Recent reviews by misami

terrible.

backgrounds are gorgeous, CGI and character sprites are good.
music is pretty cool too.

but writing is terrible.
i couldn't even finish a single route.
i can't bear this pseudo philosophical reflections of the main character that serve no purpose.
the main character himself is a mess of dumb decisions, raging on others for no reason, inability to say anything useful EVEN THOUGH HE KNEW WHAT HE WANTED TO SAY 2 FREAKING MINUTES AGO

and, of course

CATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINECATHERINE


i just hope artist and composers were paid enough because they were the only people who did a good job.

don't read it.
your time is worth way more than that.

One morning I was looking at new releases at Steam. Usually I don't find something interesting, but for some reason Marfusha has caught my attention. I briefly looked at screenshots and without a second thought bought Marfusha.

And you know what? Marfusha turned up to be a great game!

The gameplay is simple but heavily addicting. You are playing as Marfusha, a girl who drafted into the army since the country Kazolmya, where she lives is at war with all surrounding countries. Marfusha gets the duty to protect the wall from different robots who try to destroy this wall. Every day you get salary which you can spend on cards and, of course, paying taxes, which becomes more and more expensive. There are different types of cards, some will increase your stats, some will give you a weapon(which can break so you'll have to buy a new one, keep that in mind), some will give you useful items like mines or barricades.

There are also parther cards. If you buy this card, you'll get a partner who will help you to deal your difficult job. All of them are cute girls with different personalities. Some girls are serious, some are lazy, some don't care about the war in the first place and some are Belka and Strelka, whose names are the reference to the first animals who were sent to space.

Every five days you'll be able to get rest in dormitory. You can do one of three things before going to bed. You can get the food from the vending machine and if the goverment is kind to you, you'll get food which will increase your stats. You can take drink from refrigerator which somehow will make your magazine bigger or have a shower to enjoy some nice fanservice reload faster until the next dorm visit.

I should also mention the challenge mode. Here you can play as any of the partners. They have different skills and are meant to be played with a certain weapon. Or you can play as Marfusha, of course. In this mode you need to protect the wall as long as you can. Every day it gets more and more difficult. In the end your result will be saved in the leaderboard. I personally find this mode very satisfying.

I should mention, that Marfusha has very little of the content. You can complete the story in one hour and get all the achievements in like 6-7 hours. But it is definetely worth it. The price isn't high and you'll definetely enjoy these seven hours. Or, probably, even more.

I hope that the creator won't abandon Marfusha and will add more content. Or, at least, will make another game as good as Marfusha, or even better.

Twilight Town: A Cyberpunk Day In Life is a visual novel which is heavily inspired by an awesome game VA-11 Hall-A. As a big fan of this game I was heavily interested, when I first saw Twilight Town for the first time. At the same moment I decided to buy this game. But I was confused by the price. Only 2 euros?! Why so little? Screenshots look so good!

After that I bought some instant noodles to feel cyberpunk atmosphere better and started the game.

Story!
The story tells us about the ife of Ikuro, a man, who lives in a cyberpunk city called Twilight Town. He is unemployed and earns (but usually loses) money in casinos. He has enough money for a living, but he has a cute AI called Sei. He created her himself and he constantly needs more details and attachements for her, that's why he earns (nope, mostly loses) money by gambling.

Twilight Town: A Cyberpunk Day In Life is a good title for this game, since there isn't a great breathtaking story about megacorps, rebellions, AI riots or what else cyberpunk is known for. It's just a typical day of a typical person. There is some stuff happening in his life, but nothing major for the most part. Oh, no, wait, looks like something is happening...

But before that let's talk about other stuff

Visual!
Oooh, it's very good. The whole game made in pixel-art style and it looks awesome. The characters are beatiful. The backgrounds - oh my God, I am willing to make a wallpaper out of them. Like, really. Visuals are great. It reminds me of another cyberpunk game, 2064: Read Only Memories, by the way.

Music!
It's nice. Like I said, Twilight Town is inspired by VA-11 Hall-A and it has similar music to what Garoad made for Vallhalla. But it's still unique and doesn't sound trivially. Highly recommend to buy soundtrack as well. It's not really expensive anyway.

So...
Remember I told you that I bought some instant noodles? I made two cups and only ate one of them. After that the game ended. Yeah.
And this is the biggest downside of the game. The lenght is dissaponting. And the game literally ends at the moment, when the story is getting intense!


Conclusion
Twilight Town: A Cyberpunk Day In Life is still worth it.
Yes, it's extremely short. But this 30 minutes experience will give you a good amount of cyberpunk atmosphere. The game is very cheap, so why not to try! I assure you, you won't regret it. Good music and awesome visual will prove it to you. And still, I find the story quite amusing.

Freedom.
Today this word implies political meaning. Something what whole nations were fighting for centuries. Something what humanity appreciate a lot and nowadays. But ages ago, when ancient humans were fighting for life, they would look at birds. They would observe how they flew a cross the sky and would want to do the same. That is what was called a freedom back then...

Actually, Superflight is very simple desinged game. It doesn't have a ton of side quests, realistic graphics or, even, a soundtrack. And at the first look it doesn't have a difficult gameplay task. Fly, earn score, die, repeat.

But when you start the game you return back to ancient times, back to flying birds. From the first second you can feel, how great it is for us, humans. Fly into mountain tunnels, feel wind touching your face, have an animal fear of smashing in rocks. Begin to understand the nature a bit more.

The world here is a procedurally generated mountain or island of two-three colors. But every island is a bit (or a lot) more different than previous. Sometimes the whole island is one giant mountain. Sometimes you'll get many thin stone towers . Sometimes mountain is made from many earth platforms. If you turn your imagination on you'll be able to see even more than just bunch of rocks. Some places reminded me of multilayer cities, where every layer is a bit different than previous, towers full of trash like in the moive "Wall-E", faded skyscrapers that were functioning ages ago. Oh and you can save the map to fly there again.

Superflight has score system as a motivation for players. You can earn score when you fly carefully close to the walls or fly into portals that lead to next map. There is two leaderboards, one for high score and another one for high combo. However you can turn on the Zen Mode if you just want to enjoy the calming gameplay.

You'll get a hold of the controls during the first two minutes of gameplay. Twenty minutes in, you'll get how to evade walls and other obstacles. Thirty minutes in, you'll feel like you were born in the skies.

Like in the real sky, there is no soundtrack. It has its charm during the first 20 minutes but later it gets slightly boring to play with no music on. But you can always turn on your own music in the background.

I highly recommended. It is worth it even if you only plan to play for about 10 minutes.

I find it a bit embarassing to write such a review for a not-so-expensive and simple looking game. Though yeah, it touched me deeply.

First review, huh? Usually I don't write reviews but this time I couldn't stop myself. Anyway, let's talk about Synergia.

Synergia is a cyberpunk yuri visual novel made in 5 years iirc mostly by a single person, Radi.
Synergia tells us a story of Cila, a girl who works in Special Forces. Her job is to deal with defective androids. Cila lives her whole life in the Empire - a cyberpunk country located on a planet in space. Even though she works very well and makes no mistakes, she has some kind of problems with her job and her life. In the Empire it is prohibited to develop androids with singularity. Yet something led to Cila being forced to live with android with singularity. At this moment the game tells us about relationships between Cila and Mara, the android.

I have probably not described the story not as exciting as it is in the game, but still. Now, let's talk about specific aspects of Synergia.

Story.
The first and the most important thing in visual novels, that's what i think at least. The story in Synergia is outstanding. It keeps you on the edge of your seat and makes you continue reading until you see the ending. There is two endings by the way, the good one and the bad one. And this is the first time when i enjoyed both. Even the bad one. I have played a lot of visual novels and whenever I get a bad ending i usually just abandon the game or just feel very sad. That's it. But here, the bad ending is really cool written and you don't have this feeling of wasting time for nothing. Actually i recommend to get the bad ending first and then the good one. I think this way the story is more interesting. Oh, and after finishing both endings you can read the epilogue. It connects all the puzzle pieces of the story and also very well written.

Atmosphere.
Here i will talk about music and artwork and how they work together. To be short - A W E S O M E L Y. I have no words to explain how good they show the atmosphere of the Empire, which is full of social problems, terrorism and rebellions. You can feel the tension at every moment when Cila isn't home. You can feel this calmness of her home, but only if something bad doesn't happen. Music adds to it a lot. Andy Andi Han did a great job composing music of Synergia. Every track actually reflects the feelings you have when they play. In tense moments you're really worried about characters and think, what can happen now. In calm moments you're happy and relaxed after this tension you had five minutes ago. Awesome job.

Should you buy it?
Is that a question? Yes. You like yuri? Then you should buy it. You don't really like yuri? Well you still should buy it, yuri isn't the most important thing here. You like cyberpunk? Then you DEFINITELY should buy it.

Synergia isn't really long - about 8-9 hours. But this is the perfect duration, not too short and not too long to get boring. This 9 hours journey will be really exciting experience, i assure you.

Thank you, Radi, for your outstanding work.