Blankspace (2020)

Our protagonist Chris awakens in a strange black and white room, handcuffed to a downpipe, with no idea how he got there. A quick glance around reveals an unknown sleeping woman cuffed by the ankle to a sofa on the other side of the room, and a safe within reach which is accompanied by a bemusing number puzzle. And so begins [i]BlankSpace[/i], a hybrid visual novel/point & click escape-room puzzle game. The only way to progress through the game is to interact with the unknown woman and work together to solve the puzzles. Doing so will reveal her identity as Beryl, and dependent upon the type of responses given to her, a relationship will form between the two of them, ranging from cool to affectionate... or more. Beryl is not what she first appears to be, and Chris stands to make some startling discoveries not only about his new companion, but also about the time preceding his arrival in this strange place, as the missing period in his memory is slowly revealed to him. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] In the early stages of the game, the puzzling aspect is to the fore. You're going nowhere without some prompt puzzle solving and a bit of co-operation. The point and click aspect to find vari…

I had a fun time playing it. It intrigues you and makes you want to get all the endings.

Short, sweet, excellent visuals

Pretty well written short escape room-esque visual novel. The puzzles never get too tiring or difficult, just hard enough to keep strong engagement with the story. The dialogue never becomes tiring, especially with the copious amounts of witty banter between the two characters. It's worth at least a playthough, although it didn't hook me enough to want to go through all the endings.

Most visual novels I've played are just that- novels with some key choices that may or may not have repercussions down the road. There's really only a couple that I've played that have additional puzzle elements, and this game did it extremely well. What's great is once you get the puzzles down, it's really easy to quickly do them again- but the downside is repeating them over and over for achievement hunting purposes gets tedious. I get some of the puzzles are tied to the different endings, but it would be great if there was an option after your first playthrough to skip the puzzles for the sake of the story. But the story is freakin amazing. Just, oh my gosh, an incredible concept. Both characters' personalities were fleshed out well but I feel like the backstory behind Beryl wasn't developed well- but if you consider the plot, that actually makes a bit of sense. The tediousness of the puzzles was my first gripe of two, and my second is that there is no follow up after the game. Now, I could just be uninformed and maybe there's a sequel or DLC in the works, but with my current knowledge, it's like the game ends on a cliffhanger, even in the best endings. I can't elaborate too w…

Room-escape type VN with only two characters and low on colour. Should you try escaping it or maybe try playing? You wake up in an unfamiliar room with a stranger, not in a bed, but tied to a pipe in a corner, while the stranger lies comfortably on a sofa. This is the initial set-up of the story presented to the players. Sounds like a typical start of escape games, and for the most part it is, but there is some originality here despite the cliche. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll just say some decent enough plot twists are waiting ahead, or at least ones I could not predict ahead of time if that could serve as some measure of originality. This VN is relatively short so you should be able to reach one of the endings in a few hours at most. Reaching all seven endings will require much more time if you don't just use the guide that is. Since it is an escape-type game, there is some limited point-and-click interaction with the environment. You'll collect various items, some of which can be combined, and try to figure out how to use them. As typical, in most cases, it should be pretty straightforward how and where to use your finds but some experimentation is required to utiliz…