Blue Swallow is a text-based game that makes all the choices for you.
"But," you might protest, "look at all those choices the game offers you! Ten dropdowns per passage! How can you say it makes ALL the choices for you?!"
And that question can be answered in one word -- "intentionality".
Most of the best character customization in games stems from intentionality. In other words, you have an idea in your mind, and using the tools provided by the game, you shape the desired character out of it. It's how character creation works in pretty much every game.
Blue Swallow tries to innovate on the idea of character creation by taking your "idea" and allowing you to roleplay as that in character creation, shaping your character naturally through the events of the game. It's a neat idea, don't get me wrong, but it completely removes player intentionality and control from the experience. This results in a frustrating experience where you want your character to do something or go in a specific direction and the game just tells you "no".
This wouldn't be so bad if the game was a little more transparent about what your choices actually mean. All of your characters' stats are kept completely hidden from you, including which choices raise and lower what. It turns the intended experience of getting immersed in your character's story to me scrolling directly to the dropdown and trying to mind-read the author to make my desired character.
In conclusion, Blue Swallow is not really a "game". You can "make choices", but at the end of the day, you don't even know what choice you're making, and the whole thing just feels like a crapshoot as the author leads you down what feels like a random path. I think the production value is why this game is rated so highly (4 stars as of writing this), as the game looks very polished and has decent quality writing.
However, I'm giving it one star. Being pleasant to look at isn't enough to save a game that feels like it's lying to you about what it is -- even being interactive. Save yourself some effort and buy a book instead of trying to play this not-so-visual novel.
"But," you might protest, "look at all those choices the game offers you! Ten dropdowns per passage! How can you say it makes ALL the choices for you?!"
And that question can be answered in one word -- "intentionality".
Most of the best character customization in games stems from intentionality. In other words, you have an idea in your mind, and using the tools provided by the game, you shape the desired character out of it. It's how character creation works in pretty much every game.
Blue Swallow tries to innovate on the idea of character creation by taking your "idea" and allowing you to roleplay as that in character creation, shaping your character naturally through the events of the game. It's a neat idea, don't get me wrong, but it completely removes player intentionality and control from the experience. This results in a frustrating experience where you want your character to do something or go in a specific direction and the game just tells you "no".
This wouldn't be so bad if the game was a little more transparent about what your choices actually mean. All of your characters' stats are kept completely hidden from you, including which choices raise and lower what. It turns the intended experience of getting immersed in your character's story to me scrolling directly to the dropdown and trying to mind-read the author to make my desired character.
In conclusion, Blue Swallow is not really a "game". You can "make choices", but at the end of the day, you don't even know what choice you're making, and the whole thing just feels like a crapshoot as the author leads you down what feels like a random path. I think the production value is why this game is rated so highly (4 stars as of writing this), as the game looks very polished and has decent quality writing.
However, I'm giving it one star. Being pleasant to look at isn't enough to save a game that feels like it's lying to you about what it is -- even being interactive. Save yourself some effort and buy a book instead of trying to play this not-so-visual novel.