Recent reviews by Niandra!

How Fish Is Made is free and lasts about 20 minutes, so you might as well try it if you're interested, but although it's kind of neat, it didn't really grab me. I think the reason is, that at this point, I've just played so many visual novels/walking sims where "your choices aren't really your own or matter in the grand scheme of things" is one of the biggest themes, that it doesn't do a whole lot for me anymore (unless really well done)

I've been struggling to word my thoughts so I am just gonna throw them out - I think Mouthwashing is good, it's really damn good, however (through no fault of its own), the game was pushed SO aggressively to me on twitter that I think it might be a little overhyped

The only parts of the game I straight up didn't like were the two stealth sections, which were a bit tedious and definitely hurt the otherwise great pacing when I had to restart them once or twice

i had friends over my house for new years eve, and we streamed balatro to the big tv from a steam deck that got passed around the room while everyone was hootering and hollering, and it was pretty cool

An FMV game about washed up celebrities/influencers taking part in a battle royale to the death was always going to be a bit cheesy, but when bought on discount, I thought it was a fun enough watch/play

The reason I'm not recommending it though is because Wales Interactive almost exclusively make FMV games, it's Their Thing, yet it feels like the technical side of them never improves. I had issues skipping already watched scenes during Late Shift, which came out in like 2017, and I STILL had that problem here as well, which makes replaying the game pretty tedious...even though that's part of the point of it

There's not much I find more offputting than visual novels that sell themselves as not being like other visual novels - but regretfully, I do enjoy Class of 09 quite a lot

What I recommend doing is searching Yugicoin up on youtube - it's a 9 minute Yugioh parody made by the same person as this and shares a lot of the same humour. If you like that, you'll probably like this and if you don't, well you've probably saved yourself 10 bucks

Class Of 09 is an overly edgy and cynical look at mid 2000s teen culture, and that hits for me which might be why I have a soft spot for this. None of the characters are good people, it's kinda like It's Always Sunny with not as strong writing. The voice acting is also way way better than it has any right to be, which means the jokes are almost always delivered extremely well. It goes a long way in adding charm or a sick curiosity to the whole thing

also it's just kinda bizarrely gay???

i ain't arguing with a man that speaks entirely through pre-recorded tape messages - whatever you say, beautiful

An extremely beautiful and personal 15 minute experience that touches upon grief - lovely little animations too

I have a lot of sapphic friends in my life who lament the whole "lesbians are soft pure cinamon rolls!" culture, because it makes toxic yuri hard to find. Well, Nadia Nova's work might be what they're looking for - the relationships are doomed to fail, the characters are flawed but still very likeable/relataable and it is unabashedly horny

I really loved this little VN - the artstyle is great! I love it when VN characters blink - it's such a tiny thing that adds so much life. The soundtrack was also really enjoyable - Aeon of Maiden and Aeon of Maidens were my favourites. The themes about loyalty, trauma, family, and how they all come together is really well done, and plot gets like super gripping in the last act lol. I also feel like the main character is kinda autistic-coded, which was neat!!

This also feels kinda silly to say but I would also like to give a lil shout out to the game's initial warning message - "this is a work of fiction and viewer discretion is advised. None of this real. Take care of yourself.". There's so many spaces online that make you feel like a bad person for consuming media with "problematic"/unhealthy content, or that doing so is a reflection on you as a person. I always try to do Steam reviews for small/indie games because I know they help with visibility but I felt kinda hesitant because omg what if someone on my friendslist sees me recommending a porn game and judges me, even though I'm like, late 20s lol

tldr malcatras' maiden is really good, trans people continue to be the backbone of indie game dev

Doki Doki Literature Club has done irreparable damage to horror visual novels

There were things about this game I really liked, and there were things that I didn't - and I'm not sure how much of that was a skill issue on my part, which makes it hard to review Pseudoregalia

When you know you're making progress, the game is fantastic - the movement (generally) flows extremely well, with a ton of hidden techs to find. Realizing you can bunnyhop for extra speed was super cool. Unlike other metroidvanias, there's not many unlockables and most of the ones you get are movement based, meaning it's often up to player skill to get to new areas. And this can be absolutely enthralling as you grab a ledge that feels inaccessible, or just about make a wall jump

Unfortunately, I also struggled with progression a few times and knowing where to go, which slowed things down for me a lot. More towards the first half of the game, it sometimes wasn't clear if an area was inaccessible because I didn't have the right thing, or if I wasn't good enough at the movement yet and just hadn't hit the right angle. There was one powerup (a very important one might I add) that I could've collected hours earlier than I did, but I got to its location very early in the game, couldn't see a way to progress and then didn't think to go back to until much later

Basically, my playtime of Pseudoregalia went like this: I was really enjoying the game, then spent 1-2 hours lost and unsure where to go, then started making progress again and had a great time until credits were hit. That lull in the middle definitely dampened things for me, but as I said, it's kinda hard to guage if it was a skill issue on my part, versus the game itself having flaws

The world - which feels both very big and very small - being a bit confusing to navigate doesn't help, which it seems a lot of players struggled with. Although I'm grateful there IS an ingame map, as there wasn't one at all when the game launched, it's pretty basic. I would've liked to have seen where Sybil was on it, rather than just highlighting the room you're in, because I sometimes had to keep checking it to align myself. Also the bottom/top half of the map would get cut off my screen quite often lol

Also one thing I do wanna say - I found the wall jumping/kick ability a big slippery at times. Only after I beat the game did I learn from a Steam review that was also frustrated by this, that you can cancel it early by attacking. I wish the game had told me this in the ability's description, as it would've prevented almost every frustration I had with the movement. There were also moments where Sybil would not grab onto walls to do the wall slide and I wasn't sure why :(

As for plot/story/lore, there isn't a whole lot and what there is is quite cryptic so all I'll say is, I love Sybil's design and I'm never beating the furry allegations