To Hell With The Ugly

TL;DR: The game has its flaws, but it has earned a positive recommendation from me, mainly for the story. The gameplay is more-or-less a regular point-and-click. There is a bit of fun detective-style puzzle solving and a strange quick-time-event combat system. Only one character is voiced, and only occasionally. I really love the artstyle, but YMMV. Overall, the game would be quite boring without the story. It's based on a French book from 1948, and it shows. The story goes against a lot of popular storytelling tropes found in contemporary (American) media, and includes some period culture, like eating steak with spinach for breakfast. Also, it's hard to put my finger on it, but the way the characters talk and react to various situations feels very strange by modern standards. So, you play as a conventionally attractive, slightly obnoxious 19-year-old guy who gets a lot of attention from women, but vows to stay a virgin until he's 20. That's already pretty unique. But then, [spoiler]near the end, he starts sympathizing with the villain (even though by today's standards, the villain is pretty despicable). Then, at the climax, the villain just straight-up wins, with a …

The visuals and atmosphere, along with the light, enjoyable gameplay, work really well with the story, which is interesting because it's based on a novel. And in the end, the game leaves you with something to think about.

Well, hello, good adaptation of a book and not of a movie for once! Not that I've read Vian's original novel, but I went ahead and skimmed through it. Naturally, the English translation (which according to Vian's mystification would be a backwards translation of a French translation of a novel by an American author Vernon Sullivan), par ce que mon Francais n'est pas si fantastique. My brief familiarisation with the source showed there's a lot in this game here that is conveyed word for word, and it somehow doesn't feel like a letter dump for the sake of sTAYinG TRuE to ThE viSIoN. And I honestly don't think it's because of some ingenious narrative design, but rather just by virtue of the medium. Videogames plainly convey more information than cinema. Everybody's been busy shooting films from books, and they've all been moving the wrong way for a hundred years! It's good to see the almighty French animation tradition show up in a videogame. Neither constipated realism/comics duality of average American animators, nor unbridled hairy elemental rawness of Eastern European schools, it is simultaneously very stylised and very polished - as if on display in a showcase. While unappeali…

Great Game! Loved the animation style. The dialouge felt a bit shallow at times but it was still very well written. The Pacing was a little bit off and a litte to short.

just completed..was it good? both yes and so-so depends from which POV.. good bcz interesting to see how book adaptation can be transformed into a gamified visual novel with distinctive stylistic DNA with consistent animation, dialogue and soundtrack. at times very campy, which fits with the vibe, narrative, himbo characters attitude and whatnot. it also feels like watching oldskool cartoon network animation of johnny bravo (for those who remembered) in this period crime caper animation drama. more watching than interacting, the gamified elements are minimal/straight fwd, eg.finding items, turn-based fist fights, talking to people to procure clues, etc. very easy so there was mnml friction to progress thru the chapters the reference wink to aldous huxley’s BNW is a nice touch

absolutely bizarre, love the investigation, hate the ending, love the message, hate the himbo, very nice game both the art and the limited controls