Ghost Trick is one of the best visual novels I've played.

I loved it because it has gameplay. It doesn't simply ask you to mash the action button to skip text.

Everything relating to the Ghost Trick mechanic was great, although a little too intense on the "trial and error" at times.

The story is a tad overdrawn, but it still rules. The twists hit like a ton of bricks and it kept me on my toes the whole time. It's a really tightly knit story that's worth seeing through to the end.

A weird, unique and wholly realized game of top notch quality.

I'm dehydrated now from how much my hand sweat I lost playing this.

The Kidnap has very uneven game design, and maybe too many jump scares. Apart from that, a lot of moments are genuinely fucked up and terrifying, even while using very rudimentary building blocks (simple 3D art and sound design abound).

I had a great time going through this with friends on Discord, and I'll remember it fondly even if it is somewhat corny in the end.

It's all about the mood.

Animal Well, to me, really distinguished itself with its atmosphere. The almost total absence of music, replaced by a myriad of sounds and wobbles. The sparkling colors and dancing smoke effects moving across the scan-line post process. The weird animal designs and encounters where random otters can jump on screen to mess with your plans.

It also has very interesting power-ups which are all thematically consistent as a toolkit and really creative in how they shape your relationship to the environment.

It's a bit of a bummer that the game offers almost no tools to hunt down all the remaining secrets once the game is over. I would have loved to get to the true ending, but there's no way I'm scouring every inch of a gigantic map (where it's tough to fast-travel) with no pointers to get to that point.

It still is a fantastic little game for what it is and I'll mostly remember it for it's unique art direction and thick ambiance.