Ballads at Midnight

Really enjoyable little game with a lot of charm. The characters and atmosphere had me interested, Definitely worth giving a shot, especially if you enjoy storydriven games.

A very good narrative tale, as though it came from the medieval era. The love story does feel a little rushed. Can't help but think it be better if Abigail & Lucius became friends & then became lovers in the epilogue. The deeper story is a great surprise, a tremendous twist, simply perfect. I understand this made in less than a month for a game jam, but I honestly believe it could benefit from a full remake, complete with voices for all characters, specialised scenes & artwork, along with Abigail & Lucius confronting & destroying the deeper story in an epic battle. I'd pay for all of that. Regardless, a must for fans of visual novels, vampire romance & lovers of dark fantasy stories with utterly unforeseen twists.

Ballads at Midnight was a shockingly great experience. Honestly it's hard to believe it's a free game. While this visual novel doesn't visually blow me away the writing in Ballads at Midnight is consistently superb. While I'd love to, I won't say anything about the story since I think Ballads of Midnight should be experienced blindly.

Ballads at Midnight is a short visual novel that surprised me with how much personality it manages to fit into such a small story. I play as Abigail, a sarcastic travelling bard who gets exiled to an abandoned castle where she expects to be eaten by a vampire. Instead, Lucius turns out to be more bored and lonely than hungry, and he makes her a deal. If she performs one ballad for him each night, he will eventually let her go. I really like that setup because it gives the story an immediate reason for these two characters to keep talking while slowly changing the relationship between them. The writing is easily the strongest part for me. Abigail and Lucius have a lot of banter, and I like how their relationship develops from suspicion and hostility into something much more personal. Abigail is not just there to react to Lucius either. She has her own personality and is usually confident enough to push back against him, which makes their conversations much more entertaining. The humour also helps keep the darker parts of the story from becoming too heavy. The whole thing has a nice balance between romance, comedy and more serious moments. The choices are simple, but I think they w…

beautiful story with minimal but also meaningful engagement

I am an avid visual novel/otome game player. (My steam library/playtimes should speak to this.) This is the first game that I found to be so vastly unusual in the genre that I actually told my partner, who is not into such games, that this would be THE ONE they had to play because I was positive they would enjoy it. I wasn't wrong. Pros: The voice acting! I must say, while sparse, I enjoyed the voice acting. I'm normally a sound OFF type of person but this was pleasant. The characters and writing: The characters have may have snark and sass, but they also have deeper feelings that they portray. They are people in positions they didn't want to be, much like life is for some of us. They have their own motivations and personality. I truly loved this. The endings: You get to make choices that affect the characters and ending. I would say these choices are blatantly obvious, but still it was nice to see the choices did something. The Cons: I'm sorry, I didn't enjoy the singing. :/ And I do feel bad about that. But I did like the song itself! The Middle: This could go either way, but I wasn't thrilled that it ended. There was not really any romance, and I was fine with that, I pers…