The Great Voyage - Visual Novel

Full disclosure, the creator of this VN is a friend of mine, who asked me to go through this and I have not played many VN's in my life. Only few which have some sort of gameplay elements in them and this was a first VN for me which was solely text based with no gameplay at all. All this in mind take my opinion as you will. I enjoyed going through this little story. I was honestly expecting this to be a bit of a "dry" experience for me, but I was pleasantly surprised how the writing kept me going through this. This isn't a very long experience, only taking about an hour or two to read through, but while story progresses quite fast, I never felt that it hurt the pacing of it. The characters, while not the deepest, kept me interested in the story and made me care about their hardships. Regarding the presentation, even though it can be a bit rough, I ended up finding it quite charming. While I don't have much experience with VN's, so I can't really tell what a "quality VN" would look like or how this would compare to others, I myself would recommend this. It was a short and a pleasant read for me.

This is a very short kinetic novel (won't take you even an hour to finish if you're a fast reader and there are no choices or branching paths), about three refugees escaping for a city sacked by a rebel army. Among the fleet of ships carrying the last remnants of their kingdom, they have to cope with their desperate situation, the things they lost and the baggage of their pasts. The seriously well-written story content is accompanied by nicely-crafted pixelart visuals and properly eerie music. While talking too much about a game this tiny would be an overkill, I have to say I liked it a lot. Even though very brief, it does a pretty great job at building the main characters and above all make them believable - they're all deeply flawed individuals that can barely stand the pressures their borderline-hopeless situation puts on them. They're also not heroes by any means and play appropriate roles in the grand conflicts that play out around them. There was probably much more that could be done with them and the setting, but the story the game tells is satisfying simply through how genuine and fresh it feels, avoiding overused tropes or cheap plot developments. Although, calling The Gr…

The retro style really makes this game work well. The story is simple, but it's an emotionally draining one, and the sparse colors and dark music really work well to help the increasingly dire plot move along. A short story, but certainly nice for $2. For some reason, the developers removed some of the normal visual novel accessibility options, which is the biggest shortcoming for me. No options for text speed, auto-scrolling, or a text log. I frequently clicked too quickly through the script and accidentally missed some lines--the lack of any way to go back was a little annoying. But for a story this short, that's all pretty minor. It's a rough gem I hope more players experience.

Cool "game" - I enjoyed it. Worth the price.

A dark kinetic novel about war and guilt in a fantasy world reminiscent of the French Revolution, with art reminding of VNs from the early 90's. Short but worth reading.

Not nearly as good as their next game, Vengeful Heart (which is one of my favorite things I've played this year), but still a decent first attempt, and you can see how they got from here to there. The story and world and thematic elements and artwork are all pretty good here, but they built on and improved on them all significantly for their next attempt. I extremely highly recommend Vengeful Heart no matter what, and this mostly if you want to see how they got started before that. Still a reasonably enjoyable use of an hour of my day either way though.