Dry Drowning

This game is much more than your averge visual novel. Of course at heart it's an atmospheric story with great characters and an interesting serial killer murder mystery but the game does not just require you to press a key to continue reading. This game actually has an inventory and a second mode in which you can inspect the surroundings freely. You also will have to combine the clues collected and confront certain suspects with those clues or the correct items to be able to progress with the story. There also are some mini games included to add even more variety into the gameplay. Storys will always be subjective but as a fan of SciFi and serial killer stories I loved this one. I liked the characters, the atmosphere, the artwork, the soundtrack and the setting. I also liked the twists the story is doing again and again and the choices that in some cases had different results than I thought they would have. Choices really do matter here. After finishing the game (which took me about 15 hours at least) I decided to replay it and make different choices. I expected some minor things to change but I got a completely different ending chapter (approx. 30 minutes alone). The ending was very different but it also complemented the ending of my first playthrough and offered me additional information I did not get before. Also this ending was highly emotional - so I decided to revisit this game again and try to unlock the final third ending. If you like detective stories, SciFi with social critique, serial killer mysteries or all of the above you really shoud play this game. If you are still unsure check out the free demo.

Really nice. The game atmosphere is imersive, characters are well writen. The story is good. It's a real pleasure to contemplate the background. I was a bit disappointed because we had a really nice vocal intro right before the title screen but we don't hear any voices in the game. I was hoping for more voice acting. But that doesn't break the immersion for sure, mainly because the music is wonderful adding something unique to the story. Also i was a bit confused with the dialogue as a non native english speaker, they sometimes were hard to follow. It would be nice to have other game exploring the word created here.

Whilst the gameplay is not going to blown you away - standard text-heavy visual novel with some light puzzle and dialogue choices here and there, but what really shine is game's writing. It does have a mature, dark and real life issue mimicking today's culture in it's writing with plenty of twist. The narratives are not presented in black and white, you aren't even sure if the protagonist is the good guy after all. Also, do not turned off by the game usage of heavy metaphors and some questionable lines. Think of it as Detective-mystery novel with European flavour, after all the game is made by Italian developers if i'm not mistaken.

This game manages to do several things good and bad at once. Story: for a VN the most important category, it scores high in my view for the interesting setting (chasing a serial killer in a dystopian futuristic city), characters and themes touched. At the same time, the writing is occasionally uneven and there are noticeable pacing issues, especially in the middle of each chapter and at the end. Gameplay: As a VN, it tries to keep things varied by alternating standard multiple choices dialogues, an interrogation minigame which requires the player to select the right evidence at the right time and an investigation minigame. Since for each of these there is only one solution though, they are not as fun as they might otherwise have been. This is not to say the game is linear: there are some choices that have a big impact on the later chapters and ultimately on the ending, and they are hard to miss because the game presents them big and large with the screen flashing all around the options (Telltale-like, if you know what I'm talking about) Art & Sound: It has a very peculiar art style, very different from average VN fare, whether you like it or not is a matter of taste. I personally found it a bit too drab and fuzzy, but in particular I found annoying that the character design is not consistent between regular gameplay and cutscenes (more like stills showing a detail or a location from a different perspective), and this unfortunately affects especially the two main characters, since they are present in virtually every cutscene. Sound is mostly piano, it might seem strange at first to have a score so "classical" in a futuristic setting but it works well to crate a gothic, oppressive atmosphere. Averaging everything together I end up with a rating between three and four stars, but if you are willing to show some tolerance for the shortcomings I mentioned above I'd definitely recommend to buy it.