A fictitious nature documentary about whales on an alien planet not dissimilar from Earth, told through a series of beautiful images. I thought the art was really good and the narrative of the documentary (including the various asides) was believable and compelling in a way that sci-fi often fails to be without being clinical and boring.

What let South Scrimshaw down a little for me is the AI narration. At points it was glaringly obvious, different voices having different pronunciations of the same word and the main narrator slipped from a British accent into an Australian one on a few rare occasions that made it clear I was not listening to a human. I feel like it shouldn't have been that hard to find people willing to lend their voices to this.

A nature documentary visual novel with beautiful art and music that evokes a keen sense of place, firmly submerging you in its aquatic alien world. Following a new-born whale over the course of it's childhood years, the narrative is both touching and informative. The world building here is excellent, offering just enough intricacies and tangential information without overwhelming or distracting from the core tale.

The entire run-time is about an hour, and crazily it's also free, so I would strongly recommend anyone gives it a try. One of the most engrossing pieces of video game world-building I've experienced, and certainly the most I've connected with a visual novel. I can't wait to see our whale calf mature into adulthood in Part 2.

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.

A phenomenal (voiced) nature documentary visual novel following a fictional species of whale on a different planet through it's first years of life.
With beautiful art and interesting topics it's a great read.

If this even mildly interests you, as it did me, give it a try!
it's ~80 minutes and entirely free!

rlly rlly beautiful and everything I value in both art and just the world in general. I’ve wanted to work w animals and environmental protection and I fully intend to go to school for that…eventually lol. at first was annoyed that they didn’t more in addition to the visual novel type of storytelling. like they created such a fully well realized world and animals w their own history and lore and ways of living and the art is just so beautiful that I wanted to freely explore it instead of being set on a predetermined and linear path. but I started thinking about it and it makes sense both to ally and thematically, like the framing device is a docu crew and the filmmakers cannot and will not interfere w anything that happens regardless of whether or not they want to. they can only see what their cameras permit them too, they are also stuck on a straight path of which there’s no deviation and where they cannot stop events from happening. tbh when a second chapter does come out I rlly do hope it follows a diff character/breed of marine life w the whale calf just making sporadic appearances, seriously I do think w time and future releases this will come to be better than kr0 in terms of stories like these in this medium.
reminded me of the time I was on a vacation w my bf and we were taking a Lyft somewhere over a bridge, beneath us from inside the car I could see a manatee swimming away. this game made me feel exactly how I did that day, w so much love and appreciation for this world and all of its inhabitants…

A lovely creative VN with the framing device of a PBS style nature documentary following a team of human researchers studying the childhood of an alien whale on a distant planet. The worldbuilding is real neat as the animals are based off Earth ocean-life but taken in alien directions, such as the whales themselves who can be hosts to entire complex ecosystems on their bodies. It's just the first part of the game, so its not complete, but the part ends on a good stopping point. Do hope we see more. Check it out, its free, so you don't got an excuse.

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.

Y'ALL, SCRATCH EVERYTHING ELSE - South Scrimshaw, Part One is genuinely one of the most engrossing pieces of video game storytelling I've played. It's also free.

The game presents itself as a nature documentary a la visual novel - with genuinely staggering art evoking a sense of place and groundedness to what is explicitly an alien world. The game specifies that, while this is an alien world, it's extremely similar to Earth's climate, and is hypothesized to be an example of panspermia - evolving from the same extrasolar seeds that birthed life on Earth. As such, the organisms represented are familiar, but altogether spectacular in their newness.

It's a take on science-fiction that I'm not sure I've seen before, wholly focused on familiar-ish xenobiology with nary a concern for the space-tech that brought humanity to another planet. Because, of course, that's outside the scope of the nature documentary.

Its story follows a young whale from birth to adolescence, across the first four chapters of the story. The structure of the narrative is indistinguishable from that which you might expect from the likes of a Blue Planet or Planet Earth, but the cast is completely new - and completely fascinating.

It is without a doubt going to be in contention for my Game of the Year, which I CANNOT believe I'm saying about a Visual Novel - a genre that I've previously held no real interest in.

Bellissima idea di utilizzare il formato della kinetic novel per realizzare un falso documentario piuttosto elaborato su una specie animale fittizia. Così come accade normalmente in qualsiasi kinetic novel non ci sono route e non è possibile interagire con nessun elemento durante la visione: si tratta a tutti gli effetti di una fiction interattiva che, di interattivo, ha la sola possibilità di ricercare alcuni, sparuti approfondimenti riguardo alcune delle cose dette. Si tratta soltanto dell'introduzione al prodotto finale, di cui ancora non si conosce la futura data d'uscita