Totum

Despite an interesting premise, the game might be hard to follow due to translation and making right choices. Writing about the technological features would be meaningless because the game is built on a visual novel engine, which powers the bulk of titles in this genre. Its key features include the ability to save at any moment and skip content, including text that has yet to be read. The first challenge lies in finding the settings menu to switch to English. Since the game’s original language is Russian, you have no option but to listen to Russian voices. But while this adds to the charm, the translation is not ideal. It feels overly literal, making the sentences appear awkward and occasionally weird. It doesn’t hinder the gameplay, but you’ll miss a lot of what the plot is trying to present. Aside from the game's unusual visual style, which resembles a painting, it also offers an intriguing story. It takes place in a theater where a lunatic is constructing a universe depending on your decisions. You have a few choices, and more become available if you make mistakes or lead the world to disaster. This also means you don't have much impact over the story because taking the wro…

I enjoyed the concept and the aesthetic very much (and the voice acting is fun, even if it is limited to Russian), but sadly the frequency of errors (especially the "could not find label" one, which does not allow to continue with the playthrough) make the game essentially unplayable. I guess the 'winning' scenario might be playable to the end, but looking for it is demotivating when the playthrough is cut off not by a bad end but by the error screen saying "uncaught exception occurred". I am begrudgingly dropping it for now, but would definitely like another chance to play it once I know I can see my chosen scenarios through to the end. Edit: seems like the errors don't happen when the game is in Russian. Changed recommendation to positive. It would be nice to have a list of potential endings to unlock, since it is kind of difficult to aim for different ones when I'm not sure if more of them exist.