Two Steps Back

The story is great, but it is a very short one! Also take in consideration that this is a not a game, but a linear visual novel. So if you buy it as a game you risk to be upset, but if you buy this for the story, it is an interesting one, but it's very short, so be aware! For its price it still totally worth the buy.

So, I am new to visual novels, as most of what I've seen out there doesn't appeal to me. I'm not interested in dating sims / otome, and I'm not interested in hentai or anything explicit. What I *am* interested in is a good story / good storytelling. An emotional journey. Interesting characters. That kind of stuff. So it seems like there should be VNs out there that have the great story/characters, without some of the other stuff that gets a lot of attention. Oh, and I also didn't want a game where you had to play it a dozen times to get all of the endings (and achievements). So that brought me to this game, which (after being bundled) seemed like a low-cost entry into the genre and didn't have any of the obvious things I avoid. Unfortunately, this game at least didn't work for me. For one thing, as some have pointed out, it doesn't have choices, it's pretty much just click-to-read. Maybe if I'd realized that in advance, I wouldn't have been surprised / put off by it. Some of the story was interesting enough. The premise and subject matter was good. The most frustrating part was that there are two "parts" of the story, but they are not connected in-game. It's like yo…

Wow. This is probably the 'game' I liked least this year. So, why? There is exactly one puzzle to solve in this game. The puzzle? The fact that you have to quit out of the first part of the game, to start the second part of the game. With the game giving you a warning that you should 'finish part one' first, even though there's nothing to 'finish' -- aside from getting into the endless loop. The story started off cryptic and interesting. Honestly, I was expecting something like 9-9-9 / Zero Escape here. The theme could have been used well. Instead, it was wasted. There are literally no choices in the game. And, realistically, there is no *ending* to the game. Nothing is resolved, because the entire concept is an endless loop. That means that the entire game is one big tease. You're left with questions, Ultimately, this is not a game. It's not even like 9-9-9 on the iOS, where you make a few branching path choices...because there's no choice the player ever makes in the game. *YOU* are not wanted here, aside from as an observer. I'm glad I got this game as part of a bundle, because I can't condone paying for it.

Two Steps Back is an unfinished/abandoned early access visual novel. The artwork is bad and the story is equally terrible. Visual novels aren't games. They're books that were written by people who couldn't manage to get published professionally as authors (so the writing is terrible). They're also worse than books because you have to click your mouse every time you want to read a sentence. You can get books for free online or borrow them free for libraries. They want you to pay for this, and this is worse than a book! Steam is for games. This kind of thing doesn't belong on Steam.

Tags: Adventure - VN - Visual Novel Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library TLDR: Shovelware Visual Novel with nonsensical plot, no interactivity. Content is bare, animated portraits were still lifeless. Poorly put together plot about dead people having banters about being in a dream sequence or the matrix and having flashbacks. Its all very loose and ungrounded. Most backgrounds look like concept art for an abandonned project that the janitor took home and whipped up in a free engine of some sort and dumped on Steam. No interactions, you can skip through the whole thing in five minutes while reading in diagonal and relying on the images to give you the bulk of the story. The animated portions for the VN portraits were a nice touch but they still had very static pre-defined cartoony poses and expressions that kept repeating over and over which took away a lot of what that brought to the table.

https://youtu.be/mP6_rOQku5U A visual novel game that attempts to tell a story about time travel, dreams, or ground hogs. Either way, it appears to be unfinished and has no interaction.