sure to haunt you for days to come, DDLC is something you'll want to try once, no matter what sourpuss internet contrarians boil it down to simply for being popular.

Natsuki is best girl, by the way.

Dream Diary is a game about change, which is very ironic, considering that mechanically, it was too afraid to change much at all beyond a by-the-books Unity project. It's very disappointing that an entire team experimented with and pushed their development tools less than one anxious NEET did with RPG Maker 2003. The platforming isn't difficult or varied, nor are the solutions whimsical or mind boggling, as obstacles in the original game were. The amount of 2D segments far outnumber the 3D segments, despite the latter being where the game was definitely at its best. Effects were trimmed, and the ones left were not capitalized on as puzzle solving tools. Worlds were also trimmed, making for a very short playthrough. In general, Dream Diary was too afraid to go all the way as a new kind of game, and also failed to look back to is predecessor for enough inspiration, leaving a weak product as a result.

And yet, I recommend it. Twenty dollarydoos, for a heavily flawed game. Because when the game is at its best, it's really, really impressive. The Pink Sea and the Barracks Settlement were breathtaking to be in, and the NPCs and environments in general were perfectly brought from 2D to 3D. The soundtrack was beautiful, sampling the original ambient music without feeling as if it relied on it beyond that. The story present is a much more active one than I expected, and that's (surprisingly) a positive change. Though the final """boss""" was mostly trash, the note that everything ended on was perfectly bittersweet, showing the character we've become so fond of acknowledging her inner demons, and having grown past them enough to look to the future, for better or worse.

Worth it, at least for me. Buy at your own discretion.

Yume Nikki is a pioneer of its genre, and still holds up to this day, despite its creator going off the grid years ago. The extent to which it pushed the tools that forged it is impressive even by the standards of a decade later, and the effort all shows in the game's atmosphere and imagery. It's far from a polished diamond: not having features such as a map to aid in traversing openly looping landscapes is probably the biggest turnoff new players might cite, along with some of the RNG scripted events that have come to be seen as the game's most popular. Despite the unbuffed edges, however, the game glows bright, unapologetically showing the beauty, ugliness, and everything in between inside the mind of a girl who the player can come to know in a way few other characters have been, despite her not saying a word.

There are many valid reasons to dislike walking simulators, but to anyone willing to stomach the few lackluster mechanical elements of the genre, a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awaits, the likes of which you've never seen before.

Definitely worth the cheap price tag. Though certainly unpolished in many regards, the game has the meat and potatoes necessary to improve upon for any possible future sequel/remake, which I very much hope for.

The art style used for the characters and environment is very dinstinct, and pleasing to the eye. Though there really wasn't much in terms of difficulty, the puzzles were sufficient enough, and no level's zones ever felt repetitive (except the 'boss' levels). The painting gimmick was fun to use, and I must emphasize that the learning curve for each color was really great, never feeling too vague or too patronizing toward the player. The interesting method of indirectly approaching the enemies with your colors by gluing them, sliding them out of the way, and leading them into each other was briefly upset by the underwhelming fire power, but the electricity power did a good job at regaining the traction lost. The music was hardly anything to be called 'memorable', but music does tend to be on the lower priority rung for independent projects, so what's there is sufficient.

The game's rough patches can't be ignored, though. The narrator flat out sucks, and has zero inflection or enticing qualities to his monotonous, repeitive voice. The script also feels as though it was translated from another language, making the canned voice acting stand out even more. As mentioned above, the story is very lacking, and should have taken some more risks in hitting heavy notes. This is especially sad considering that the art style could have done some great visual storytelling. Even worse are some of the mechanical aspects of the game. Hitboxes felt extremely unreliable, and not being able to duck or dodge in any way makes for some very frustrating deaths. Being locked into the same jump arc and height only added to that, as well as projectiles persisting in movement during the transitions between screens. Some of the puzzle elements also stick out like a sore thumb against the stylized environment, looking like RPG Maker cutouts pasted over the backdrop in Flash.

Despite this, I still reccommend picking it up (while it's on sale). It's nothing that you'll probably play more than once, but it's fun enough to spend a few hours on, and one hell of a first step for an indie company to take. Here's hoping that all the constructive feedback Nihilumbra seems to be getting gets factored into their next project.