Eine ganz simple kleine visual novel über einen entlaufenen Hund. Schön leichtherzig mit liebenswerten überdrehten Charakteren, die wirklich schön gezeichnet sind.

Besonders gut gefallen hat mit die einzige Gameplaykomponente: das Hirn des Hauptcharakters wurde durch eine Murmel ersetzt und so muss man in multiple choice Situationen die Murmel per Kurbel zur richtigen Antwort steuern. Dabei ist die korrekteste Antwort immer am schwierigsten anzusteuern.

Dabei kann man als Spieler nur gewinnen, denn manche der "falschen" Antworten sind so absurd falsch, dass sie oft die witzigsten Dialoge bringen.

Für mich einer der Überraschungshits des Playdates bis jetzt.

The story and writing are quite poor but the idea and art captured my interest. I love the idea of mad libs conversations solved by balling-rolling puzzles but it is just nowhere near snappy enough to make it work. Too much text and the ball-rolling levels feel too long to keep up the pace.

In general, I'd say text-heavy games do not work well on the playdate. It is far too small to read tiny text on for long periods and even the best writing would struggle with its limitations. I think story-based games can work on the system, but only by relying less on long conversations in favor of environmental storytelling and moments of action.

Although I could see a version of this game, leaning more into the mad libs element, having no idea what the conversation is even about until after you finished filling in the blanks. I would definitely be interested in seeing the idea further explored.

Also, it is kind of unacceptable for a VN not to have an auto-text-advance option. It is like the bare minimum for quality-of-life features.

I love the idea of this! The story isn’t amazing or super compelling, but it’s cute and funny at times. The art is pretty interesting and the core mechanic that elevates this is a fantastic idea. I don’t love visual novels and little minigames like in this are a stellar way to get me into it. You control a little ball with the crank and smash decision orbs to make choices in the game. Very interesting concept, I’d love to see something like this in a bigger visual novel with an interesting narrative to go with it (not that this one’s -bad-, but)

A un nivel mecánico, este juego me retrae a una época antigua en el medio. Casi siento que este título podría haber salido en la época mediana de Game Boy, cuando les desarrolladores empezaron a trastear de verdad con las posibilidades del aparato. Y ver a un juego de lanzamiento en Playdate con esta inventiva lúdica me reconfortaría, si no hubiera visto ya tantas versiones de Marble Madness.

Pero mi problema principal con este juego es la manera en que está escriita la trama. A ratos, recuerda a un capítulo avanzado de Steven Universe, del tipo que hace carantoñas y espera que te rías con ella y nada más. Eso me provoca un rechazo importante.

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Mechanically speaking, this game takes me back to an ancient time of the medium. I almost feel like this could've come out in the Game Boy's middle period, when developers really started to tinker with the device. And seeing a Playdate title acting this bold and launch would be more impressibe, if I wasn't so used to Marble Madness lookalikes by now.

My main issue with this game is in the narrative itsel. At times, it is reminiscent of a later episode of Steven Universe, the kind that made cutey faces and expected you to laugh at only that. That made me reject the game in a big way.

The first Playdate season has done a good job of giving out a wide variety of different genres, with this week's title being a visual novel -- Lost Your Mables. It's a short story about a girl traveling around an eccentric town looking for her dog. Dialogue choices are made by playing a pseudo-pinball minigame, which uses the crank to tilt a stage, allowing the player to direct a ball into one of three dialogue options. It has some clever writing and some cute characters, but I'll admit I didn't care much for this game. The plot is goofy to the point of not mattering, and the dialogue minigame, while cute, is difficult to control and none of the dialogue choices feel all that impactful. This game does claim to have 10 different endings though, so if you really enjoy it, you can subjugate yourself to trying to hit the needed targets. However, this was one of the weaker Playdate titles for me.

Cute game, writing can be pretty funny at times. Characters are pretty memorable despite only getting a couple minutes of screen time, and the "choose your own adventure" aspect combined with the marble mini-game is neat. Also liked the design of the little overworld map - gave this small game some scale and added charm.

Marble game itself is simple, but a fun use of the Playdate's crank.

Wish there was a way to see which game routes you have taken previously without rolling credits (e.g. via an option on title screen)

Progress: Rolled credits a couple times to get a couple different endings.

usually i just avoid VNs, they're not my thing, i do not attempt to play them and therefore never have to review them.

but as this was given to me as part of the playdate system itself, i tried it.

probably made it worse that I wasn't aware it was a VN till it was painfully too late.

allegedly this has gameplay, I never got there, I was so wildly frustrated with the boring and gratingly twee dialogue to even reach a 'level'

oh well.

probably a game for fans of steven universe, i have no idea why i think that.