Billie Beetleneck -A detective tale-

Full disclosure, I am a backer/contributor to this game, but even with that in mind, this game comes recommended. I'll also be avoiding spoilers since the game is short and free, so the key takeaway is that I think you should play it. For the dev's first attempt at a visual novel, I must say they did a pretty good job. While there are some minor issues here and there (the most common I saw being the lack of proper capitalization for proper nouns), the overall package is delightful. Character and background art was a treat for the eyes, and the music was nice and relaxing throughout. The concept is also very unique: you take the role of Billie Beetleneck, a detective from Bugtown, given the task of getting to the source of the recent uptick in bookworm attacks. See, in this world, books are physical worlds that Billie can travel to and from, and the bookworms threaten to destroy not only as many of these worlds as they can, but maybe even Bugtown itself. That's the non-spoiler version. The game is a linear visual novel with some choices that only effect the game is very minor ways, like lines of dialogue. While that may be disappointing to fans of the genre, I think it was ultimat…

This is more of a neutral review, half because I have very little experience with visual novels, 1/3 because it's free. The lore is interesting, but the MCs thoughts changes between present and past tense quite frequently (I don't know if this continues or not since I haven't gotten far at all). I also just can't get past the AI backgrounds, especially that one plant that goes through it's own leaf. The text is controlled both with clicking and the scroll whell, and the scroll wheel is inverted, which my brain doesn't agree with. The UI thing at the bottom looks good but I turned on auto when trying out the buttons and it doesn't seem like you can turn it off? I was like a minute in so I just restarted the game. If you like visual novels and/or parallel book universes you'll probably like it, if you don't you probably won't. I'll probably end up finishing this one, which I don't often do (even for paid games)

More of a mystery than a detective novel as there's no way to resolve the mystery much faster than the detective does, but it's still a good read for an hour or two.

Game is 7 minutes long with skip speed maxxed