Edit: You can now read our official review of See No Evil!
Well here is an incredibly interesting upcoming title… See No Evil is the latest game from developer Bigfingers and it is definitely not the sort of thing gamers are going to tend to see on a regular basis. The developer has worked on “bara” games before but seems primarily a Flash-based creator. Now we are seeing a full game set to arrive on August 1st.
So the Steam Summer Getaway Sale 2013 has finally begun! With that said, there are so many games you can choose from. Yes, there are the deals on the front page which cycle out but they are hardly all there is. In fact, nearly a thousand games are on sale if you simply take the time to search them out. I just wanted to share a list of my favorite (primarily indie) games that are available at a minuscule price thanks to the sale.
Although I know I will never sift through my ever-growing backlog, I still find it fun to try and beat games more often than I used to before joining Backloggery. Before then, I probably beat one game a month – if that. These days I’m doing my best to beat many more although tons of games still annoy me suddenly impossible spikes in difficulty right before the end.
Anyway, these are the games (in the order I beat them) between the last two months:
If you’ve been checking out this site at all then you’ll recognize almost half of these titles were reviewed here too. It’s been a lot of fun to recognize that there really is time for me to play games outside of my reviewer requirements. Of course, it’s still not as much time as I had before, but far better than nothing.
Of all the games, my favorites were Surgeon Simulator 2013 and The Yawhg, but Dysfunctional Systems, Slender: The Arrival, The Starship Damrey were close as well. That’s 11 games down and hopefully many more will be beaten before the year comes to a close!
Developer: Stout Games
Publisher: Stout Games
Platform: PC
Have you ever felt yourself worrying that you’ve been stood up on a date? If so, then this is likely a game you can relate to. If not, then it shows a pretty depressing example of how worrying the whole process of waiting for a date to arrive can be.
As the name implies, you engage in the preparations and waiting for a date to have dinner with. The dinner is intimate, with a single candle and wine, despite being in the protagonist’s cramped kitchen. You can look at the clock – again and again, as well as interact with the objects nearby.
This is not any sort of typical game focused on gameplay. Instead, you mostly soak up the internal diegetic of the protagonist while waiting for your date’s arrival. There’s nothing wrong with exploring narrative over actual play in games, but have that expectation in mind beforehand. Dinner Date is a neat, if very brief, experience. I just would have liked to see the idea expanded further.
2 out of 5 alpacas
Developer: Dischan Media
Publisher: Dischan Media
Platform: PC
Visual novels are one of the most disrespected genres of gaming out there. Thanks to a real lack of understanding of dating sims and games which are primarily text, you see few mainstream attention drawn to them. Of course, this all denies the previous success of companies like Infocom who attracted PC gamers in the 80s with their text adventures.
Either way, if you’re still new to the whole visual novel world then Dysfunctional Systems seems to be a good starting point. The game, so far, appears to not be a dating sim and features a story not pulled straight from some silly anime series.
You play as a teenager named Winter who has a new job. She doesn’t work as a waitress or anything though but instead must try to resolve conflicts on other planets. It’s a tough position and one she isn’t even sure she’s ready to fulfill. All the same, she studies (and gets a little too close) to the subject in Episode 1: Learning to Manage Chaos.
I’m not particularly a fan of episodic games but so far this looks like quite the game. The story is surprisingly focused on sociopolitical topics which is rare for visual novels, let alone gaming as a whole. This brave move deserves attention, but it’s unknown yet whether Dysfunctional Systems will attract tons of players. I hope so, as I would love to see this series continue and the only way that will happen is with more purchases.
3 1/2 out of 5 alpacas
July 29th, 2013 
