Recent reviews by Fluka

This game aims at a very specific niche. It's about the transition between the medieval and early modern eras during the Northern Renaissance, memory and how we assemble evidence into history, the production of manuscripts and early printed books, and the history of a small Bavarian town. It's also a murder mystery with basically nothing but reading and walking and making plot decisions, with minigames for flavor (spinning wool!). You can take Latin or an understanding of the occult Hermes Trismegistus as a character trait. And did I mention there's a lot of reading? Disclosure: all of these things are 100% in my personal wheelhouse, plus you can pet the cats, so this is automatically one of my absolute favorite games ever. But really, if the above in ANY way sounds intriguing to you, you owe it to yourself to play this game. It does a wonderful job of conjuring a very specific place in time, with really beautiful writing and art. Beyond the murder mystery and monastic element, this is a personal story about ambition and personal regret. The story is beautiful and often sad - parts of it hit me hard specifically as someone who recently became a parent - and also quite funny at times. Highly recommended as something moving and very original (closest point of reference being Disco Elysium). Make Josh Sawyer happy.

Man, I wish I liked this a lot more than I did. I was a backer last year, and had high hopes for CS as both a game and as a generator of interesting procedural narratives (like Kennedy's earlier Failbetter games). Maybe I would like it in the future if I invested another ten hours into learning the subtleties of its mechanics, but the first few have been so frustrating that I actively don't want to go any further.

Sunless Sea and Fallen London had similar positive and negative attributes: fantastic writing and atmosphere, held back by a ton of grinding and game mechanics of varying quality. This one is still a grind (albeit not as bad a grind as Sunless Sea), and still has the fabulous writing. However, it's somehow managed to completely drop the ball on interpretability and quality of life. Why the hell can't I stack glimmering and erudition cards, when I can stack health and reason and passion? The text is too tiny to read on a laptop, but when I zoom in, the game likes to stack things all the way off the card board out of my field of view, so I miss key events. Why does it shimmer certain cards when I press on the relevant slot (because I often have NO clue what kind of resource is relevant), but then that card won't work for that slot? Oh ♥♥♥♥, I just got kicked out my job because I forget to drag the employment card back into the same slot. Wait, why am I now about to die in 60 seconds because I don't have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Dread card?

Experimenting to figure out what works and what doesn't might be a lot more fun if the UI was better, and did even a little work to help organize the player's thoughts. As it is, it feels like I'm perpetually decluttering a messy desk, rather than slowly chipping away at ineffable mysteries of the transmundane.

A short and sweet little game, which I played on an afternoon when I felt bitter and sad, and which made me feel better. The title suggests it's a dating sim, and I guess it technically is. In reality, though, it's more of a human-connection-and-empathy sim? The short interactive stories veer from flirting, to spookin', to weird shaggy dog tale humor, to sad stories of loss. All of them end on at least some sense of hope, however. Also, it's very very funny. Also also, the music and art are fabulous. Don't expect a long or mechanically deep game, but if you're looking for sweet, sad, and sexy ghosts, this is the game for you.