Visual Novel

Kentucky Route Zero is a beautiful visual novel with something of the timeless, surreal feel of Southern Gothic fiction, though without the elaborate language of Faulkner.

The graphics are simple yet striking, in a twilight palette that reinforces the moody nature of the game. It's slow moving, meditative and emotionally impactful.

You play as Conway, a truck driver, who needs to make a delivery to Dogwood Drive. The people you meet tell you that you need to use Route Zero -- which does not appear to exist on any map. Magic realism at work, in other words.

It's played in a point-and-click, graphic adventure kind of way, but there are no real puzzles to solve; more, environments to explore, and characters -- well realized ones -- with whom to chat. As in hypertext fiction, the appeal is in the story, not the gameplay; and the interesting moments are those of epiphany, when you understand something more about the underlying story, putting pieces together mentally.

Created by the designer of Digital: A Love Story, Analogue: A Hate Story is a sequel in the sense that it uses essentially the same dynamic, but thematically quite different. It is also, in some ways, a tragedy, a form of story rare in games.

The backdrop to the story is that you have been sent to a lost generation ship -- a slower-than-light spacecraft, large enough to support a community of people over the generations it will take to travel to a star system with a habitable planet. It was lost long ago, and your own civilization evidently has FTL. No one is alive on the ship, and your task is to discover the reasons for this.

To the Moon is an affecting visual novel with adventure elements, built (I believe) in RPG Maker, but eschewing the conventions of the RPG.

It is an exploration of a man's life, approached in an unusual way: beginning with old age and delving back gradually to childhood, unpeeling his life, love, and the events that shaped him little by little. It's an effective story-telling technique, allowing the player to piece together the puzzles of his existence, with moments of raw sadness, occasional bits of humor, and an an ending with genuine emotional power.

I hereby implore everyone in attendance to make some RPG Maker games. I mean, this and Space Funeral prove there certainly are metric fuck-tons of untapped potential to be mined, conventions to be toppled over, all that jazz. I would make a Minecraft reference here but I haven't played it yet -- I know an addiction when I see one. In fact...

*ramble about myself for a good couple of paragraphs*

Oh yeah! Game Journo Story! Fun times, for sure. It is a delicious and tart Ninja-Turtle-phallus-esque pickle to be savored and devoured by you, hearty consumer. Wait a sec, that inane analogy is certainly missing some gratuitous vulgarity. Just imagine a bunch of 'fucks' and 'shits' strewn about casually and thoughtlessly. Where was I? Oh yeah, this song is pretty awesome.

ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT THE GAME NOW

Re: Alistair ++ is a Japanese-style (but not Japanese) visual novel with dating sim aspects, created in the Ren'Py engine. As such, there's not a huge whole lot of actual gameplay; as Merui, you work to win the affections of one of three guys, while figuring out which one of them stole your kill in an MMO boss battle. Each day, you have a choice at three moments: where to spend your lunch hour, what do do after school, and what do do in the evenings. Your choices can either set you up for the next scene with one of the three boys, or increase one of three stats (network reputation, social reputation, or intelligence), and basically each of the three guys prefers one of the three stats. You can also shop at the mall, and certain items improve your chances with different guys.

A Visual Novel about breaking up with your girlfriend? That's indie in more ways than one -- we're dipping into indie music territory here. This is a game for everybody who's been in a bad relationship that lingered on more than it should have, which should cover just about everybody in attendance. The backstory is vague enough that you can impose yourself into the role of the protagonist, who is struggling with ending a courtship that isn't exactly healthy. The game plays out as a series of conversations with the young lady supplemented by your own interior monologue. Occasionaly you're prompted to choose between two options, which usually either relent and placate her or push towards ending your entanglement. The game's short so exploring the various options doesn't take much time, and the dialogue is well written and easily identifiable with. The pixel art has a clean and appealing style to it but the tinny chip music wears thin after a while. Instead I'd recommend some early Elliott Smith to set the mood. With that in mind, give it a shot and come back for spoilers and musings. I'll promise to not pull out my acoustic guitar.

Just another dating sim designed by refugees from 4chan as a result of an anonymous post on /a/. Also, all the girls are disabled in some way -- Katawa is roughly translatable as "retard" or "cripple;" it's not a nice word. Heartwarming, right?

But, shockingly, it's the best portrayal of people with disabilities I've ever seen, far outstripping those you see in the mainstream media, mostly because those are limited to Professor X.