Garenburg Penitence: The Riflebird

TLDR: For the love of god, play this game. A story that continuously had me in tears for hours as I played through the later acts, shockingly fun gameplay for a genre I never thought I'd enjoy, an easy enough time if you just want to relax and shoot balls yet a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ challenge if you dare turn up the difficulty or attempt the achievements. The thought of playing a story heavy shooty ball game appalled me, but somehow I was hooked by both gameplay AND writing, accompanied by a unique visual style and music that perfectly immerses you in the emotion of the moment - whether it be the calm main menu, the upbeat story moments or the agonizing downfalls, the game's atmosphere encompasses you completely, to the point where as I played through the final few acts I did not realize it was 3am. This has amazing story, gameplay, audio and visuals, all in a ~10-15 hour criminally cheap game that will bring you to tears either due to an excruciating character betrayal or ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wave mode. Play it. And don't just play it once and stop. Open it again. And play it to the very end. And then keep playing it.

If I can be entirely honest, the gameplay of this game was too hard for me and I promptly switched on every difficulty modifier to make it as easy as possible for me, and I still honestly kinda struggled with it. But I think the gameplay is secondary for this game, it's the story you're really after, and this story is genuinely one of the best ones I've had the honor of reading. If you can somehow look past the gameplay and focus on the story, you will not be disappointed.

A beautiful and tragic story told through the lenses of multiple characters giving a intriguing look into events that are equally on a large scale and a small scale. A tale that shows the imperfections and frustrations of people. I'm not expert on writing but the way the narrative flows and the repetition of themes and quotes just gave me so many emotions that by the end I was left in tears. Frankly, i don't think a game or story has ever given me such unique levels of emotion, which I think is the perfect word for this game. Unique. And just for that it is worth playing. As for the actual gameplay, I'm not experienced at all with marble games so I absolutely sucked and had to switch to easy by act 6 sadly, but even on easy it's still fun and not just something to blow through without thinking, it still became a much more painless experience. Levels are short and I'm glad for that as the end of each file left me wanting more and more, I don't think there's any file where I wasn't fully engaged in what was being said. A bit rambly of a review but I hope I got my emotions across. Beautifully unique game that made me feel emotions. Awesome. Yuri. Hell yeah.

This game is fun and saddddd

the game is really good!! the marbles part gets insanely hard sometimes (i'm not very good), but, even so, i think going through all that is totally worth it for getting to read the story - and the story is awesome! there's a lot of stuff to remember and you're kind of dropped in the middle of everything ever, but it's really intriguing seeing what happens to the characters and what they do as you bash your head against the marble game. there *is* also girls kissing but that has totally not, in way, shape or form, influenced my review. i definitely do not have ulterior motives. i swear.

Imma be real with you, I tried giving this game a real chance. I really love abstract and weird games that offer unique experiences so in that aspect this game seemed right up my alley. The artstyle looks cool and the story seems interesting but the gameplay is just so insanely cumbersome I can't even fathom how anyone would genuinely enjoy it. I don't know if it's just a skill issue on my part or what but I wasn't able to beat even a single stage despite switching to the easiest difficulty. Despite that I wouldn't necessairly call this game *hard*, it's just hectic and hard to control in a way that isn't really fun, imo. I know that 0.3 hours on record doesn't seem like much but every time I tried playing this game I genuinely felt like quitting after minutes, if not seconds. The only reasons why I haven't refunded it are because: 1. I forgor 2. I prefer not refunding games from indie devs.