Great short and sweet little game. Props for using custom sprites but I wish the little balloon that appears above the head was in the same resolution as everything else.

I'm inclined to say this is a good pick for someone's first RPG Maker game, as it's not too long, there's no combat, and the puzzles aren't super obtuse, but the button-timing puzzle is honestly annoying as hell. Also got stuck in the market area for a while because I thought the coupon you receive could only be used for one thing and I had to choose wisely. The yes/no question when you try to buy something also played a huge part in convincing me of that as well. But whatever, it's not that big of a deal.

Also, the ending is absolutely nuts. Honestly did not see that coming at all.

Okay so, imagine Breaking Bad, but very poorly translated from Russian, and with none of the good writing or characters or charm or drama or tension or anything. And I say this as someone who hasn't seen Breaking Bad.

TBH tho this game isn't an atrocity, it's just so laughably bad that it's amusing. And actually, I don't even think you can buy this game on Steam anymore, I think the store page was deleted because every time I try to access it it just takes me to the store home page. I bought it because I like RPG Maker games and I like supporting indie devs and I thought the game had an interesting premise and really nice sprite art. But one second in I realize the tiles/characters are likely from an asset pack because the 'enemies' you 'fight' are all represented by the same singular piece of clip art.

And TBH, this game's core idea isn't bad, even with it just being a worse Breaking Bad. You 'make' drugs in your apartment by literally battling them at the stovetop. Then, you have to go deliver them to people in the city while narrowly avoiding the cops. Some cops can be bribed and others can't. Obviously it needs some work, but it's a fun idea. The problem is literally everything else about the game. Constant tile layering errors which make traversing the needlessly large overworld even harder, not to mention there's a stamina meter for when you run?? Which I guess makes sense for outrunning cops but it depletes so fast and the city is so large and vacant that having to wait between dashes is just so annoying. And did I mention it's very poorly translated from Russian? The game immediately throws you into this 'tense' scene where a doctor is telling you your mom has cancer, but you can't see your mom and there's this really loud royalty free 'adventure' music playing in the background. The music loops constantly throughout the game and does not change during different scenarios.

Thank god I got this game on sale for 50 cents and also you can't even buy it anymore so the world is safe from its wrath.

So after remembering to log this game on here like, yesterday, and doing so based solely on my memories of it from years ago, I decided to actually give it a shot and play it until I beat it. And honestly? I kinda wish I didn't.

The game is just as slow as I remember it being, with the music being just as annoying as I remember. It's not that the single track that the game has is bad, it just feels unfinished. It's a few notes played on loop, nothing special. And the sound font it uses is quite grating. The game is also just as confusing as I remember it being, with the set up being "walk around, talk to people, inspect everything" and to be fair, those are the bulk of the gameplay. But what the game doesn't tell you is that it's a multi-round murder mystery with multiple endings. Most of the items you pick up, despite their interesting names and descriptions, literally don't amount to anything. They don't go anywhere, they aren't used for anything, they aren't given to anyone, nothing. In and of itself, I understand the desire to have a 'collectathon' of sorts, but when your entire gameplay is finding and giving items to people, having 80-90% of your items just being for show and not actually useful just gives this feeling of disappointment almost, like a 'man I was looking forward to using that'. Especially when there's no prompting by the game anywhere of like 'this is for your collection' or the idea of a collection in general.

The game literally has an opening cutscene thing where it's like 'hey this is what you do in this game' with no mention of the multi round mystery thing. Does it make it more of a shock when it happens? Sure, I guess. But I feel like it's also part of why I shelved this game like 3-4 times before beating it-- I had no goal. I was just walking around, collecting random items, talking to NPCs with seemingly no reaction from any of them. And so after seeing every room and talking to everyone, I would just give up and assume I saw everything the game had to offer.

And in the end, the literal ending of the game, I wasn't satisfied enough by what happened to make me feel like my time here is warranted. There's a jump cut to the graveyard with like, a wizard battle type of thing, and then it just ends.

I feel bad rating this game low because the art is really cute and the vibes are really nice, and a lot of the flavor text on things is so full of charm. There's a lot of little details here. But it doesn't make up for how slow this game is. And for that, I can't really recommend it.