HTML - Blue Swallow [v0.7.3,1] [Blue Swallow]

This has great potential.

Pros:
- Good update schedule. It has made a lot of progress in a short time!
- Lots of choices. Can pursue a lot of routes. But it's unclear how many of them are truly meaningful.
- Good amount of text. Enough to build the scene but not a wall of text.

Points to improve:
- The avatar kind of sucks and malfunctions a lot. That needs fixing bc it breaks the immersion.
- Replay value is lower than it should be due to how clunky the start is. The opening is fun the first two times you play it. But it would be great to have an "accelerated start" option to just pick the key attributes and get going.

Keep up the good work!

For v0.3.2P
A text-based game with a female protagonist and some paperdoll and scene art. You set up some genetic factors and customize your character and story by selecting behavior and activities at certain milestones (i.e. childhood, highschool, college).

I liked the aesthetic, the *idea* of the mechanics, and the variety of character origin/personality/archetype customization.

The cons for me were that consequential choices were unclear about their outcomes (maybe I was playing it wrong, but I never ended up with the character I was specifically trying to make/be) and, this is primarily a "me issue," but I'm not into games that force hookups on me. All of my playthroughs had trysts either done as cut-to scenes or injected into my character history with no opting in on my part.

Giving it 3 stars, since 2 seems too low, even if I ultimately didn't care for it.

There are a lot of what seem like choices, but if you go against what the base storyline seems to be, eventually you'll just get railroaded into the same final plot point.


A kinetic novel is fine, a kinetic novel with some options is also fine, a kinetic novel pretending to be fully choice driven while constantly trying to railroad you (and eventually, just taking away your choice in the matter and doing it anyway)--- not so fine. Why make me choose 100 different things, if the end result is basically the same narrative?

Just go kinetic and spend less effort on adding superfluous layers to the onion, and more on focusing on the linear story you truly want to tell. This was, in fact, the same exact flaw in the other game that's like this. A bunch of fluff choices that didn't actually change the narrative whatsoever a few pages later.

Well, shamelessly stolen idea, but since it brings back just the part of the original game that was lost there, it fills a long-lost gap brilliantly.

I'm just curious if they'll continue to just steal the ideas or if it will develop into an independent game.
That's also what makes it so hard to give a reasonable rating here. In the end, however, I decided on 4 stars.

As some have already said, it's a robust character creator at this point. And when I say robust I mean the most detailed and intricate i've ever seen. Giving you as many as ten options to describe things like personality traits and background. Will it all mean something down the line? I respect the devs mad dedication to be so thorough but did find myself just clicking through. hoping to arrive at something that felt like a game.

Beyond that, the paper doll avatar is a nice amenity. In the actual game though, there needs to be more pics and gifs. If you love detective, spy games though you probably want to support this.

very good game, highly recommend. Can't help but feel it was inspired by female agent. If thats the case, i genuinely hope the creator has the discipline to keep a consistent update schedule and stick to the original vision

The game is still in its early release. The quality is top-notch, from the customization, to the "lore", to the graphics. I hope it will be continued. It has the vibe of the early "Female Agent", but so far I'm actually preferring this version.

I really appreciate the amount of effort the dev has put into the storytelling, but something about it just feels off. Most of the time I have to read a line more than twice to know what that line is saying. It just seems that perhaps the writing is not as clever as it was in the writer's mind. Other than that, so far I enjoy the premise and the core mechanics of the game.

Updated review for 0.6.2
So, it's been nine months, and while a lot has been added to the game word-wise, its basic problem remains: it is a "spy story" that has almost no spying. The devs actually got the MC started on the spying mission but that lasted ion a few days before the MC "cracked" and gave up. Clearly, the priority would be to fix that (and maybe fix the utterly stupid "test" of the agent where the agency gives the MC, who's never handled a weapon before a live gun with the safety turned off and then had her fire at unknown objects in the air, all while they were in a room in a busy school building) and continue the story, but... nope.

The devs abandoned the story and started adding fluff about the HS life of the character, as though anyone really cared except the devs. The game is more bloated but no more fun. Still can't give it more than three stars.

Sept 2023 review:
Another game design that shows some promise but starts in the wrong place and ends up being just a soap opera about a girl growing up and doing nothing at all interesting. The fact that saves don't carry over just means that a player will have to re-live the entire boring life over and over with each iteration, never getting (yet) to anything interesting.

The problem here is the problem that 90+% of devs make: they want to create an action game, but decide to start it in the most boring place possible, hoping that fans don't drop below critical mass before the devs ever get to the game they actually wanted to make.

The devs would be better off if they just dropped the whole life story part until the meat of the game - the spying - was established and player had a reason to care about the choices in the life story. It's not too late, but I am not hopeful.

Its a bit hard to make a review about an unfinished project (0.3B), thats why i wont give any points to different aspects, instead try to word it, but anyway, here we go

i think the grammar is more than fine compared to some or most games, but still understandable even for not a native english speaker, and because its a text based game i think this is an important point (they also try make it as much enjoyable for not fans of this genre as possible, with choiches, pictures and kinetic text flow, instead just reading walls of text)
sex scenes are well written as well, there are some quit different, however you can find reused scenes with different persons

the character creation is uniqe enough, with quit a lot of option, even playing with genetics and how some stuff or aspect in life can determine others... however, its far from clear sometimes (even if i understand the narrative aspect, i hope later the stat system will be visible, because it can be frustrating if u want to reach something, and no matter how many times you try it, still cant reach it, because its not clear what you should change) but it surely gives you an oppurtunity to replay

about the story, lets say its decent or interesting so far, with great possibilities ... i mean we get the instructions for now, the past...but how the actual story will look, the present... its hard to say
with 0.3 you will get some ideas, how the stats will influence things further, but there are still some question marks, because its still part of the character creation

about kinks... so far, its not much what i found... there are more like hints, what can come in the future

visually... well its a text based game, you get a pixel image about you character, and nearly thats all, its still more then in same other, but not much to tell about yet, but they planning to add more stuff, as i read

i really think, this is already a really good experience, with possibilities to become a really really good game, lets hope it stays on the right path

Very intriguing storytelling. It is clear the developer has serious writing talents. Though the graphics are lacking, dialogue is interesting and complex. Great to see more games in this genre now that the update frequency of Female Agent is moving at a glacial pace.

Ridiculously rich story, and while it doesn't have all that much in the way of art yet, what art it does have through the paperdoll system fits perfectly.

Sex is (relatively) limited in this set up phase, but there's a good amount of tillation and at least a few distinct scenes.

Hidden Gem in the making
Version v0.2

Has a great potential hopefully it won't get abandoned.
Absolutely love the ammount of decisions hopefully most of them are meaningful. (It seems that way so far.)

The UI can be a bit schizo at times. Switching between three different decision making systems. (buttons, rotating options on-click, dropdown menus)
However I shan't complain because it still kind of works.

I can happily say that I am looking forward to future updates.

Boring, unnecessary, pretentious word salad presented with annoying text effects and in an utterly confusing, inconsistent UI. It is supposed to be a "spy story", yet there's no story or a spy or any spying as of version 0.2. All it offers is a background creator for your imaginary spy with endless amount of pointless options, which asks you to even create her parents and then relive her life all the way from her childhood to college years making zillions of unnecessary choices that will never be used in the actual "game" which it may or may not feature in the future. Sounds familiar? It should, cause it seems like another attempt at the infamous "female spy project" (a la Female Agent) that will run only on people's imagination for a long time. The best thing to do is to ignore it, which is what I'm gonna do and I suggest you do the same.

Since the advent of Female Agent, there have been a few games about, well, female agents making the rounds. Like early versions of FA, Blue Swallow is focusing on building a detailed and highly interactive background filled with a plethora of options, each of which changes the MCs story. It's possible to play anything from prude to slut, party girl to nerd, big city girl to small town kid.

Some specific notes:

1. The only art present is a paper doll, similar to (though less polished than) Female Agent. Aside from that, this is a text-only game. This is neither a positive nor a negative.
2. The descriptions used vary from excellently detailed to a bit sketched-in, but none that I've read so far go on long enough that you get bored, as happens in other similarly text heavy game. This is a very positive point.
3. One of the early decisions is whether you want to be straight, bi, or lesbian. Unfortunately I found only one lesbian encounter (when you have the choice of deciding who your first was); aside from that, even after deciding to be a lesbian, your sexuality is still described as revolving wholly around boys and men. This is a strongly negative point -- if you aren't going to give full support to lesbian choices, then don't provide the option to choose being a lesbian; the choice should be Straight or Bi, or even dropped altogether in favor of a basically straight, occasionally bi MC. That's not so say that every, or even most, sex scenes in the game should be lesbian if the lesbian option is picked, as I suspect quite a lot of the sex scenes will revolve around the MCs mission. However, if the MC is lesbian, then her voluntary sex scenes and her private sex life should be with women and this is almost wholly absent from the game now. In-game "choices" that all lead to the same outcome are just bad design that wastes the time of players and devs.
4. Although it's way to early to say for sure, the only hint you get of your future spy plans would seem to point toward Manila. There's nothing wrong with that, but I hope it doesn't indicate that this will be a copy of Female Agent where a Western woman is sent to be a spy/prostitute in "The Mysterious Orient."

Blue Swallow left me wanting much more, and left me eager to see what else the dev team has planned.

Really good start. Most-text based, currently (v0.1) goes through a lengthy character creation before ending as the story picks up. But a ton of choices, written really well. Nice mix of drop downs and clicking through options. A few bugs but I'm sure those will be fixed. Hopefully it keeps going, with the story reacting to your character!

Essentially just a character creator at the moment but its a really, really good one. Nice, easy writing style and a ton of options for making your girl. Really looking forward to seeing how this gets developed.

For an initial release it was very enjoyable and I am looking forward to see what the future for the game will bring. I like the way the choices are done in-line within the paragraph and how it affects the look and outcome of the character.