Recent reviews by Aniyha

This game has irrevocably changed my neural pathways. My life is now in two eras: pre-ISAT and post-ISAT. I think I will recommend this game wholeheartedly to every person I know who likes games, and every person I know who does not like games, and every person I don't know. I actually like time loops as a genre now. I am not normal about this game. Please play it.

Garl my beloved

As a linguist I can say that this is a certified banger

It's kind of like heavily discounted, casual Breath of the Wild-- there's glitches here and there, and it's much less developed than BotW, but a lot of its design philosophy takes from it, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

This game goes way harder than it has any right to.

I can make her worse? Nah son she can make ME worse

When I was playing this game, I struggled to think of how to describe it. Now, I think it's most akin to unraveling. Gaslighting, but in the true sense of the word. Reflecting the protagonist's sanity falling apart, the background music will begin to take on static to the point that you will think it's been like that the entire time. It's lo-fi, right? Sometimes they add a bit of static for flavor, right? Then the stuttering starts. The missed notes like a record skipping a groove.

The story doesn't help. Your character experiences time travel and loops both as a result of his own actions, as well as your own save scumming. Once, when I was messing around with common route options to try and land on a certain character's route, I picked an option that I normally didn't. The game explicitly told me that that wasn't how it went. My character then proceeded to black out for several frames until the game righted itself. Another time, a scene that was familiar to me played out differently: the paper snowflake the protagonist folds and cuts instead blooms into fractal chaos, consuming everything, until the game righted itself once more.

Further, on a meta level, the entire point of the story is to achieve immortality. Or is it? It seems as though every story written about humans achieving immortality is actually about why trying to do so is a fool's errand. Black Heaven is no different. There is a hunger, a certain gnawing at the edges of every living being, but some measure of growth and happiness can only be gained when that hunger is shed. It's left me with a lot to think about, which I find increasingly rare in visual novels. Able to achieve a perfect blend between its horror, philosophy, romance, and even sex, I think there's a little bit of something for everyone in Black Heaven. Give it a shot! It was inspired by DDLC, if that helps your decision-making.

Oh, by the way, the button to hide the text box is the mouse wheel. Also, there isn't a CG menu, which is a bit weird, since there are definitely CGs in this game. Take screenshots if you want to keep those!

Potions go brrrrrrr

The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general. -Engels, 1847

If this game interests you at all, wait for it to go on sale. A steep sale.

While the art is gorgeous and the urban legend stories are interesting, it is entirely too short, lacking in general content, and unpolished to purchase at a whopping $50. The episodic structure aids the ghost investigations, but hinders any ability for character development to happen. There aren't really 'routes' so much as there are two different endings which don't materially differ much from one another. There were multiple typos that I found in the English text, which for a game this short, really shouldn't be happening. You'd think there would be full voice acting as well, but very few lines are voice acted. Death Mark is a genuinely decent game with gorgeous art and interesting episodes that I'd happily recommend were it not so ridiculously overpriced.