Smiling Misery
Press For Coffee · 2025 · Visual Novel, Female Protagonist, Dialogue Heavy, Dogs, Medieval
PC
Positive87% · 39
This game is free to play. Get it on Steam →
Screenshots
About Smiling Misery
Inspired by the medieval Mediterranean.This is the story of a time long past.A time when people lived in peace and well-being in the region of Verigo after an event that would be known as... The Garlic Wars.In an enormous castle lived Margo, a young jester who served her lord at court. Margo enjoyed a life of absolute comfort and privilege; possessions, favors, compliments, and even a close relationship with her king.A dream life that took a turn due to a twisted desire that would blossom in the heart of young Margo... Unhappiness, sadness, all the ills of mankind suddenly turned into guilty desires for the young jester.Thus, one day Margo left the castle with a very clear purpose."I want to know misery."Offering a lifetime of service to anyone who could help her see her desires come true.What the young woman did not know was that the real world would be one very different from what she expected.Main Keys:
- Space to talk.
- Left & Right Arrows on the screen to move across the map.
- Esc for skip the intro.
- Space to pass text.
- Esc -> Skip, sometimes.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
✦ AI summary
Players praise the game's charming art style, sound design, and creative premise about a jester seeking unhappiness, with some finding the short experience genuinely enjoyable and well-narrated. However, common complaints include technical issues like freezing, inconsistent voice acting levels, poor writing and translation quality, minimal gameplay beyond reading text, and the lack of English voice acting, with some feeling the experience is too lightweight and narrative-focused for a traditional game.
Game kept freezing and wouldn't let me pick the potato option at the start.9 found this helpful
Well this one ya should really give a try. Its a short and enjoyable one the narration and sound and yeah its a nice one. I recommend it. :33 found this helpful
'I want to experience misery.' 'Someone who is able to grant me misery, I will serve them for the rest of my life.' This is such a fantastic premise for a story! There are so many iterations of where this could go but I enjoyed the light-hearted exploration in this game too. Very stylized and excellent art direction and music! 8/102 found this helpful
If this game wasn't free it would be a thumbs down. CUTE AS HECK art. The VO sound levels are all over the place, so prepare your ears. A story worth exploring, but the gameplay lacks.2 found this helpful
"Smiling Misery" is a poorly made e-book with some side scrolling adventure game elements where you take on the role of a very happy court jester girl who seeks out a way to be unhappy. The poor premise is met by equally poor writing, even worse translation, and next to no meaningful gameplay beyond reading garbage e-book text. For gameplay purposes, because the user interface for this game is mostly just 2D static text/images... it might as well be a web page. It's functionally no different from a browser game. And we all know, Steam isn't here to compete with Chrome and Firefox. If the game can be done in a web browser, it's just not rich or compelling enough to appeal to serious gamers on PC. There's an overwhelming amount of mediocre Visual Novel/E-book style cutscenes in this game. The developers failed one of the most basic, fundamental requirements of game design.. "Show, don't tell." So you'll spend a huge amount of time not playing the game, but clicking through endless lines of poorly written VN text cutscenes because the developers couldn't work out how to relate their narrative through the game mechanics, and decided instead it would be better to compete with re…1 found this helpful
No english dabing :(
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