The So-So games sitting on my Hard Drive

Okay, I have played a lot of doujin-soft games from al|together both years. Some were good. Some were really bad. And some just sit on my hard-drive forgotten and un-reviewed. Those games are these. These all have a niche fan-base I'm sure they just didn't stand out to me personally so I shall talk about them each here. All of these are rated : Average

I Too, Saw Dreams Through Air
Releasing a set of two short works is a novel idea (in more ways than one) but it has been done better. (The World to Reverse) The Caged Vagrant was the stronger of these two stories (despite having to go through the main menu much too much) but both had their boring parts despite having clearly noble goals in story telling. Plumerai took too long to build up to it's point as interesting as a point it tried to be.

Shooting Star Hill
Cute character based love story with a obvious twist but still very average art and story. Left a feeling of "So What?"

io [christmas eve]
Started strong and ended with a punch but the middle was almost painfully slow-paced. The art is really cute, however.

Sumer, Cicadas, and the Girl
First of all this is one of the better in this lot. It is good but... very short with out a feeling of satisfaction when you do get the location correct (this game has a word entry system). The "secret ending" is very cute also. If it had a bit more fleshing out I would rate this one "good" (We are looking at like a 78% here)

FLOOD OF TEARS
This game tried really hard to be a serious visual novel but... the long wind up and simplistic characters just didn't click for me and it seemed dissapointing.

Yeah, someone ought to give these games a proper review especially if they liked one of them. Then link it here :3 I won't review any of these games further but JonFawkes may so you might see theses titles again. Sorry this isn't a real review but I wanna uninstall these already XP True Remembrance will be reviewed soon I promise!

Midsummer Haze - the long awaited review

• Title - Midsummer Haze
  
• Author - Sakura Shima
• Style - Short branching novel (interactive)
• Engine - KiriKiri2 (requires Japanese Enviroment)
  
• Price - Free
• Get - Web Download - http://at2006.haeleth.net/game.php?id=13

Midsummer Haze.....I look forward to finally being able to delete this game after 3 long months. MH has a one choice with two options.....and four endings....yes four. To get the third ending you have to play one of the paths around 50 times and to get the fourth you have need to stall at the choice until it is triggered. Now this is very clever but the story isn't.

Graphics - Solid art, nothing special. Fairly colorful. The backgrounds are stock images. There are no event CGs I can remember. 8/10

Music/SFX - The music is good and appropriate to the scenes except the final ending song which is techno. Sound effects are appropriate. 8/10

Story - Story..... there was one....kinda. The idea was good but the implementation is boring at best and the plot twist invokes more of a "huh?" than the intended "oh" . The only part of it that I enjoyed was the third ending but it was rather incongruent to the story. 3/10

System/Extras - This is a KiriKiri game (Japanese environment required). The system is straight forward not a pretty GUI but it's simple and easy to use. The ending system is pure undiluted evil tho. As I mentioned before, you have to play the one path about 50 times to get the only ending worth anything in this game. Thankfully there is a fast-forward button. After you get this ending you unlock the extras which are a postscript, translator's note, and extra story which would be good except, at least in my case, you will hate the characters by that point. Then there's the fourth ending with the techno theme and you're done, no extras after that one. 2/5

Score - 21/35 - 60% mediocre

OMGWTFOTL

• Title - OMGWTFOTL
  
• Author - HANPAMANIA-SOFT
• Style - Short Nonsense Novel (interactive) 16+
• Engine - ONScripter
  
• Price - Free
• Get - Web Download http://insani.org/omgwtfotl.html, http://at2006.haeleth.net/game.php?id=5

First of all.... this game will offend you. If it doesn't please go get help.

Secondly.....where to start....? This game is impossible to describe so my review format is out the window because it would be comparing apples to oranges. This is no Red Shift, but despite the lack of plot its not another VFTOS either. This game is hilarious in a way I can only describe as sophisticated delinquent. The music is good, the art is solid and can be cute or ugly but, my god, WHAT did they smoke while writing this....?

The plot was lost somewhere between the fights, the copulating bears, the U.S. Navy base, and the high-school love confession. It flows but its utter nonsense.

If you like South Park or Excel Saga this may very well be the game for you, I enjoyed it very much but it incited blood-lust in my classmates.

Overall rating - Good

GENUFLECT OR DIE!

At Summer's End

• Title - なつのおわりに (At Summer's End)
• Author - （猫）milk cat
• Style - Short Linear Novel (interactive)
• Engine - ONScripter
  
• Price - Free
• Get - Web Download http://www.insani.org/atsummersend.html, http://at2006.haeleth.net/game.php?id=2
  

At Summer's End is the second doujin game I played, after Narcissu. It is a short sweet little (non-fantasy) story with a few choices that do not affect the plot. The plot revolves around a boy and a girl who are long time friends. This story won't change your life but is fun and short to play over a cup of tea.

Graphics - The backgrounds are very professional looking while the character style looks a bit amateur. This is easy to get used to and the art has a bit of whimsy charm to it. The colors are bright and colorful to match the light story. Each scene also has a sketched opening image with a title. 7/10

Music/SFX - The music is also mostly light and cheery but there is a very nice slower song as well. It is simple but very nicely matched to the story. The sound effects consist mostly of punching and crickets. There are no voices. The sound effect are not of high quality (and the crickets get annoying) but they are not bad either. 8/10

Story - Like all other aspects of this game, quite simple but solid. The plot is well built but predictable. A happy ending. 7/10

System/Extras - This is an ONScripter release. For all of you who can't figure out why I bother to say that it is because ONScripter games happily run on English OS's while most others require tweaking. They also tend to be multi-platform instead of Window$ only. The interface is much nicer than the average doujin game. It includes all the standard features of a visual novel and some of the features I've only seen in commercial games, such as Quicksave/load, thumbnails, and a detailed options menu. The extras were the standard CG mode and music mode (the tracks had names which was quite nice). 5/5

Overall - A nice, light, little game. Worth the time spent on it. Enjoy it for what it is.

Score - 27/35 - 77% - average

Visions From the Other Side

• Title - 向日の夢 (Visions From the Other Side)
• Author - Treasures
  
• Style - Short Linear Novel (non-interactive)
• Engine - ONScripter
  
• Price - Free
• Get - Web Download http://at2006.haeleth.net/game.php?id=3

I just finished this visual novel not 20 minutes ago. I downloaded it on a whim from al|together 2006. Since it is doujn software I didn't expect it to be long but didn't expect it to be this short either. It was enjoyable but there are better games out there.

Graphics - The reason I downloaded it in the first place was the graphics. They are very nice though sometimes a bit unrelated to the story. Some are a bit unpolished but very nice for doujin work. They are also stored in the program files as jpegs so you can copy and save them very easily. 9/10

Music - The music was enjoyable but a bit harsh sounding and much louder than my other games. The soundtrack is entirely MIDIs with WAV files for sound effects. While I have nothing against MIDIs these are nothing really notable. Again, the music is stored as normal files in the program files folder. 6/10

Story - This is where it dies....there is no coherent story. While there is simple flow, there is no plot and it feels like an omake chapter to something else. Luckily, it is very short. 2/10

System/Extras - VFTOS is an ONscripter release. I have not found a save function. The interface is not explained in the readme or anywhere else but being a VN you just click the mouse or hit enter to prompt text and you can press up-arrow to review old text. Once you finish the game, a CG slideshow (instead of an extra menu) is unlocked. 1/5

Overall - Don't bother with it unless you just are bored. No save function. It'll entertain you and the ending is kinda cute but overall it's not as good as most.

Score - 18/35 - 51% - mediocre