Recent reviews by FrighteningBee

i won!!!

Did you know that organ harvesting is a really efficient and quick way to make a lot of money?

This game has come literally out of nowhere for me. It surpassed all of my expectations and made me fall in love with it in a way that is so rare and for someone who has experienced a lot of media throughout their life. I’m going to spend this review gushing all over it with very little criticism, since while it’s not a perfect game, I believe its shortcomings completely fade in comparison to all the good that it does. If you like story-driven, choice-heavy games (or generally life sims and visual novels), and the artwork is appealing to you, I bet you’ll enjoy it too.

Exceptionally high-quality writing.
“Exocolonist” doesn’t just read like a well-written game; it reads like a well-written book. Each character is written like a real person, dynamic yet cohesive, interesting and unique in their voice. Dialogue is joyful and engaging, it never feels awkward or tone-deaf. Descriptions of places and events are concise, evocative and informative. Through them, the alien world where story takes place is presented with outstanding clarity and life.

Great sci-fi.
This game combines the joyful, optimistic, curious spirit of classic sci-fi with modern tendency towards sharp, topical critique of modern society in a brilliant way. Some of the events portrayed have genuinely shaken me due to how relevant they are to me personally, and it’s even more true to many other people around the world. There's no shortage of trauma and tragedy in the life of the young Exocolonist. And yet, it ultimately relays a message of hope and constructive optimism for the future.

Meaningful choices.
“Exocolonist” does a really good job of giving you control over the narrative while never making you feel like you’re more important than everyone else. In fact, it’s very likely that you’re going to feel powerless and confused for your first playthrough, and the game doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the consequences of your actions, or inaction. It takes work to succeed, it takes curiosity and exploration to find the way to positively affect the events of the story. However, once you’ve familiarized yourself with the game, you’ll find that your actions influence everything: the resolution to the final conflict, the fate of other characters, your own life post-ending, and everything in-between. There are also a few “curveball” endings that completely change the later events of the story or your character’s place in them.
There are multiple romance options. They are pretty expansive, and you can enter in different types of relationships with some of the characters. Polygamy is also an option in a few cases, though not everyone in the game is okay with it. That said, romance is not the primary focus of the game, so don’t expect too much here. Its purpose is to fully portray adolescent experience, and other characters will not stay partnerless if you don’t assert yourself.

Stunning artwork and OST.
The massive synth soundscapes are forever ingrained in my brain. I don’t feel like I need to say much about the artwork – just look at the screenshots. Along with great background and character design, the game also features a number of breathtaking fullscreen images for certain story events. Seeing different sprites for player character and all of your friends as they grow and change as people was so touching and exciting, it really creates a deeper level of connection to all of them.

The gameplay loop elegantly ties everything together.
There’s nothing revolutionary here, but it works great, and offers much more than a lot of similar games tend to. You collect memories by doing actions in the world and talking to people. Memories are your playing cards in the card challenges, which work as a simple puzzle minigame with some randomness. The minigame is not very hard even on “hard” mode, and careful use of resources allows you to blow through some of the harder ones, which seems to be intended by design. Card challenges can represent any action that requires some skill to perform. You raise skills by performing various actions in the world like studying, exploring, working or talking to people. Most actions increase your stress level and progress the story one month further.
This is where the magic happens: you only have so much time - 10 years 13 months long each, and the gameplay loop naturally forces you to alternate between different actions and take breaks. Managing stress means you’ll frequently have to spend a whole month to rest. Some regular actions reduce stress naturally, so planning around them is good. Other actions may require more stress to perform, so you want to be fully-rested to be efficient. You can also use your stress to “push trough” card challenges by adding missing points in exchange for increasing stress, so it's good to be rested before important events that you don’t want to fail.
One of the best activities in the game is exploring: it gives you a lot of collectible items that you can give to your friends or use strategically to gain advantage in challenges. Exploration is also required to fully understand the story and unlock a number of important events and characters. However, it also takes up the most time and stress, and can be awkward to do if you’re not fully rested. On top of all this, some story events that may force or incentivize you to perform a certain action, or even completely lock you out.
What this ultimately means is that your choices throughout the game also change what actions are available to you – and this is true for everything. Who did you befriend? What dialogue options you chose? Which skills you raised? Did you explore that place fully? Did you save that person? Did you talk to that other person? Everything matters here. And with a hard limit on game time, you will always have to prioritize, plan, sacrifice. Some events you can’t stop at all, others require you to complete certain actions in time before you’re locked out. You cannot see or do everything each playthrough, which makes each playthrough unique and meaningful.

Finally, what struck me the most personally besides the fact the high quality of all of the game’s aspects is its core of empathy, love, joy and respect. It’s rare to see a piece of media that’s so thoughtful and understanding of and focused on the immense value of each person, regardless of their identity or worldview, and the wonder of genuine, deep human connection. This is the ultimate achievement of this game to me, and what makes it such a great piece of art both within and outside the video game media.

Игра хорошая, но матчи говно