First impression: The Safe Place (PC – Steam) ~ Playing With Emotions

Steam store page

Remember two games I have talked about in the past before? Little Kite and Repentant? Well, the developer Anate Studio released his newest game last month. The developer was so kind to provide me with a press key to review and talk about this game before release. But, due to life getting extremely busy… I didn’t have the time to actually write something about this game until today. As usual, you’ll get my 100% honest opinion about this game and if this new point-and-click game is worth your time or not. If this world is really a safe place right now, or if we should do something about it. In any case, let’s dive right into it, and feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article. I’m always curious to read those.

Editorial note: this article is written while the game was in v1.1

Playing with emotions

Just like in all previous Anate Studio’s games, this game tackles heavy subjects. In this game, the story is about self-sacrifice and a troubled childhood. In this game, you play as an engineer, Alexander. He lives in the post-Soviet era, which was in the midst of an economic crisis.

One night, he meets a young girl called Christina while waiting for the bus. Things go south from there, and Alexander commits a murder in front of her and covers it up. While the girl promises to keep silent when he helps her, things might and will go even more south from there.

In terms of writing, the story is well tense. There are two majors threats loomed over our main character and they are equally thrilling. Should Alexander deal with the troubles of the economic crisis, or should Alexander make sure that all the traces to the murder are covered up? This struggle also comes back in the writing, making it even more tense for you as the player.

Something I want to mention as well, is that I found it extremely lovely to see the dev diaries on the studio’s YouTube channel. For example, in this video, we see how the first scene is inspired by a real life bridge in Ukraine. You see it all come together in a time-lapse, and you see how much detail and love has been put into this game.

This whole game is also voice acted. I have to say that compared to the previous game, the voice acting has improved quite a lot. The voice acting is a lot less monotone and has a bit more feeling into it. From the three games I have played from this studio, I feel that this is the best voice acting yet. While the voice acting has been improved, it’s still a bit jarring that there is no lip-syncing. So, you will hear the characters talking but not see them talking, you know.

The only critique I have about the voice acting is something I’m unsure is a critique of the voice acting, sound mixing and/or the visuals. It sounds and looks the same when you have thoughts and spoken dialogue. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen very often, so it isn’t a big problem. But, maybe for the next games, have a sort of little distortion on the thoughts and display that text in cursive. Something quite similar has been done by the ports of 999: 9 Hours, 9 Doors, 9 People, and it works extremely well when you are not picking up on context clues.

Before I move on, this time the game is only in English and Ukrainian. I only speak Dutch and English and a bit of French. I know a little bit of German, so I’m only going to stick with the language I understand and I can judge. So, this comes from somebody who doesn’t know any Ukrainian but from what I heard from the voice-over demo on the developer YouTube channel, it sounds pretty good as well.

Drawn by hand

I touched upon this earlier, but visually, this game is extremely detailed. Just look at this screenshot I have placed here. Every environment you visit is highly detailed and looks amazing.

Now, I have chosen this screenshot intentionally. Since, there is a minor issue I want to talk about here. On the desk in the bottom left, there are several items you can pick up. When you click on the desk, the camera zooms in. But, you can still move your character.

This leads to it feeling a bit janky in my opinion. Since, at first I didn’t know how to exit the zoomed in screen and when I learned I could just click on the top to walk away… I felt like you didn’t know what the restrictions were in the zoomed in area. So, if you work with a mechanic like this… Make it evident to the player how they can exit that zoomed in screen and don’t allow the character to move.

In any case, I wanted to talk about the visual presentation of this game. Overall, this game looks amazing. In addition to that, the animations in this game are decent. Some of them don’t really work in my opinion. I mean, the back and forth swaying from some characters feels out of place. It feels a bit unnatural. I can understand that from a gameplay standpoint that it makes the characters stand out more, but it looks a bit silly sometimes. Something I would love to see in future games is that the characters are more expressive, especially in dialogue. Now, they go through the same short animation cycle, and having them more expressive would make the game come more alive.

I hope that you aren’t getting the impression that this game is unpolished or that it’s broken. It isn’t. I’m just quite impressed by the leaps forwards that the developer made compared with the previous two titles, and I just want to see their games become even better. For example, in the previous game you only had a few hints you could use, and you had a set number. In this game, the hint system is miles better. In each area, there are several statues hidden. These statues can unlock an image sequence for you to get a hint. But be careful, since you can unlock an image sequence for a puzzle you already completed. And on top of that, there aren’t enough statues to unlock every hint tree. So, look for them and use them wisely. Since, they are hidden extremely well.

If you know what to do, this game will take you roughly two and a half hours. This game is longer than the two previous titles in this trilogy. Yes, the two games mentioned in the introduction are part of this game. Now, you don’t need to play the two previous games to understand everything in this game. But this game is as long as the two previous ones combined.

Sound support

Earlier in this article, I said that the characters should be more expressive. But, there is another side of the coin. Sometimes, the lack of animation works in the visuals in their favor. Since, the sound design and sound effects make your head fill in a lot of details.

The sound effects really play a support role, sometimes to make the world come more alive. A small piece of advice I’d give is that in the next game you have some sort of subtitles for the sound effects as well for the hard of hearing/deaf people in your next game.

Something that shouldn’t change is the soundtrack. The soundtrack fits this game like a glove. It sounds atmospheric and creepy sometimes. And like I said, it fits the atmosphere amazingly. A rather common complaint from the previous game was sometimes the music and sound effects were louder than the voice acting, this is anything but a problem in this game.

This game controls extremely well. In this game, you almost exclusively use the left mouse button to control the game. This makes the game quite easy to learn. You might think that due to the very detailed art style, it’s not always clear where to click on. But the cursor turns into a nice hand icon when you can interact with something, and you can click the magnifying glass in the left corner to make sure you have investigated every spot.

Now, sadly there are a few complaints I have about this game. The first complaint is that activating the running in this game is quite tricky sometimes. I wasn’t always able to get the running to work, and the main character walks rather slow sometimes.

The two other complaints I have about this game are more UI based. Which is a shame, since they drag the amazingly crafted UI down. For of all, I find it a mistake that there is no save time in the load menu. This game has an auto-save system, but it’s unclear what the latest save is. There is also no way to manually save, either. So, you’ll have to rely on the auto-saving of this game. And that doesn’t happen quite often, only after certain specific events.

The second complaint about the UI I have is something of a pet peeve. Since there are multiple words for something, it’s always handy to have each item named. For example, you have a broom handle or broom stick. These names I’d love to see in the inventory. Since, when you don’t play this game in one sitting, it’s extremely handy to quickly hover over the items to quickly catch up with the items in your inventory.

All in all, this game is a huge improvement compared to the previous titles. The puzzles are quite challenging, and it feels quite rewarding to figure them out. The game has some issues for sure, but comparing the first titles of this developer with this game, it’s impressive how far this developer has come. A better hint system, better voice acting, a longer story and adventure… There is also a demo for this game if you are unsure if you want to pay the 12 euros for it.

The biggest issues I have about this game are rather small in the overall picture. My biggest annoyances in during playing were the running not always working as I hoped and the back and non-expressive characters during dialogue. I mean, the voice acting is so much better, but the animation needs to follow. You can’t have two back and forth sawing characters having a heated discussion.

So yeah, if those are the only two major complaints about an adventure game that’s well written and drags you into a emotionally gut-wrenching story with amazingly handcrafted enviroments… I mean, what’s stopped from me to recommend this game to everybody who enjoys adventure and/or point-and-click games? Nothing! I’m convinced that the next games will have more improvements since this developer works almost alone on these titles and the quality he is able to put out is really worth your time and attention.

And if you’d excuse me now…. I have a game to finish. So, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

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First Impression: PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (Switch) ~ Playing Around With Curses

Nintendo.com microsite – Square Enix microsite

How far will you go to revive somebody from the death? Do you believe in the paranormal, or are those just story mechanics for a great campfire story? Those are some questions you have to ask yourself while playing this game. A horror visual novel that got released in March 2023, developed and published by Square Enix. Currently, you can play this game on the Nintendo Switch and Steam. But, you can also play it on your mobile phone. But wait a minute, that might be a worrying sign. If this game is also playable on phones, it might be filled with microtransactions or might not have too much depth. Now, I have already played a bunch of this game so, I’ll tell you if you should play or skip this game in this spoiler free review/first impression of this game. So, let’s dive right into it while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of this article.

Editorial note: this game is rated 16+ and covers some subjects that might be sensitive for some people. Digression is advised.

Playing Around With Curses

I have quite the weak spot for adventure visual novels. Games that take you through a tense and thrilling story with a lot of twists and turns. Games like the Zero Escape trilogy, Danganronpa, Trace Memory and Death Mark are just a few examples that come to mind. So, when I read in the flavor text in the Nintendo eShop that this game takes you on a journey to discover the truth behind seven folk tale mysteries… Oh man, I purchased the game right away.

And let me tell you, the flavor text isn’t lying in the eShop. The story of this game really delivers. The story is indeed about how far would somebody go to bring somebody back from the death. There is no voice acting in this game, but the pacing of the text and the sound effects really add to the atmosphere.

In this game, you also play as different characters. You’ll experience the story from their perspective. Slowly, but surely, you get more pieces of the puzzle before everything falls into place. The story is the strongest point in this game, and it took some fascinating twists. It left me puzzled several times, and it hooked me into playing the next chapter or trying to look for a solution when I got stuck.

That’s something that can happen. You can get stuck in a chapter because you need to finish something else in another chapter. Thankfully, we have a helper. The storyteller is there to help you when you reach a game over or a dead end. When you reach that dead end or game over several times, the storyteller gives some small hint to nudge you into the right direction to progress in the game. It’s an amazing system, since you don’t get the solution right away, but you don’t get frustrated because you are stuck or don’t directly understand what you need to do differently.

It’s more than a painting

You might have noticed from the screenshots, but visually, this game looks like a dark version of Okami. Everything in this game is hand drawn in a sort of manga/comic book style. And not only that, the environments are drawn with the help of the Tourism Division, the local museum, local community and the tourist association of Sumida, Tokyo. So, we are exploring places that are based or extremely close to how they look in real life.

Visually, the game looks gorgeous. Something that surprised me even more is that even with the few animations this game has during dialogues and gameplay segments, this game is still quite immersive. Together with great use of sound effects, camera angles and filters… the well paced dialogue really comes to live. Sometimes I really felt that I was standing next to the characters.

While I can totally understand that some people would want a bit more expression and visual stuff happening in their games, I think they found the right balance in this game. The only thing that sometimes looks a bit weird are the mouth movements of some characters. I felt like the mouth opened a bit too wide. But then again, I don’t speak any Japanese, so who I’m to judge?

In various places, you can look around in 360°. And sometimes that hides secrets. There are 20 hidden stickers of Mocking Birds in this game. And let me tell you, they are hidden quite well. You have to really investigate the area’s really well to find them all. In your overview of the stickers you have or haven’t collected, you can see a little hint on the ones you haven’t collected. And let me tell you, these hints are extremely vague. One hint even says: “Jackpot”.

Now, this brings me to the UI. Let’s first talk about the menu’s before we talk about the gameplay. The main menu of this game is extremely simple. You have a resume button, a button for the options menu and a button for the credits. Now, in game, the pause/inventory menu is opened by pressing “X”. Now, you can control this menu two ways. You can either use the left joystick as a sort of mouse pointer and the “A” button to click. Or, you can navigate it almost all the other buttons. It took a little bit of getting used to, but as soon as I got the hang of it… It was quite easy.

You can also see a dialogue log in this pause menu, which is sometimes very handy when you clicked something away too fast or just want to read up on something. There is also quite the extensive file system. There is a lot of information stored in there that also gets updated the further you get into the game. You always get a notification if something gets added or updated, and you can see the updated or added files easily in the “New” tab. The only thing I’m missing from these files is a sort of search feature. Since, sometimes I have to dig a bit too much… But then again, that’s half the fun of the game, too.

This game has an amazing autosave feature. When you exit the game and restart it, you almost always pick up right from where you left off. There is also a save and load system. You get five save slots, but you can load these from the main menu. If you want to use these save slots to share the game with somebody else… Be wary of the autosave, since it overwrites quite quickly. So, with a bit of using the manual save/load system you can have different profiles, but that isn’t built in.

Choose your words wisely.

In this game, you have to be on your toes. You really need to be careful how you approach each interaction, since one wrong move can mean the end.

Thankfully, this game isn’t a kinetic novel. There is some gameplay in this game. First, you have to look around for clues to progress into the story. Sometimes you can’t even progress in a dialogue when you haven’t found the right clues in the area.

Second, you have to choose the right dialogue options. Like I said earlier, be careful that you choose the right option.

Third, there are some puzzles. The biggest hint I can give you in these puzzles is that you really need to take note of what you learn. Sometimes, the answer to a previous puzzle or another chapter can give you a hint to solve the new puzzle.

Now, something that might put people off from this game is that this game is on the light side in terms of gameplay. I feel that this game could have benefitted from a bit more puzzles, different from choosing the correct path in a dialogue tree. While the game and story is still fun and a blast to go through, I feel like some chapters are more used as exposition dumps than as gameplay. But then again, if you’d ask me to give an example, I’d draw a blank. Maybe more puzzles would ruin the pacing? It’s something on which I’m on the fence about.

If I really have to critique something in this game, then it’s lack of a sensitivity slider for the mouse cursor in the options menu. The speed is perfectly fine in handheld mode, but if you play this game on a bigger TV, it’s a bit too slow. Another complaint I have read about this game is how you have to enter the dialogue tree after you finish a conversation, that might be annoying for some people, but I didn’t find that too big of a deal.

Something I can’t complain about is the music in this game. The music in this game is already a part of my playlist of amazing video game music. It really adds to the atmosphere of the game, and it’s a joy to listen too. It’s also used in very effective ways to make scenes more tense or scary when they need too. If I’d have to describe the soundtrack of this game, I’d say that it’s something like AI: The Somnium Files. I can’t really put a genre on it for the life of me.

Now, this game is only 20 euros on the eShop. For that, you get a 12 to 14 hour game. I have to say, that it’s quite impressive that we get a full game like for that price. It has no silly DLC or microtransactions. So, that’s another bonus for this game.

Just like how you have different control options in this game. You can play this game without your Joycons at all. Well, only in handheld mode that is. Granted, the point-and-click interface might be a bit slow on big TV’s with a controller and the menu UI needs a bit of getting used too, but those are the only complaints I have about the controls.

In general, if you enjoy games like I said in the introduction… This game is a no-brainer recommendation. It’s one of the better visual novel games that I have played recently and apart from a few slower moments, I have barely anything negative to say about this game that doesn’t go in the nitpicky category. Now, if you don’t like reading too much in your games or want more action in your adventure games… I can almost assure you that this game isn’t for you. But, it might be worth it to check out a let’s play online, since this story is really something. It really throws you for a loop sometimes and really takes you on a ride.

In any case, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Game Quicky: The Rat Pack (Itch.io – PC) ~ The Rats Will Take Over

Itch.io page

Indie games can be unique. Today’s game is no different. Today, I want to talk about a game that’s created by the developers of that point-and-click game, Captain Disaster. I honestly expected a new point-and-click game when he contacted me via Twitter and when I heard it was going to be about rats, the edutainment collector part of my brain went directly to Mia: The Mouse, but this game is something completely different. It’s a TBS game, a turn-based strategy game. About rats? This is going to be unique. But, we need to ask, is this going to be the good kind of unique or the bad kind? Let’s find out in this 100% honest review of this game that I get a press review copy for. And yes, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the content of this article and/or the game.

Good rats, pet them

I love this easter egg random event to bits.

The story of this game is about a colony of rats going for bigger and better. Starting off on a farm and going to the big city. I’m so happy that in terms of the story, this game isn’t doing anything silly and trying to put a fantasy spin or something on it… It feels realistic and stays in the background. It’s the perfect set dressing for the game. There is one random event, that I really love. I think you can guess which one is with the screenshot here.

Most of this game is spent on one screen. This is the game screen. There are 5 squares. Let’s start with the easiest to explain. You’ll have the yellow square in the top right, this is where everything that happens during your turn is shown.

The white square in the middle is one that shows special messages. I chose a beta screenshot here on purpose, since this random event message is now one of the various events that have a nice artwork accompanying it. But not every random event has a drawing.

Then, in the bottom left, you have the rat lab. This is your upgrades section. You have 4 things that you can upgrade, and these are essential. Depending on your lab level, you earn a certain amount of lab points per turn. You can upgrade the lab by scavenging for treasure. Each upgrade can improve the skills of your rats to avoid a game over. A game over is when your population reaches zero. That’ll cause you to restart the mission.

I could write a whole article explaining how this whole game works, but the tutorial does an amazing job of that. And not only that, the difficulty curve in this game gets a chef kiss from me. In each mission, a new mechanic is introduced, and you learn easily the amount of depth this game has. You learn when you can risk losing rats in your colony and when you urgently need to do something.

There are three difficulty levels, and you can finish this whole game playing on easy mode. But, the easy mode isn’t a cakewalk. You’ll need to learn the game and think carefully about what you want to do with your colony. And try to not get distracted by the amazing music this game has. Seriously, I would love to buy this soundtrack! Together with the amusing voice work and charming sound effects, the audiovisual presentation is quite good.

At first, I was worried that this game would be boring and repetitive. But, after playing 10 missions so far, I really have to say that I’m quite enjoying myself. With an easy to learn but tricky to master game, I’m impressed with this game. Sadly, there are a few things I didn’t really like, and I’m going to explain them in the next section of this article.

Bad rats, trap them!

So, what does this game do wrong? Well, first, there is no way to save mid-mission. Thankfully, this isn’t too big of an issue, since the missions themselves are sort. Well, I say short, but I have only played this game on easy and normal difficulty, so maybe it’s long on the harder difficulty?

The second negative of this game is a strange design quirk. Why is the pause button “F1” and not “Escape”? It really messed with my hardwired brain.

Overall, the UI design is excellent… But, there is something that would take it to the next level. Currently, when you beat a level, it gets a checkmark. And it doesn’t matter on which difficulty. I would love to see a different color checkmark depending on which difficulty you have beaten the level. Since, currently, the only way to see that is in the achievements’ menu which doesn’t even have a back arrow.

Another flaw in terms of the UI is in the red bottom right corner of the game screen. There are two things wrong with that in the version I reviewed. First, it doesn’t tell you the amount of treasure you’ll need to upgrade the attack and defense of your colony. Secondly, it doesn’t tell you when you can do a raid and how many raids you have done. This is somewhat annoying in some missions where you need to do 5 raids, and you didn’t keep count.

Something I personally missed was some animation in this game. Currently, all random events have a nice drawing, but the attacking and under attack events are too static. Either add a drawing or two for them or have some animation. It would polish up the game that much more.

And that’s about everything. So, shall we go on to the conclusion? Before I ramble on, and on.

So, what we RAT this game out?

Terrible pun aside for this final section of the article, is this game worth your time, or is this conclusion going to rip this game apart? Well, to be very honest, it’s the first. This game is really worth your time. Especially because most of the things I didn’t like about this game can be fixed and fine-tuned with an update or two.

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend this game to everyone. If you enjoy casual/puzzle and turn-based games, I would give this game a chance. But, don’t expect this game to be action-packed. This game is more on the calming and relaxing side. The charm of a small group of creators developing a game is oozing out of this one.

I would really pet this rat and not rat this game out. It’s a great game with some minor flaws. And I can’t wait to finish this game and maybe try the hard difficulty option. And maybe I’m even going to try to fill out that achievement page.

And with that said, I want to wrap up this article and thank you for reading it. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 70/100

Preview: Repentant (PC) ~ Has the Little Kite flown?

Official website

For those who remember Little Kite, I have talked about last year in December, I have some interesting news for you. The developer Anate Studio contacted me to announce the sequel called Repentant! Or is it a sequel? Let’s look at what’s released so far. As usual, feel free to give your opinion on the content of this article and/or the game in the comment section down below.

Information for the developer

It’s a dramatic point & click adventure about a man who is trying to atone for the sins of the past.

The story in this game shows the events that took place seven years after the events of the game Little Kite. The main character, Oliver, survived but suffers from pangs of conscience because of his behavior in the past. This led to the fact that his family left him and because he is obliged to continue criminal activities. But soon, he gets a chance to atone for his sins by helping another person.

Everything will occur in a small store with three characters. Oliver is a man who has a dark past. A shopkeeper decides to rob his own store, together with the help of a girl. This decision was made thanks to severe life circumstances.

Despite the characters and references to the previous game, this game can be played and enjoyed even if you haven’t played Little Kite.

The game will be available for Windows and Mac.

Video with gameplay demo:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ2xPO78kx4&t=5s

Stay tuned for news of developing progress

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anatestudio/?ref=bookmarks

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/anatestudio

Developers site: www.anatestudio.net

Personal thoughts

I really enjoyed playing Little Kite. Because some parts of the story stuck with me personally. So, when a mail arrived from the developer in my inbox talking about a new game and a possible sequel to that game, you can say that a hype train left the station for me.

Looking at the screenshots and gameplay demo, a few things can be concluded. In terms of art-style, atmosphere and gameplay, nothing much is going to be changed. And that’s a good thing! Visually, this game looks amazing and I’m a big fan of the style. It reminds me of games like Hotel Dusk and older Broken Sword games.

Gameplay-wise, it looks like this is going to be a point-and-click game. Why change a working formula? The previous game in the series was also a point-and-click adventure game and a highly enjoyable at that.

While you might notice some typo’s here and there in the preview video, I’m not too worried about that. Since the developer said that the video only has a draft version of the text and the proofreading will happen later in development.

In terms of the story, I’m quite interested. I’m honestly expecting a story where betrayal and a mystery will be the central focus of the game. While the game will take place in one place, I’m curious to see how this place is used. There is a lot that can be done with only a few rooms, that fact is proven by all the “escape the room” games that exist.

Watching the preview video, I am even more hyped to play this game. I really like details like the names of the places showing up when you go from screen to screen. This makes it a lot easier to navigate in a point-and-click game.

The only thing I didn’t really like in the preview video was one minor thing. The looping of the sound-effects inside the store with not smooth enough. If you pay attention, you can hear when the sound effect starts and when it stops. That’s all.

Real talk now for a moment, the developer is planning to possibly release this game upcoming spring. If you can create an adventure game in a year with at this quality, I have a lot of respect for the developers. Creating games isn’t easy and I really hope this game succeeded. I can’t wait to see more from this game and I can’t wait either to play it. So, if you are as interested as I’m in this game, I urge you to follow the developer on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.

So, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game for now. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day!