Recent reviews by rinimt

You can find my full review on The Backlog.[www.the-backlog.net]

Where to even start with Drusilla Dreams... Well, it's a VN that supposedly "follows up" the story from the game I Am Caligula. It definitely follows in I Am Caligula's footsteps in terms of absolutely awful writing, grammar, and spelling. The story reads a lot more like a poor fanfic (or, in this case, "real person fiction" would be the accurate term). You have the original character Lucca who is apparently the favourite slave of Drusilla.

I cannot suggest Drusilla Dreams at all, and I highly suggest you run far, far away from it. There are FAR better VNs out there that cost less than this (and this already does not cost very much). If you want to find out more about the real Drusilla and Caligula, go to wikipedia and don't support this game. Also be warned that there is a fair bit of sex talk in the short amount of time this VN will take. It's something that makes me question why this game doesn't have some sort of age gate on it, but what do I know in terms of that I suppose.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Dear RED is an extremely short mystery game that is fairly hard to understand. There's an abundance of endings available, but most of them will hardly last you any time at all, and even the "real ending" is pretty short. Even with playing through quite a few "normal" endings and getting the real ending, I still hardly understood what was actually going on in the game. It seems to be all over the place. One of the other things that turned me off was how scary Red's portrait looked, and that the guy you are going after is literally just called "Murderer".

Given the price of this game and how short it is, I cannot recommend it at all. I was thankfully able to get it through a bundle since I cannot imagine paying $3 for the length of this. If you want to get Dear RED then find it on a major sale ($1 or less), otherwise just give this game a pass.

My full review can be found on The Backlog.[www.the-backlog.net]

One of the initial things that drew me towards That Dragon, Cancer was the art style and the story premise. I absolutely love art-y type games, especially when they're story based things such as this.

As an overall, I absolutely loved this game, and I do highly suggest to people to play it. Do keep in mind that there is a heavy religion theme throughout, so if that is something you dislike then you may want to just avoid it. I did spot some odd moments where things didn't seem to be the way they should've (in particular, one particular scene with Joel crying yet he's not even invisible even though it seems like he should be there).

That Dragon, Cancer will make you cry. This is a game you'll likely only play through once however, so I'd highly suggest trying to find it on sale if possible. It is worth the couple hours it'll take to play it though, so once you're able to find it on a sale, pick it up as soon as you can. This game is an easy recommend from me, so long as you keep in mind that it'll likely only last you one playthrough and it has heavy religious themes (they are done well, at least).

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

ATOM GRRRL!! follows the story of Jessica L. Huster and a group of crazy people after she makes her return to America from Japan. Throughout the ~2 hours of reading this VN will provide, your perspective will jump all over the place between all of the different people, and will sometimes cause you to go back a bit in the timeframe. This made the story a bit hard for me to follow which lead to a fair bit of confusion.

I both liked and disliked the art style in this VN. I liked the look of the characters, but I did feel like it clashed with the photographs (with an added filter) that made up the backgrounds. The clashing of the text background with the text colour did make it hard to read at times as well, especially when combined with lighter coloured game backgrounds (and if I had it set so it wasn't see-through, I just couldn't see the text very well).

Atom Grrrl is one of those games that is middle of the line for me. There were things that I enjoyed, but some other pieces majorly detracted from it. Do keep in mind that the game does not hold back and does talk about a lot of not-so-clean things, so if that is something that offends you then just stay far away.

I give ATOM GRRRL!! a shaky recommendation, and really just suggest you try it out for yourself to see if it's something you'd like. Try and find it on sale if you can, since as I said it will only last you about two hours.

Disclaimer: I was provided a key for review purposes by the publisher.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

I Am Caligula follows the short rule of the Roman Emperor, Caligula, along with his sister, Drusilla. Within it, you'll find horrendous grammar, walls you can walk through, and unbalanced combat. Oh yeah, and there's the completely unbalanced sound design and lack of subtitles for the voice acting. The sound will go from completely blasting out your ears to having to turn up your speakers to even hear anything.

I cannot recommend I Am Caligula at all. There's no direction on "where you should go next", you just have to wander and hope you find the next trigger. There are missing commas everywhere, as well as there being a number of run-on sentences. No, I don't claim myself to be amazing at English, but getting a proof reader (especially if English isn't your main language) can prove vital to helping writing flow.

*Note: I played this before a grammar patch was put out. I did a quick check and a number of the grammar errors I saw were still present. I didn't have time to check on the spelling errors I had found (I didn't want to deal with getting back to them through the unbalanced combat).

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Sharf is an extremely short title following Christina in the woods. You'll spend ~10 minutes reading her thoughts until she finally finds a body.

This game is a dedication to a victim of a horrible act, and for that I commend it. While I do commend it, I also wonder why the money isn't going towards helping other victims of said horrible act. I detail this a bit more in my full review, but it would be nice to see if all proceeds went to help those victims. Aside from that, the game has a lot of ellipses, some odd grammar, missing words, and missing punctuation. While I get that these are supposed to be the internal thoughts of someone, the ellipses did make it a bit hard to read for me. Also, the game has no options, so no windowed mode or adjusting the sound.

Sharf gets a shaky recommendation from me. The grammar was rough in some parts, and the lack of options is never something I like.

*Note: The playtime is due to idling for cards and falling asleep while doing so.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

To help out your ailing grandmother, you have taken up the role of manager at the resort she runs. What you weren't told is that all of the girls have horrendous English and what to just get you into bed with them. Beach Bounce will follow this story over the course of a few weeks, and it's not an adventure I suggest going on.

Beach Bounce (Remastered) is the updated version of the original release. Completely rewritten, the writing is an absolute mess. The Steam version is the censored version and the transitions for where the 18+ scenes should be are rough, making it so you can definitely tell something is missing. The writing is also absolutely horrendous - spelling mistakes everywhere ("Thankyou" is said quite a lot), grammatical errors everywhere, and the punctuation is messed up in places. I didn't have the opportunity to play the original version so I can't comment on how the characters received new personalities.

Beach Bounce Remastered is in desparate need of a lot of proof reading. Even with that, the story is extremely poor and isn't really worth your time to read it. Give this VN a pass, there are better ones out there (even if you're looking for 18+ VNs there are better ones out there).

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Tokyo Hosto takes you inside a host bar within Tokyo. You're fresh out of high school and are a complete failure. The only thing you know how to do is flirt with girls. Luckily, hosting exists so that you can do just that!

Tokyo Hosto is.... not good. The art style is absolutely terrifying and the voice acting quality is all over the place. The characters do hav some "animation", however it's worth noting that the heads move completely separately from the rest of the body. There's one particular spot in which your boss leans in close to you and you can easily see how his head and the rest of his body are moving separately. There are also numerous spelling and grammatical errors throughout the game, some of them making you go "WTF!?".

And then there's the issue of even getting Tokyo Hosto to run. In order to get it running, you need to either run it or Steam as an administrator. Without doing this you can enjoy never playing it (though this may, honestly, be the better option). There seems to be no hopes of this ever getting fixed either.

I cannot recommend Tokyo Hosto at all, even if you want to play it as a joke. I got the game through a bundle thankfully, but there's no way that this is worth the asking price of $4.99. Really, there are far better VNs out there, and there are definitely better VNs that actually give you a choice in what you choose, instead of just giving an "illusion" of choice like this game does.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

Pointless is a clicker game that takes it's name quite literally. The "point" of Pointless is to click the dots to create more dots to earn points and unlock new skins, though there really isn't much point beyond that. Said dots don't have that good of a hit box on them either, and they'll disappear after a short period of time. There are some powerups you can use as well, but they also can easily work to start lagging out the game. In fact, the game starts to lag out fairly easily considering how simplistic it is.

Considering there are far better free "clicker" games out there, I cannot recommend Pointless at all. The fact that this is going for $1 just makes me question "Why?", and if I hadn't gotten this in a bundle I likely would have just completely passed it up. Save your money and play a free clicker game instead.

My full review can be found here.[www.the-backlog.net]

No Pineapple Left Behind is an interesting and satirical look at the US Educational System. Your role, as the player, is to manage a school. However, in this school, all that matters are the grades. Children are dirty little things that tend to have wants and needs, Pineapples, on the other hand, are ideal students. All they do is take tests and get graded. We want more pineapples.

In NPLB, you will mainly be managing the courses that your teachers are giving. These courses (called spells in the game) will influence the humanity and grades of your students, should they succeed. Success will depend on how much energy your teachers have, and it generally only recovers at the end of the day when they get paid.

While I did have some issues with game (detailed more in my full review), if you're looking for a somewhat different type of management/sim game, then this is a game worth giving a shot. However, with that said, this is one of those games I wish I could just give a neutral review to. As it is, I can only give it a shaky recommendation, as there were some elements (Fruitbol, for example) that I just did not enjoy about it.

Disclaimer: I was provided a copy by the developer for review purposes.