The art is nice and the small touches of novelty in the xenofauna are lovely. The writing is a little overwrought at times, especially when discussing the lives of the fictional crew producing the 'documentary' you're playing, but nothing too horrible.
I find lately that I'm not really interested in visual novels as a storytelling medium. I'd just always rather be reading a short story, or a graphic novel if the pictures are that important. Nothing about this medium works better for me when a story is as linear as this.
The voice acting is also truly terrible - it may well be text-to-speech model generated, I can't say for sure. You can turn it off, but it's extremely grating.
I find lately that I'm not really interested in visual novels as a storytelling medium. I'd just always rather be reading a short story, or a graphic novel if the pictures are that important. Nothing about this medium works better for me when a story is as linear as this.
The voice acting is also truly terrible - it may well be text-to-speech model generated, I can't say for sure. You can turn it off, but it's extremely grating.
I discovered this title after coming across a list of free titles on here and being immediately intrigued by the premise, and I can confidently say it delivers on my expectations and then some.
The game has a very compelling narrative that is presented in the style of a BBC nature documentary, with very charming artwork of the alien animals and landscapes that is both weird and whimsical. The true intrigue comes from the little tidbits of lore about the wider setting and it left me wanting to know more.
Gameplay is unfortunately extremely linear, even for a visual novel. You get the option to click on certain text options to find out more information but ultimately you can't deviate from the story presented in the documentary framing device. Hopefully this will be addressed in Part Two.
For the most part I was happy with the narration, there was an odd inflection in a few instances but for the most part it didn't take me out of the experience, however I did check in the credits to confirm my theory that it was generated using AI speech tools.
Overall, I was very impressed with the creativity on display here and since it's a free title I would say it's well worth an hour of most people's time.
The game has a very compelling narrative that is presented in the style of a BBC nature documentary, with very charming artwork of the alien animals and landscapes that is both weird and whimsical. The true intrigue comes from the little tidbits of lore about the wider setting and it left me wanting to know more.
Gameplay is unfortunately extremely linear, even for a visual novel. You get the option to click on certain text options to find out more information but ultimately you can't deviate from the story presented in the documentary framing device. Hopefully this will be addressed in Part Two.
For the most part I was happy with the narration, there was an odd inflection in a few instances but for the most part it didn't take me out of the experience, however I did check in the credits to confirm my theory that it was generated using AI speech tools.
Overall, I was very impressed with the creativity on display here and since it's a free title I would say it's well worth an hour of most people's time.