Classic Sierra style adventure gameplay, similar to Leisure Suit Larry but with a lot more actual payoff.
The gameplay pacing is kind of rough when you start- more than half of the inventory items are things you will probably interact with the first time you explore an area, but they don't become contextually relevant until you advance a character's story. This game has so many "you should try this action later" pop-ups when trying to do stuff. in classic adventure game style, you need to click on EVERYTHING
If you do stick with it, none of the puzzles are too obscure or difficult, the map is deliberately kept pretty small to limit frustration (and you unlock a lot of QoL improvements as you go), and once you start making some progress the story has a steady drip oh H scenes from there on out.
The appearances are all very similar (see the title image for an idea). Beach Ball tits. Normally not my thing but in this case the writing was good enough for me to get over it. lots of side characters, most not fleshed out yet, main story has a decent amount to chew on as of v0.5
My main criticisms: text advances too slowly, and only on mouse click. no other keystroke seem to advance text. very annoying to replay stuff as a result. anything that involves audio (phone dialing, modem dialing, door knocking, etc) does not let you advance the game until the full sound clip has played fully, which is really annoying (esp in the case of the long ass modem handshake)
I will give the dev props- a lot of people try to make sandbox adventure games where you can explore and advance the story at your own pace, this is the first time i've actually seen it done well. Most of them are purely kinetic with hidden time-of-day triggers. I was able to complete like 95% of v0.5 content without a walkthrough (and the stuff I missed was mostly flavor text when replaying stuff, so not a huge deal)
The gameplay pacing is kind of rough when you start- more than half of the inventory items are things you will probably interact with the first time you explore an area, but they don't become contextually relevant until you advance a character's story. This game has so many "you should try this action later" pop-ups when trying to do stuff. in classic adventure game style, you need to click on EVERYTHING
If you do stick with it, none of the puzzles are too obscure or difficult, the map is deliberately kept pretty small to limit frustration (and you unlock a lot of QoL improvements as you go), and once you start making some progress the story has a steady drip oh H scenes from there on out.
The appearances are all very similar (see the title image for an idea). Beach Ball tits. Normally not my thing but in this case the writing was good enough for me to get over it. lots of side characters, most not fleshed out yet, main story has a decent amount to chew on as of v0.5
My main criticisms: text advances too slowly, and only on mouse click. no other keystroke seem to advance text. very annoying to replay stuff as a result. anything that involves audio (phone dialing, modem dialing, door knocking, etc) does not let you advance the game until the full sound clip has played fully, which is really annoying (esp in the case of the long ass modem handshake)
I will give the dev props- a lot of people try to make sandbox adventure games where you can explore and advance the story at your own pace, this is the first time i've actually seen it done well. Most of them are purely kinetic with hidden time-of-day triggers. I was able to complete like 95% of v0.5 content without a walkthrough (and the stuff I missed was mostly flavor text when replaying stuff, so not a huge deal)