Distress: A Choice-Driven Sci-Fi Adventure

Distress marketed itself as drawing inspiration from Mass Effect, Silent Hill and Snatcher and in some ways I can see that but in other ways it falls a tad short. It can certainly have some creepy vibes from the monsters you encounter that make me think of Silent Hill but sadly we don’t see much of them or interact much with them much. The game has a rich lore you get introduced to, lots of planets and colonies mentioned but it is mostly in passing. You don’t actually get to go to these planets, get any flashbacks to the lore, or interact with the colonies. I keep going on about what the game doesn’t have but let me mention what it does have. It has a solid story to it that I think has a lot of potential for prequels. It has a great vibe to it, I love the unsettling locations and the bits of mystery and suspense the game is able to create. The cast of characters are all interesting and make me want to know more about them but sadly not much info is given. The soundtrack is great and puts me back into 80’s era sci-fi which is my childhood and I love. The choices you get to make are decent but do have one big flaw I dislike: false choices. Some choices mean your death and the end of …

This is an amusing sci-fi visual novel. My first playthrough ended in the vacuum of space due to an improvised weapon performing a bit too well. Next playthrough went a bit more smoothly and showed that this visual novel has a plethora of choices with vastly different outcomes. If you like a bright, comic art style and quirky characters then I would recommend this game.

Writing is decent in Distress. Good graphics. Nice cast and personalities for this sci-fi visual novel. Feels like there are meaningful choices as things you decide affect the station as a whole. Could use better foreshadowing of what those new events will be. My main annoyance was that the characters only have talking poses facing one direction - which means that a right-facing sprite will often stroll in from the right side of the screen... Again, that's just the idle poses; there's a good spread of action poses for each character. Combat boils down to choosing among different tactics and it flows well. I'm glad I was able to keep my crew alive. Would be great if there were Steam Achievements to keep track of such things ;)

Enjoyable writing, loads (and I mean loads) of choices, and character depth that unveils itself naturally through multiple playthroughs as you see the characters put through an ever surprising wheel of stimuli. It’s like choose-your-own-adventure version of The Expanse with a playful and humorous edge. I love the focus on dozens of unique playthroughs instead of one impossibly long one, so instead of competing with my dozens of gaming and reading obligations, it can complement them in between.

I was pleasantly surprised with the story and how your choices can increase the time it takes to play through or decrease it. the longer the more you learn about the narrative as well. the downside? well after playing for 100 minutes I've gotten multiple endings and am left longing for more. the characters well pretty well developed for how short it is. That's the downside to the game, im not a great gamer and i blew through multiple endings quickly. for the price i still recommend it, its a nice little distraction, but dont expect a long story arc or hours upon hours of gameplay.

Nice Game :) after some trying i found my favorite Way. Infiltrate the station throug The Myrmidon. Descend into the metro. Don't intervene. Let the mysterious woman out of the pod. Follow the stranger's lead. Help the stranger. Help Lenore destroy Nova-8. Hear her out. Tell her to stick it where the sun don't shine. Surrender. Focus fire on two, while Nyles zaps the others. Go! Stop her once and for all. Promise to hide Lenore. Maybe.