Recent reviews by robinrescues

This was a well written story, and I can see how people who enjoy psychological horror would like it. Lynne does go to a rather dark place though.
For me, the story wasn't something I enjoyed.

I can't say I'd recommend it to everyone, but I'm going to cautiously recommend this to fans of visual novels who enjoy psychological horror.

TL;DR This DLC has nothing to offer - the alternate background "sounds of winter in a forest" does not work, and the wallpapers are the image files found in game. Buying this was a waste of money, and I do not recommend this.
0/10 stars

Summary
Christmas Tale Deluxe Edition DLC provides an alternate background sfx and contains 4 wallpapers.

Music/SFX
The DLC claims to give an additional option for music/sfx ("sounds of winter in a forest"), but it did not work for me. After installing the DLC I found no change in music in the game, and no way to set/change/enable the DLC music in the settings. Upon closer inspection, I found no new sound files added to the game after installing the DLC, so either it's a file already included that was previously unused or it was not added.

Wallpapers
Included are 4 wallpapers, at two sizes - 1280x720 and 1920x1080.
The wallpapers are: (1) the desk in your apartment, (2) the snowy forest, (3) the snowy road you walk down and (4) Kate/Katya on the city street with holiday lights.
However, you already have these image files. The backgrounds are located in data > bg image (home/tempbeforeforest/tempforest/tempstreet) and the image of the character of Kate/Katya is located in data > fgimage > chara > 2 > katya02_001.
The 3 backgrounds require nothing to be called "wallpapers", and you can paste the image of Kate/Katya over the city street in any free online image editor. Instant wallpaper!

for the final verdict, it gets a ... THUMBS DOWN
Flatly put, I got nothing from it and I feel it's a waste of money.

TL;DR This VN offers a holiday slice-of-life presented with below average writing style and full of grammar and spelling errors. I didn't find it an enjoyable read, but thankfully it was short. While there is potential here, I can't recommend this VN in it's current state for anything more then a quick way to get a few pretty holiday achievements.
4/10 stars

SUMMARY
A miserable, depressed person has long rambling musings about life and the Christmas spirit.

STORY
"I live all my life in a state of negativity, or indifference." - so speaks the main character at the start of this Christmas Tale.
The story goes on in a slice-of-life fashion, and as situations come up you can choose to help others or not. The end of the story rates your actions with a score, and then will sum up what you have experienced.

CHOICES
Your choices do matter, and there are 3 different endings to achieve - bad, usual, and good.

CHARACTERS
The MC (main character) is a whiny complaining cynical guy - he finds no meaning in life, and often sees the worst in things. Constant misery and swearing populate his rambling musings. This character displays the same personality as the MC's in the 2 previous VN's I've read by this developer. (My Personal Angel and Say Goodbye) After reading three VN's by this developer with three nearly identical MCs, I'm now feeling a bit cynical that the developer can create a MC with a different personality.
This is not a novel to read in front of or with the younger set. As in the previous 2 VN's I read by this developer, most characters often speak with frequent swearing and f-bombs - this VN it seems even more prevalent though. For example, when the MC asks an elderly lady if she needs help crossing the street, she responds with a string of swear words. Despite the holiday season, people in this story seem to have an even more surly and rude attitude then the developer's previous VN's.

PRESENTATION
Overall, I found this VN's presentation to be below average.
English is not the original language of this VN, and the translation is full of spelling and grammar errors. I found it difficult to read because of the translation shortcomings.
The character art is simplistic. The same character stock art was re-used from previous VN's by this developer. As you only see two other characters in the story, it's not a huge issue though.
A few of the backgrounds are quite pretty, and I like the falling snow effect. The falling snow effect does have it's shortcomings though - for example, when you see the falling snow effect by a window in your room looking outside, the falling snow is in a square so you also see falling snow on your curtains inside your home.
There is no CG gallery. A DLC is available which contains 4 wallpapers.
The music was unremarkable, and there is no soundtrack included or available as a DLC. The DLC claims to give an additional option for music, but it did not work for me (I found no change in music in the game, and no way to set/change/enable the DLC music).

TECHNICAL
This installed and ran OK under Windows 7, 32 bit.
There is no steam overlay or steam cloud.
There is no control for music and sfx, they are *always on* at a preset volume you cannot control.
There are no choices for screen resolution. The game started in windowed mode. As you read, there is a small black square in the upper right corner that takes it into full screen. Those seem to be your only two choices.
Only the first save slot worked for me. You cannot save at a choice screen (but for this VN, you can get by with only one save slot for all three endings).
Skip is available from the start, but skipping is painfully slow.
The delays from scene to scene are terribly laggy. Snowfall and day/night transitions in lighting slow it down even move. There is a scene at the end where you take a walk in the forest and you are stuck there, just staring at the background of snowy trees for several minutes. The first time it happened I literally thought my computer locked up, but after experiencing it on multiple readings it appears the extensive delay is part of the VN. This also happened in other VN's by this developer, and I think they use the delays as a way to get the reader to feel they are "part of the scene". For me, I found that rather then setting the mood, the extensive delays ruined it.
"You've earned X points out of 10". Huh? I was initially confused what the main character was speaking of, then I realized it was showing the total "score" of our choices to us. If we're "playing for points", that's fine - but I don't think that needs to be announced to the player near the end of the story.

for the final verdict, it gets a ... THUMBS DOWN
While I did find reading the story's good ending was OK, dealing with the constant transition delays and horrible translation did impact my ability to enjoy the story, not to mention all the swearing! I feel holiday novels should be a bit more optimistic and uplifting, and I didn't get that feeling from reading this, even with the good ending.
Cleaned up and properly translated, this could be an interesting short read. In it's current state, I can't recommend this VN as a good read.
If you're looking for a few cute holiday achievements for your showcase, you can find them here. Sadly, that's all the positive I can say about this VN.

TL;DR This VN offers an average plot presented with below average writing style and a poor translation, along with simple artwork at a high price tag. If you don't mind stories with a sad theme and you can grab it in a bundle or get a key at deep discount, then it's worth a read - but I can't recommend paying more then a dollar to two for this VN.
3/10 stars

SUMMARY
"My Personal Angel" is the story of Vladimir, a dock worker living with his girlfriend Erica. Vlad feels trapped with no way to better his lifestyle, then a chance for more money presents itself to him.

CHARACTERS
The character of Vladimir reminded me of Michael from the author's previous story "Say Goodbye". With a change of his job and his graphics, you have pretty much the same miserable depressed insensitive jerk who constantly swears and often has nightmares. Much like Michael, it was hard to find him a likeable or relatable character.
Vlad's girlfriend Erica is clearly in love with Vlad and tired of putting up with some of his antics, but she's also willing to stand by his side. Her loyalty in the face of doubt and devotion to him were admirable traits.
When I first saw Anya, I mistook her to be Sarah from the author's previous story "Say Goodbye". They appear to use the same stock images. Despite their similar appearance, the personality of Anya was nothing like Sarah. Anya met Vlad while working at a coffee shop, when he stepped in between her and an overbearing boss. Anya dreams of going to acting school, and is saving up for her dream.
As in the previous novel I read by this developer, most male characters often speak with frequent swearing and f-bombs - IMO even when the situation doesn't warrant that language :( Interestingly, I haven't noticed any female characters swearing.

STORY
The introduction contains a warning that the story is sad and depressing, and that it contains a bad translation.
The story starts with Vlad listening to Anya feeling sad over the disturbing memory of her grandmother drowning blind kittens.
The story shows a "slice of life" of Vlad, and his frustration at being working class and not having opportunities for advancement. Then an opportunity comes to Vlad to recover some money lost in a plane wreck with some of his co-workers - but it will require a substantial investment of cash.
I found the story itself to be interesting, but the way it was written was too verbose. Vlad often describes things and his own thoughts in painfully annoying details. The author clearly has some talent for writing, but needs to focus on "Show Don't Tell" - in this story, most things are TOLD to you and very little is SHOWN through the characters experiences in the world. This did impact my enjoyment of the story.

CHOICES
The players choices do affect the character routes, and there are 5 different endings - Very Bad, Bad 1, Bad 2, Mystery and Good.
The routes branch early, and it requires several playthroughs to get all endings.
I was pleasantly surprised that the mystery ending had a cameo appearance from a character from "Say Goodbye".

PRESENTATION
Overall, I found this VN's presentation to be below average.
The creator acknowledges the poor translation in the initial game startup after choosing "English".
The character art was acceptable quality, but the characters look fairly basic and unpolished. The same character stock art was re-used from a previous story. (The way I initially mistook this novel's Anya for the previous novel's Sarah is an example of how generic the artwork is when re-used).
The music was unremarkable, and there is no soundtrack included or available as a DLC.
There is no CG gallery.

TECHNICAL
This installed and ran OK under Windows 7, 32 bit.
There is no steam overlay or steam cloud.
There is no control for music and sfx, they are *always on* at a preset volume you cannot control.
There are no choices for screen resolution. The game started in windowed mode. As you read, there is a small black square in the upper right corner that takes it into full screen. Those seem to be your only two choices.
Only the first save slot worked for me. You cannot save at a choice screen (and often, that's when you would most want to save).
Skip is available from the start, but skipping is painfully slow as transitions from scene to scene and even day/night lighting slow it down to a crawl. I found this to be especially frustrating considering I only had one functional save slot.

for the final verdict, it gets a ... THUMBS DOWN
I was on the fence between thumbs up and down, because it has it's share of both good and bad points.
In the end what tipped me toward a down is it's high price point. ($9.99 USD at the time of this review) Compared to many other VN's I've read, the price just isn't justified. I would have been much more inclined to go with thumbs up if the price was $1-2 USD, but I feel that $9.99 USD is just WAY too high for what you are getting.

TL;DR While I didn't like the story, I do appreciate that this expanded ending concludes the main story at a better point, and it now feels like a more "complete" read.
1/10 stars

Summary
The Say Goodbye Deluxe Edition DLC gives an epilogue to the main story of Michael.
It also contains 5 character wallpapers.

Story
I felt the main story stopped at an odd place, and left a lot of questions unanswered. This gave an epilogue to Michael, and it brought the story to a close at what I feel was a more natural point where I don't have any lingering unanswered questions.
Michael still has rambling thoughts and hallucinations (?), but the overall story is more clear - possibly because there's less characters. The scenes between Michael and Ashley were believable, and felt she was a good supporting character.
Taken individually, I felt this was slightly better written then the main story.

Technical
Originally, there were 2 achievements that were exclusive to the DLC. When the 2 achievements were removed, the DLC became bugged and unreadable at the point where the first achievement should have appeared.
The story begins 4 years later. Just 4 sentences into the story, and I got an error message. After reading some discussion in the forum, I was able to alternate between using the escape key and the skip feature to read through the story. It was really slow and annoying to go through, but I did manage to read the whole DLC.
If that does not work for you, reviewer Mia has suggested a way to read through the game files with Notepad.

Wallpapers
Included are 5 wallpapers, at two sizes - 1366x768 and 1920x1080.
The wallpapers are: (1) Polina on a city street, (2) Emi on a solid grey background, (3) Warren, Sarah, Eva, and Emi on the camping trip (4) Eva on a green background (5) Sarah on a blue background
The game did have some lovely backgrounds, and it would have been nice to see the characters in the game locations rather then on a solid color background.

Value
Normally, the $9.99 USD price tag would have put me off buying it, especially considering how much I disliked the main story. Still, I was curious to see if the story's ending was any better in the DLC then the rather depressing main story.
As luck would have it, it happened across my path at a reasonable price.
It's currently in GoGo Bundle #51 with some other games by the same developer. I purchased the DLC at the Daily Indie Game Store for .03 USD (no typo, that's 3 cents).
IMO that makes it a lot more fairly priced for what you end up getting.

for the final verdict, it gets a ... THUMBS DOWN
At full price, this DLC is a terrible value for the cost. Frankly, it's a buggy mess of code I wouldn't recommend to anyone. However, the DLC does seem to end the story at a place where it seemed more reasonable and less of a "so, that's it?" point where the free story left off. For that reason alone, I can only recommend this DLC *only* if you are already invested in the main story and can get it at quite a discount. Otherwise, it's better to give it a pass.

TL;DR I found this story to be a poor read. The story itself wasn't entertaining or engaging, and reading it was a poor way to spend my free time.
0/10 stars

SUMMARY
"Say Goodbye" is the story of Michael, a man who becomes guardian for his 10 year old cousin Emi after her parents deaths.

CHARACTERS
The main character Michael is very negative about most things and overly critical of others. He speaks with a constant stream of swearing and f-bombs, and he is a violent drunk. Honestly, I just couldn't bring myself to care about what happened to him.
He is soon joined by Emi, the child of his deceased cousins whom he took in after their deaths. Emi became a light in Michael's bleak existence and a bright spot in the story. Sadly, the story takes a unexpected dark turn when Emi gets ill from their camping trip and Michael kills her for coughing too much. Yes, really.
Besides the two main characters, the rest of the characters faded into the background and didn't really stand out to me. They were rather generic and uninspiring (the generic best pal, the generic boss, etc).

STORY
This kinetic/visual novel was not an enjoyable read, and it dragged on so long frankly I felt like it would never end. There are many, many pointless conversations and times Michael gets lost in thought where you have to read through his rambling musings.
It's obviously a translation, as no native speaker would mangle the English language so poorly. Many times I had to stop to puzzle out what was being said, as it's really confusing. (example: Michael is invited to a campaign - but it turns out they go camping)
Finally, I didn't really like where the story went or how the story ended. It starts exploring a "slice of life" for Michael, then he has an alcohol fueled blackout and has to deal with the aftermath of his actions. It literally seemed like there was a dark twist to the story's ending with very little reason other then applying a ton of bad luck/timing.
Overall, I just didn't relate well to the characters or the story.

CHOICES
The story has choices for the player to make, but as far as I can tell they have no real impact on the story's outcome.
You do get achievements for exploring all the choices, but they don't have a significant impact on the story nor do they change the ending.
Imagine a kinetic (no-choice, read only) novel, where you got to choose your character's outfit for the day and what they have for breakfast. It's like that. There's choices to be made, but it's an illusion that they have any impact on where the story is going or what events will transpire.

PRESENTATION
Overall, it's below average. The character art was acceptable quality, but is fairly basic and unpolished. The backgrounds looked better then the character art. There is no CG gallery. The music was unremarkable, and there is no DLC for a soundtrack.

TECHNICAL
This installed and ran OK under Windows 7, 32 bit.
It had it's share of issues, but reading other reviews I believe they were related to the game itself and not my OS.
There is no steam overlay or steam cloud.
There is no control for music and sfx, they are *always on* at a preset volume you cannot control.
There are no choices for screen resolution. The game started in windowed mode. As you read, there is a small black square in the upper right corner that takes it into full screen. Those seem to be your only two choices.
Only the first save slot worked for me. You cannot save at a choice screen (when you would most want to save).
Skip did not work for me until I finished the whole story once, and when I did attempt to skip it was still painfully slow as transitions from scene to scene and even day/night lighting slow the whole thing down. It appears this is not from the game engine TyranoBuilder, it's a delay put in by the creator to force you to read the story.

ACHIEVEMENTS
You might say "21 achievements!" Well yeah, that's what I thought too. IMO it was not worth it. Just got spend a buck and get a 5,000+ achievement game - it costs more, but is way less painful and time-consuming.

for the final verdict, it gets a ... THUMBS DOWN
I can not recommend this free kinetic novel to anyone. Reading it was not a good experience for me.
You might say "Hey, the game is free - it doesn't cost anything. It's worth a try!"
While it's true the game is free, it still costs you time to read it. It's time you will regret spending, and time you will be unable to get back.

TL;DR - It's a good collection of 5 basic games that offer a nice way to pass some time but don't require a huge commitment to time to play. I will lean towards a positive rating because of the solitaire game but *ONLY* if you can pick this game up at a discount.
4/10 stars

I've only played 2 of the 5 games in this bundle, and I enjoyed the solitaire game.

PROS
I played the solitaire game and I liked it. It's your basic solitaire card game, with an option for stacked cards to be hidden or displayed. The pirate theme is cute and the background music is OK. It's a nice game to play when you have a few minutes to spare but don't want to get involved in a long game that's hard to quit out of quickly.

NEUTRAL
I played the mahjong game but thought it was average. The background music was nice, but the play modes were limited. There's better mahjong games with more features, so I probably won't be replaying it.
I don't have any interest in the tetris, sudoku, or word games so I probably won't be playing them.

CONS
I got the game on sale for $1 and felt it was overpriced, but that's partially because I'm only playing 1 of the 5 games. Even if I was playing all 5 games, I don't think this is worth full price ($3.99 USD at the time of this review)

TL;DR - For me, this game was not entertaining or fun to play. Uninstalled.
0/10 stars

Broken Dreams is a platformer with a unique mechanic of "shadow friends" to help you reach new heights, and a story about unrequited love. While this sounded really interesting in a description, during game play I found it just feel flat for me.

PRO
The voice acting was well done

CON
The in-game tutorial does not explain shadow friends aspect of game very well & I found the shadow friends both hard to control/direct during game play, and disturbing during the story.
Characters weren't likeable - Jack came across as a creepy stalker and Michelle came across as manipulative and heartless.
I felt the levels didn't progress in difficulty well. Some levels felt stupidly hard (10 & 17), other levels not so much.

VALUE FOR THE MONEY
Broken Dreams didn't provide me with entertainment or fun, and playing the game wasn't an enjoyable experience. There's so many inexpensive or Free-to-Play games on Steam that offer much better gameplay and provide fun and entertaining gameplay, this really falls short by comparison. Even purchased at a discount during a sale, I feel it wasn't a good purchase and I cannot recommend this game.

I got the game for the achievements with the adorable cat images and the level 5 badge with a cat.
Turns out it was a short but fun game with a spot-the-difference game to simulate working on indie game development, and lots of real life distractions on how you could spend your day - including spending your day with an ADORABLE cat!
The cut scenes of your day and night are fun to watch once, but you can also skip them by pressing "0".
Once you've "won" the game there's not a lot of replayability, but I've actually replayed it just to watch the adorable cat cutscene. :)

I was amused and entertained & feel the game was worth what I paid.

While Gone In November sounds like it's got a great idea for a dramatic story, it's the poor delivery of the storytelling that really kills it.

CONS
-no reading speed controls so text disappears before you've read it, and the only way to read it again is to start the game over and quickly screenshot the text before it disappears (which was WAY more effort then I was willing to put in)
-interacting with objects is difficult
-the story is quite short
-the story felt incomplete and unpolished

PROS
Ummm .... well ... I like cactus (yep, that's seriously the most positive thing I can say about the game)

The premise of the story sounds interesting, but the delivery of the story just fell flat for me.
Telling a story about depression and end of life issues would have probably been better told through a visual/kinetic novel format rather then through a buggy walking sim.