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tinygamertris · 4 years

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Cat’s Top and Bottom 5 Video Games of 2020

As with last year, I count only games that I played for the first time this year, regardless of the year they were released. All opinions are personal and all flames will be met with a hearty ‘fuck you’ and used to roast marshmallows.

5th Best: Outer Worlds

Goddamn this was a beautiful game. Bright and colourful, filled with character, dripping with sarcasm and incredibly insightful satire, Parvarti... There was almost nothing about this game that I didn’t love. It’s what Fallout could be again if only Bethesda had the balls, pretty much the diametric opposite of the bland yearly release FPSes like CoD, and every inch of it screams of a dev team filled with passion and creativity. The only reason it’s not higher on the list is because it was locked to first person when I played it and first person inevitably makes me sick sooner or later.

5th Worst: Seer’s Isle

This game isn’t bad as such. It’s very pretty and intensely mystical, with a plot that could have been remarkable. It’s what it promises but doesn’t deliver that killed it for me. I was promised a game with interactivity, where every choice I made impacted the ending, where my actions would determine who lives or dies. NOPE. What I got was a game that only holds up for one playthrough, because the moment you try to make good on the supposed varying plot you discover that it’s going to be the same thing over and over again with only two endings. At least it’s short.

4th Best: Ghost of Tsushima

Another ridiculously pretty game! It’s typical that in a year when the new consoles were released (oh what a clusterfuck that was) that the most graphically impressive game was on the PS4. The gameplay loop is a delight, allowing you to customise your approach to many situations, and the ability to challenge enemies to a duel to start a fight is buttery smooth and viscerally enjoyable. It’s only let down by the predictability of the main plot, to the point where I only did story quests when I ran out of other things to do and wanted to open a new area. Absolutely worth your time and money regardless, it’s a game that will make you feel like a badass samurai from the comfort of your own room.

4th Worst: South Park - The Fractured But Whole

This is a game where its strength is also its weakness: It’s like playing an episode of South Park. Much like the show, when it’s good it’s absolutely on FIRE, and when it’s bad it’s the most profoundly uncomfortable cringe I’ve ever experienced. In the end, all this game did was remind me why I stopped watching the series years ago.

3rd Best: Monster Keeper

A very recent Switch release, Monster Keeper earned it’s place with its simple but lovely graphics, its delightful Metroidvania gameplay, and the almost Pokemon-like pleasure of fielding a team of badass monsters to kick the asses of other badass monsters. When I’m not playing 1 or 2 on this list, I’m playing this game.

3rd Worst: The Last of Us 2

In almost any other year this would absolutely top my worst of list. This game takes everything that I thought was worthwhile about the first game (Joel and Ellie’s relationship, complicated morality, and fuck all else) and shoves it down the toilet and takes a great steaming dump on it. The fact that this game swept the game awards in a year with Ghost of Tsushima, Hades and the Final Fantasy VII Remake is disgusting and final proof that the awards are as corrupt as the industry they celebrate.

2nd Best: Elder Scrolls Online

I’ve never been much of an MMO player. I find the presence of other humans in my games to normally be a nightmare. But this long drawn out dumpster fire of a year got me watching a LOT of videos on YouTube, and when my favourite channels did a few challenges in the new Greymoor chapter, I decided to give it a go as a birthday present to myself. And good lord did it pay off! Elder Scrolls Online is bloody huge, bloody beautiful, allows you to choose the level of interaction you have with other people, and has some of the best NPCs I’ve ever met in any video game. Not to mention the wonderful friends I’ve made both inside and outside the game, who have made this year of lockdowns and crises worth living through. Love you guys.

2nd Worst: Deadly Premonition 2 - A Blessing In Disguise

Holy transphobia, Batman! Swery really made an idiot of himself with this game and his reaction to the backlash, and yet again in any other year it would absolutely top the list. Sadly, it’s 2020, and it gets worse.

Honorable Mentions: Best

Dragon Quest Builders 2 (For having the wonderful combination of Dragon Quest’s ridiculous sense of humour and Minecraft’s dedication to building cool shit), Animal Crossing: New Horizons (for being the pure and gentle escape that I needed during the first few weeks of total isolation), Portal Knights (Another game with Minecraft’s addictive building mechanics and delightfully ridiculous characters), Final Fantasy VII Remake (honestly it earns this through the Honeybee Inn scene alone).

Honorable Mentions: Worst

Astral Chain (apparently it gets good a couple of hours in but I can’t fucking get that far so screw it), Death Stranding (what did I even?), Sin Eaters (utterly incomprehensible to the point I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the first room).

Best Game of 2020: Hades

How could any other game top this list? Hades is truly the best game Supergiant has created yet, and considering how incredibly good their games are as a rule, that’s saying a LOT. The art is just *chef’s kiss* perfect, the characters are all filled with personality and voice acted with incredible talent and dedication, the gameplay is a delightfully chaotic rampage through the various levels of the Greek Underworld, Zagreus is possibly my favourite protagonist of all time, and every single aspect of this game is sheer delighful perfection. Thank you, Supergiant Games, for a truly transcendent gaming experience that will stay with me for years to come.

Worst Game of 2020: Cyberpunk 2077

This game should have had it all. It was made by darling publisher CD Projekt Red, it starred Keanu ‘Most Perfect Human Being’ Reeves, it had years and years of hard work behind it... And it somehow managed to be an absolute shit-show the likes of which I’ve never seen before in a lifetime of gaming. From the lighting that gave people migranes and actual seizures (thanks a lot you assholes it took me three days to recover from that migrane), to the disgusting crunch forced upon the dev team by shitty management, to the plague of bugs, to the returns controversy, to the patches not arriving until some time in January... Not even Fallout 76 failed this hard. This proves once and for all that when Jim Sterling speaks, the industry needs to FUCKING LISTEN.

#Cat Meows #Top 5 games #Bottom 5 games #Top 5 #Bottom 5 #2020 #What a dumpster fire of a year

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melonbreadreviews-blog · 6 years

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Playing ‘The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’ Three Years Later

I’ll admit, I’m often late to the party on major title releases in gaming. I’d like to tell you that it’s an intentional choice of mine, that it’s in my best interest to let the best and worst parts of these landscape altering pieces of art simmer in a pot together. I picked up Bloodborne on a whim three years after its release, and after about a two hour play session, I decided it wasn’t for me; three months later I was glued to my TV every night after work searching every nook and cranny that the hunter’s dream had to offer me.

My point is that buying a game upon its initial release is a commitment to either loving or hating that game. I often feel compelled to shower praise on the solid parts of games that I love, and pressure to explain with hyperbole the games I just couldn’t vibe with. Playing Bloodborne years after its release at a much lower price allowed me to put it down when I didn’t enjoy it, and pick it back up when I needed it. The parts of it that I didn’t like weren’t exacerbated by a pressure to validate my own experiences relative to the gaming community. Likewise, when i picked the game up again, I loved it not because I thought I should, but because the experience itself was legitimately breathtaking.

Three months later, set against the familiar hum and drum of my slowly dying Playstation 4, my experience with CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt begins. I tried to begin this same journey a few months earlier, but that run died on the starting line in a messy tutorial and a post-Bloodborne haze. One enormous Dragon Quest XI run later, and I’m finally ready to give this journey three years in the making a chance. My expectations are a mixed bag; I carry with me the influences of a thousand burning reddit threads and the weight of an inescapable question: Has this game aged well?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with The Witcher franchise (I’ve never read the series or played a mainline game before touching The Witcher 3, so you’re not alone!), the main plot of the game follows the journey of a Witcher named Geralt as he searches for his protege and ward Ciri while also fending off the primary antagonistic force of the game, the Wild Hunt. Witchers serve as bounty hunters of the region, often dealing with the monsters and villains ordinary folk are incapable of handling themselves. Throughout the game, players can feel the tension in the air between Geralt and the people around him, often including the ones he saves. Witchers exist outside the realm of normalcy in this universe, and to some extent the amount of agency the franchise gives you over the lives of the people who exist around you is a direct cause of the aforementioned tension. Though the social world Geralt inhabits mirrors the dangers of the physical world around him, there are romantic options in the game that allow for a deeper understanding of his character and The Witcher universe. The lore aspect of this game really separates it from similar titles in the same genre.

My first memories of the game still hold true, though my feelings about them have changed. I love the comic style art that flashes across the screen as the game loads, not because it matches the aesthetic of the game, but precisely because it does not. If I compare The Witcher 3 to other iterations of the same genre like Skyrim or Fallout, I find myself enjoying that not every moment of The Witcher is something that I need to take seriously. Sometimes, it’s okay to be reminded of the fact that I am actually playing a game and not living and dying by the decisions I make in this world.

That isn’t to say that decisions in this game don’t matter, though; I find that The Witcher 3 places weight on its decisions in a similar fashion to Mass Effect, rather than Skyrim or Fallout. There are several moments in the game that require a timed quick response in conversations or during action, and those quick responses sometimes dictate both the flow of ongoing dialogue and possible relationships with the characters around Geralt. There are even dialogue options that seem quite diplomatic on the surface, but end in brawls or even death for characters that the player did not expect. These moments are meant to teach the player just how much agency they have over the lives around them; sometimes Geralt feels like a god, and sometimes he feels just as vulnerable to the whims of the world as the people around him.

Normally, worlds that freely give that sort of agency to the player overwhelm me. I feel paralyzed by just how much my choices matter, and my love for the friends I’ve made throughout the story keeps me from playing the game as intended. Through the use of guides and reddit threads, I orchestrate my game in order to keep those characters alive, and that leaves me with less of an experience in the end. The Witcher 3, however, doesn’t leave me paralyzed in the same way. Because much of the main narrative is decidedly linear, Geralt is free to explore the world around him, which includes contracts to kill creatures and free spirits and occasional games of a fairly fun but not too complex card game called Gwent. Not every decision has a role to play in the main story, and the ones that do feel natural in the game’s flow. Geralt is both insanely powerful and incredibly vulnerable, but I never fear for the outcome of his story while enjoying the fun of making decisions.

The skippable tutorial of the game remains not so skippable considering the amount of experience I have with The Witcher 3’s combat, but I appreciate that I have the option of ignoring it if I decide to run through new game plus. It’s here that the meat of the game comes to the forefront. The reason I initially put down The Witcher 3 was because I didn’t enjoy the flow of combat, which includes the two primary slashing attacks with two variants of weapons, a myriad of magical powers called Signs, and the use of items like bombs, crossbows and oils which can be applied to Geralt’s main weapons. If you’re just judging the combat of the game on the first few hours, The Witcher 3 may not meet your expectations of a major title release. When disjointed in the name of learning, the combat feels clunky, and the first few contracts in the region, especially on higher difficulties, are a major challenge for the uninitiated.

But in the same way I came to love Bloodborne, I’ve come to adore The Witcher 3 because of my journey with it. Sitting through the first few hours of the game, especially in 2018, can be sort of a grind. The story has yet to materialize, the combat is underdeveloped, and Geralt himself can seem unrelatable, but as the hours move on, the game opens up in parallel fashion to the world it encompasses. The combat itself feels incredibly fluid, each piece of it tied together in a way that challenges the player to learn how to be a Witcher, while also rewarding enough to encourage growth and not detract from the side-questing and story that make this game fun. The Witcher 3’s systems include a hearty dodging mechanic that feels clunky outside of battle, but seamless in it, and a parry system that is absolutely necessary on higher difficulties. Geralt’s magic, Signs, interact with objects in the world, but they can also be morphed and shaped into crowd control devices. The ability tree is extensive, but in a way that represents a mixing of action and role-playing. Each playthrough can be different, but Geralt remains much of the same, just upgraded.

Though not combat in a traditional sense, I think The Witcher 3’s in-game card system, Gwent, represents an entirely different method of fighting for players. Though not required, there are various quests given to Geralt in different regions of the game which involved beating skilled Gwent players at cards. While the game involves a little bit of strategy, it’s never overwhelming, and because Gwent isn’t a major factor in the story, it’s skippable for fans who don’t enjoy it. I found myself going from inn to inn, challenging keeps to games for their best cards, and I really came to love a part of the game I didn’t enjoy all that much at first. It’s a missable portion of the game, but it definitely adds dimension to the gameplay without requiring too much effort on the part of the player.

Much of the game’s story is very compelling, and it isn’t saddled with an extensive lore that the player is forced to grapple with. There is lore, yes, but that lore is discoverable all over the world, and it’s the player’s choice to explore it, or not. There is a distinct moment in the first 20 hours or so of the game that allows the player to learn about about Geralt’s relationship with Ciri through dialogue options with another character. The player can listen to all of the heavy lore in the dialogue, or simply skip it. The Witcher 3 is chalk full of story, but it never asks the player to share the burden of that story. In much the way you can flow in and out of the narrative of the story through side-questing and contracts, you can simply choose not to pay attention to certain parts of the main quest line.

That isn’t to say that the story is lacking or is unfocused. There are reasons to want to stay on track, including a wide array of characters who are, though not as interesting as Geralt, incredibly complex. The Witcher 3 does a fantastic job of presenting its best qualities though, and those qualities encourage players to explore the world around them and creative a narrative journey that varies significantly from player to player. Whether or not a player values that storytelling approach, though, depends on their own taste. Personally, I found that I could have my fill of Gwent and monster hunting, and then pick right back up where I left the main story.

The Witcher 3 is not without its faults, despite my glowing praise up to this point. While the world itself is rendered beautifully, I found the interactions with other characters to pose the biggest problems for the game’s graphics. There were times where Geralt’s face would simply teleport all over the screen until the game was able to settle into the set animations for the dialogue, and I distinctly remember an interaction between Geralt and Triss Merigold which involved Triss pressing a hand to her face that was stuck in the Igni battle animation for fire. While these graphical glitches don’t detract from the overall product, they are wrinkles on the surface of the game that begin to show its age. I was surprised that the world remained incredibly stable, save for a few times I found my horse could fit between a clustered group of trees better than I could, while the dialogue options proved incredibly difficult for the animations in the game. It reminded me a lot of my time with Mass Effect, in both good and bad ways. There was a certain novelty, but maybe that novelty is a bit too dated for a Playstation 4 title.

I’d like to end this review where I started, and that is on the subject of playing games years after they’ve already debuted. I wish I was a strong enough person to not feel the pressure that comes with making a commitment to a new title, but I often let reviews and recommendations, either positive or negative, affect the way I experience games. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a near perfect example of my current status as a consumer, because I’ve been able to enjoy all the good that the game has to offer without taking the bad bits too seriously. I did expect the game to be great, of course, but I didn’t expect it to be perfect, and that’s partly because I don’t have a need to be justified in having purchased it. I haven’t tasked myself with deciding The Witcher’s place in history; that’s already been decided. So, for now, I feel quite content to stroll along cobblestone city roads and swampy marshes, living life as a Witcher.

#game review #writing #the witcher 3 #geralt of rivia #video games #review

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pride-vns-blog · 6 years

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LGBTQ VN Week: Day Three! (6/20)

Welcome back for my third day of LGBTQ visual novel recommendations! Remember to check out my first post’s “One note before we get started” section to get a handle on what this recommendation list is, what it’s not, and why I made it, if you haven’t already!

The four visual novels I’ve got lined up to talk about today move beyond endlessly bleak apocalypses to focus instead on persistence and hopes for a brighter future — Spincut’s Who We Are Now, Sofdelux Studio’s Disaster Log C, and Worst Girls Games’ We Know The Devil, followed by a conversation with Jaime Scribbles Games about her upcoming As We Know It.

(Disclaimers: I’m somehow still into unique-looking apocalypse stories in the year 2018, so I backed both Who We Are Now and As We Know It on Kickstarter, and I also know the creators of Disaster Log C personally.)

Head on in for comic book supervillain jokes, super important teddy bears, one hell of a summer camp, and juggling your full-time job with the end of the world!

WHO WE ARE NOW (SPINCUT)

Itch.io Tagline: "A queer, post-apocalyptic visual novel about love at the end of the world.” Genre(s): Romance; slice of life; science fiction. Release Date: December 12th, 2017 (Xander’s Story); June 18th, 2018 (Jesse’s Story); TBA (Ray’s Story & Nathan’s Story). Content Warnings: Multiple explicit sex scenes; discussion of traumatic violence.

Who We Are Now, a visual novel following protagonist Wes as he offers comfort to the isolated fellow residents of a post-apocalyptic town named Home under the advice of town leader Mohra. The backdrop for Who We Are Now is distinctly science fiction, but the worldbuilding elements are interestingly vague enough that the characters only refer to the apocalypse more in terms of how it impacted their lives, rather than concrete details about exactly which places were destroyed on what dates and how. That’s personally something I prefer for character-focused pieces like this, and an interesting contrast to the hyper-detailed way AAA studios approach the apocalypse — it works in Who We Are Now, especially in the instances where the characters react differently to the circumstances of their situation or share different information, because it’s what they’ve retained.

Although Who We Are Now is short and largely still in “preorder”, according to its Itch.io page, both of the two relatively complete Stories — starring romanceable characters Xander and Jesse, respectively — offer distinct enough stories with memorable characters that I feel comfortable saying their two companion pending routes (Ray and Nathan) will all be well worth the price and the wait. Spincut’s script treats the two love interests’ struggles with society and their respective traumas carefully, never really offering an answer or a single moment that stood out to me as being a demand for them to just “get over it”. Both Jesse and Xander bristle, especially in the later half, and neither Xander’s struggle to control his mysterious electric powers nor Jesse’s slow progress fitting in as part of the society in Home go seamlessly. Even Wes’s personality feels realistically flawed; as a character who’s lived for years on his own, there’s moments in the script where his self-reliance and avoidance gets in the way of honest and open communication.

As a relationship-focused story with a heavy emphasis on character development, Who We Are Now’s writing delivers some solid growth and reasonable conflicts in a minimal amount of time, especially in Xander’s Story! Without going into too many spoilers, his convictions about the “bad guys” outside of the community of Home and his struggles with self-worth throughout the story build up to a believable, sympathetic end — his Story raises some interesting questions about violence in a post-apocalyptic world that, combined with how different it felt from Jesse’s perspective, made me all the more excited to see Ray and Nathan’s viewpoints on the apocalypse.

(Also, the sex scenes are 👌.)

The Xander’s Story and Jesse’s Story chapters of Who We Are Now are available now for a total price $15, a price that includes the eventual release of Ray’s Story and Nathan’s Story, both of which currently TBA. For more updates, you can follow developer Spincut on Itch.io or Twitter.

DISASTER LOG C (SOFDELUX STUDIO)

Itch.io Tagline: "It has been raining ceaselessly for 7 days...” Genre(s): Comedy; mild horror. Release Date: October 23rd, 2017. Content Warnings: See Itch.io page.

(This section contains mild, vague spoilers for Disaster Log C’s ending. It’s short and free, you might want to give it a try first!)

When it comes to the four apocalypse stories on this list, they’ve all got (thankfully) relatively different approaches to handling the end of the world, but Disaster Log C’s approach is one of the few visual novels that actually surprised me with its later swerve into a revelation I hadn’t totally expected. (I’m trying to be vague enough as possible, but I seriously didn’t see that plot point coming and can appreciate the worldbuilding that made it easy to accept as a “how did I miss that?” kind of fact once it’s revealed!) Protagonist Mell’s no-nonsense approach perfectly serves the story’s steady pace, punctuated by Mell’s own “Disaster Logs” of the ocean rising up to swallow the island she’s lived on her whole life, and that pace is fed into perfectly with the frantic nature of knife-wielding Issa’s demands about where to go, what to do, and how much alcohol she wants to drink.

There’s a goofiness to Disaster Log C that never undercuts the story’s more serious moments — Mell’s struggle with the end of the world she’s always known and Issa’s own relative detachment from that world as it exists are both given more than enough space in the text, and the story never holds their growth back for the sake of slapstick. But there’s plenty of slapstick and a lot of absolutely hilarious moments, served equally well by both script and story, that are well-placed enough that it becomes clearer and clearer in hindsight exactly when Mell and Issa became as close as they can be by the story’s end. Their dynamic is a delight and well worth reading for, whether it’s in the most serious of heart-to-hearts or a scene where they’re arguing with one another about how much food to eat.

But above all else, the thing that really sells me on Disaster Log C — and Sofdelux Studio’s previous dating sim, Mermaid Splash Passion Festival — is how sincere it is. It’s easy for apocalyptic fiction to be smug, or grim, or just plain dark, but Disaster Log C manages to capture the real grief inherent in its premise without ever plunging into hopelessness. The world Issa and Mell inhabit is a beautifully illustrated one filled with plenty of jokes and triumphant fishing CGs, but it’s also a cruel world, and it’s still very much the story of how everything Mell has ever known disappeared in the blink of an eye. That’s a delicate balance to walk, for sure, but it’s a balance Disaster Log C walks seamlessly enough that its wonderfully optimistic True Ending had me in tears.

Disaster Log C is available now for free, in both English and Korean. Both halves of Sofdelux Studio also have individual Itch.io pages (DCS’s here and Nami’s here), or you can follow their shared Itch.io for more Sofdelux Studio projects!

WE KNOW THE DEVIL (PILLOWFIGHT, WORST GIRLS GAMES)

Steam Tagline: "Follow meangirl Neptune, tomboy Jupiter, and shy shy Venus as they get to know each other--but one always gets left out.” Genre(s): Group relationship horror. Release Date: February 15th, 2016. Content Warnings: Religious abuse; blood; character death; implications of sexual harrassment/abuse.

(This section contains spoilers for the plot and endings of We Know The Devil. Sorry! Please play it!)

It would be difficult — if not totally impossible — for me to talk about why I liked We Know The Devil or what it's doing in this group of visual novels without spoiling the ending in one way or another. (I don't think I could even refer to Venus, my hands-down favorite character, in a way that felt natural without dodging around her pronouns like a middle schooler playing volleyball.) For a while, I considered putting this in the creative design category and trying to avoid spoilers anyway! There’s been of fascinating pieces that I’ve loved reading about how We Know The Devil’s unique choice system operates; its “choose two characters out of three” model is smart, well-executed, and offers a lot of character development in both the duo you observe and the one you don’t in every playthrough.

But the piece of this story that I’ve always loved the most has been its ending and the way I feel that it functions as a work of apocalyptic fiction. While the other three entries on this list are all set either at the dawn of the apocalypse or well after the apocalypse has literally “dawned”, We Know The Devil’s apocalypse is more quasi-metaphorical and much more closely linked to its ending. If you read it 100% literally, the “three worst girls since Eve” ascend in all the ways they were never supposed to be and end the world; if you read it strictly metaphorically, they still become more removed from the all-encroaching, endlessly painful social standards that have been forced upon them. And in that case, it’s even more the “end of the world” for their family or the religious authority figures around them to see that self-satisfaction and acceptance instead of the quiet repression and shame, isn’t it?

I can’t deny that a lot of my fondness for this kind of reading is a deeply personal one, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. (If anything, I think how many personal reactions there have been to We Know The Devil is a testament — ha! — to the nuanced writing and worldbuilding.) The legacy of religious abuse in the name of Christianity, specifically Irish Catholicism, is something that’s haunted my own family for generations. It’s dictated who got married and who couldn’t get divorced, it’s been the reason some of my friends were born and the reason some others died, and its impact is so irreversable that the guilt even gets passed down into generations that have barely attended a service. So for We Know The Devil’s true ending to take a lot of those religious hallmarks, that guilt from failing to live up to expectations, and then build up to a true ending where the rest of the world is damned for the way it treated Jupiter, Neptune, and Venus — without the true ending’s text ever condemning any of them for being teenagers who are willing to scorch the Earth, metaphorically or literally, and refuse to accept the pain they shouldn’t have to suffer? As a story about the end of three characters’ slice of the world, We Know The Devil one hell of an answer to the Christian idea of a Rapture, and one I prefer a thousand times over.

We Know The Devil is available now on sale for $1.99 (75% off), while you can try We Know The Demo for free on Itch.io; Worst Girls Games can be found on Twitter and Tumblr with more information about their upcoming project, Heaven Will Be Mine!

AS WE KNOW IT (JAIME SCRIBBLES GAMES)

Kickstarter Tagline: "A heavily branching visual novel, featuring love, friendship and life-sim elements in a future destroyed by the sun.” Genre(s): Romance; drama. Release Date: April 25th, 2018 (demo); TBA (final version). Content Warnings: Alcohol and drug use; violence; mature content.

As someone who really enjoyed Pinewood Island, Jaime Scribbles Games’ debut horror visual novel about college students trapped on an island with a murderer, I’ve been looking forward to As We Know It since I first saw initial character designs. The first demo definitely was what I’d been hoping it would be — although visually unfinished in places, given that the Kickstarter was largely to help fund purchase of its art assets like finished backgrounds and side character sprites — and the story about a post-apocalypse society that largely functioned but still ran into unexpected troubles instantly hooked me.

Interested in hearing a little more about protagonist Ashlynn’s dual focus on romance and maintaining a job, I reached out to Jaime with a couple questions to hear what she had to say about her upcoming visual nove.

First, congratulations on your Kickstarter reaching full funding and a bonus goal! I'm sure you've done a lot of this already during the funding period, but how would you pitch As We Know It to someone who'd never heard of it before?

A heavily branching visual novel with romance in a post-apocalyptic setting. Something along those lines.

Yeah, that sounds accurate to me! What's the experience in having run a successfully-funded Kickstarter for a visual novel been like? Are there any weird little details or things that you weren't expecting to have to deal with that have become surprisingly important?

Hm, I didn’t really know what to expect. I can’t say anything too unusual occurred.

Hey, no news is better than bad news, for sure!

Both As We Know It and Pinewood Island have had different mechanics alongside the romance -- in Pinewood Island's case, unpuzzling a brutal series of deaths, and in As We Know It's case, pursuing a career path in a crisis-stricken community -- that seem to be just as central to the storytelling, rather than a backdrop for romance. Can you talk a little bit about striking that balance?

It’s not easy! I have to make sure it makes sense for these characters to want to pursue romance despite whatever else is going on. That usually means making sure things don’t get too intense until more of a relationship is formed. Since romance is such a heavy aspect I hope people don’t question it too much lol

When you're designing characters' personalities or approving their visual depictions, what do you keep in mind? What do you think is the most important thing when it comes to building a lineup of characters to make them all feel distinct from one another?

I think of different personalities, different types of people I want to write, and then I try to make sure their looks are diverse and varied. As I write them their characteristics become more solid.

Were someone else to make a "dream visual novel" for you as a player, what do you think that visual novel would be like? In terms of genre, romance routes, etc?

Oh I’m not sure 🤔 probably a really good mash up of horror and romance with psychological elements and a mature story (no teenager plz) lol

😆 I'd definitely play that, too!

For my last question, what LGBTQ visual novels from other developers or creators are your personal recommendations?

Let’s see, Hustle Cat, Let's Meat Adam are my faves, but there are tons more out there!

Definitely! Thank you for the conversation, Jaime, I'm looking forward to seeing As We Know It's progress over the next couple months!

You can find more information about As We Know It on Kickstarter, try out the free demo on Itch.io and Steam, or keep up with progress on the game’s development blog!

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