Fallstreak

[H1]Fallstreak[/h1][hr][/hr] 6-8 hours to complete, Fallstreak is a dark fantasy VN that takes place in Socotrine, a country surrounded by a barrier of hazardous mist and recently recovering from a horrific disaster ten years ago, later called The Fires of Collapse. While most of the game is you seeing the world through the nine-year-old protagonist’s Aelise’s eyes – her not having a mother, her older schoolmates living with their disabilities, most of her friends being orphans – the other half is flashbacks and glimpses into Socotrine’s history; a mother trying to protect her children during the Fires, the proceeding famine, and the witch hunts. It’s a gruesome novel that really talks about how far humans would go to save themselves, but it’s also a well written, interesting perspective of humanity through stories. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3624818332 While Fallstreak is absolutely not for everyone, I did really like learning about this world the writer is creating. Fallstreak: Requiem is significantly more gruesome, it’s about the country “ULs”, outside Socotrines protective yet debilitating fog, where constant war and child soldiers are commonplace…

this story moved me to the point of tears in a way not many other things have done in recent years. It might seem too short but that's because for the most part the script does not waste a single word, every character that might seem inconsequential at first has a purpose, and some even outshine the main cast. The game has some disturbing parts, it's the only reason I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, but if it didn't have some of those parts I don't think I would be recommending it in the first place.

Fallstreak, developed and published by Centicerise Productions, is a visual novel that commits fully to storytelling as its primary vehicle, stripping away nearly all traditional gameplay elements in favor of a dense, carefully constructed narrative. Set within the enigmatic land of Socotrine—a place shrouded by a strange, ever-present mist—the game follows Adelise Cotard, a young girl whose dreams and memories appear to be entangled with a devastating past event. From the beginning, it establishes a tone that is equal parts melancholic and unsettling, inviting players into a world where beauty and horror coexist in a fragile, uneasy balance. What immediately defines Fallstreak is its complete lack of player agency in the conventional sense. There are no branching choices, alternate endings, or gameplay systems to master; the experience unfolds in a strictly linear fashion. Rather than feeling restrictive, this approach allows the narrative to maintain a strong sense of cohesion and pacing, presenting itself more like a novel than an interactive game. The story builds gradually, layering its worldbuilding and character development in a way that requires attention and patience. It …

Easily one of my favourite visual novels of all time. Deceptively charming to begin with, you think you know how deep the rabbit hole goes. And then it goes deeper.

"Fallstreak" is not a game, it's an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game. I have a general policy of not reporting products that don't meet Steam guidelines, but I have reported this e-book. Most e-books on Steam are all about the authors imaginary anime girlfriend/waifu, and this e-book has that in common, but the imaginary girlfriends here are underage and the author expresses his fantasies of sexual abuse and violence. Certainly, the author is going on a few FBI watch lists for this one... sex exploitation is reprehensible, and the author expressing his fantasies about this are in clear violation of Valve's guidelines. Otherwise, this is just a creepy, cringey Ren'Py e-book with no value as a PC game, and hopeful…

Everything looks and sounds good, but there's too much of it for no reason. I hesitated for a while, but I decided not to recommend it for the very arbitrary reason that I hate the "main character" and that seeing the bad pollute the good really frustrated me. [b]In form:[/b] - Did we need the graphic descriptions of torture? The graphic descriptions of a man cutting his toddler's arms? - Did we need to repeat a character's story three times? (specifically, we see Alouette's past, then we see someone react to the past two days after it, then we hear someone talk about the same past years later, but neither someones add anything that we didn't already know) - "To answer this question, first we need to talk about Socotrine's history" is so lazy and it's repeated three times. - Nitpick but I hated the scene where they argue over if a song is the alphabet song or Twinkle twinkle little star, including the adults made it sound so fake and contributed to something I'll mention later. [b]In substance:[/b] - The story goes: [b]"Ade has a dream, Ade plays with her friends, very long flashback of the friends' parents', Ade has a picnic with her friends"[/b]. Most of this is okay, but [i]…