Who We Are Now is a queer, post-apocalyptic visual novel set ten years after a nuclear war scoured the earth. It follows Wes, a young man who, drowning in the memories of everyone he's lost, returns to a settlement called Home in search of something to ease his pain.
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i do agree that this VN is really short despite having four routes, but i really enjoyed the experience! it's sweet and nice, and i liked the characters :)
There's a lot of potential here, but this is a wisp of a VN, with barely enough content to get me past the two-hour mark despite having four routes. Short VNs aren't a bad thing, obviously, but each route centers around the protagonist helping a love interest work through their traumas (and falling in love with them in the process), and 30-45 minutes is simply not enough time to make that journey resonant. It's barely even convincing on a basic narrative level.
It takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting, but worldbuilding is scant at best. Some key narrative beats are outright skipped over--one love interest, who has supernatural powers through vaguely defined means, defends the town from invading bandits at the midpoint of his arc in which he learns to accept and control his power and identity, but this scene is not even depicted, only referred to after the fact. It all has the abbreviated feeling of a game that maybe ran out of money during the dev cycle. I don't know if that's what happened, but if it did it would explain a lot.
It's a shame too, because on paper I like nearly everything about it--its queer-friendliness, the way it takes place in the post-apocalypse but the post-apocalypse isn't the focus, the art, and well, yeah, the sex. It's essentially a game about men talking about their feelings, which I love; this kind of blunt emotional directness, especially among guys, isn't super common in video games. It's just that in practice it's so rushed that it feels like a game barely about anything.
It takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting, but worldbuilding is scant at best. Some key narrative beats are outright skipped over--one love interest, who has supernatural powers through vaguely defined means, defends the town from invading bandits at the midpoint of his arc in which he learns to accept and control his power and identity, but this scene is not even depicted, only referred to after the fact. It all has the abbreviated feeling of a game that maybe ran out of money during the dev cycle. I don't know if that's what happened, but if it did it would explain a lot.
It's a shame too, because on paper I like nearly everything about it--its queer-friendliness, the way it takes place in the post-apocalypse but the post-apocalypse isn't the focus, the art, and well, yeah, the sex. It's essentially a game about men talking about their feelings, which I love; this kind of blunt emotional directness, especially among guys, isn't super common in video games. It's just that in practice it's so rushed that it feels like a game barely about anything.